MacDailyNews - Where Mac news comes first

F*** Microsoft. F*** Windows. F*** all these clowns that can get it through their thick skulls that Mac OS X is a superior OS.

Oh yeah, I'm a former Windows Network Engineer....studying Mac OS X programming now.

Macs rule!

"The most important is that it was designed with relatively little concern for compatibility with earlier versions [for example Mac OS 9], while Windows is full of compromises"

What RUBBISH! Are we meant to call the achievment of virtually 100% compatability and seamless intergration of OS9 apps via the Classic environment "designed with little concern?"

Sometimes i wonder where these people get there stats... 90%? thats pretty high...

Obviously the reason why macs dont have viruses.. no one will pay for mac, use it, and then want to hurt it... its too perfect!

ME... i wanna throw a rock through my windows everyday:P

MDN: You have a couple typos: "Mac OS X would not be as vulnerable to Windows if it had Windows' installed base" -- "as vulnerable to" should say "as vulnerable as".

Also, "lease stop insulting Apple Mac" should say "please stop...."

Some commentary on why Apple DOES release patches from time to time would have balanced out MDN's comments. But otherwise I am with you all the way. OS X is inherently better. There's a joke about how viruses would work in OS X: "KillJoyX needs your administrator password. Please enter it now."

Mac OS-X sits on top of Unix, a very well designed system. Unix is not a patchwork of stolen ideas and cobbled together hacks. MicroShaft tried to migrate to something robust with Windows NT but were unsuccessful at getting wide adoption. Even today, Windows XP Professional enjoys a far smaller audience than the (slightly cheaper and more compatible) consumer XP. This has helped fuel the thinking (inside MS) that they must maintain that compatibility issue to keep a large userbase clamouring for paid updates.

Someday (hopefully sooner rather than later) the house of cards will collapse. Linux and Mac OS are poised as alternatives when the masses are ready to shed their buggy unsecure Windoze software. Of course they will have already tried the latest version of MS security (for an additional fee) and found it "not so secure" and costly. As the price of time wasted installing and managing security software increases Mac's will look like a cheaper and cheaper alternative.

Still amazes me that people cannot understand that OS X is a much better, logical system.

No registry, no DLL's, no crazy directories.

Just Applications, Library, System & Users. Simple, effective and nowhere for viruses to hide.

Call me crazy, but Windows looks like a complete and utter mess. I reckon no two versions of Windows are the same.

yes windows dominates etc but what virus writer would not want to be the first to cause major havoc on the Mac side. There would be more publiclty for that one incident than a years worth of PC virus news.

One word: sycophancy. Look it up.

I recall learning Unix at University in the 1980's. While connected to another large University in a neighbouring city over a slow telephone line (300 baud connection with frequent dropouts was tops in those days), I found I had somehow acquired administator privileges on the other computer. I suggest the virus proof reliability of the Unix OS underpinning MacOSX is in large part follows from the constant testing and use since then. Now, almost all of the vulnerabilities have been detected and addressed. However, Apple cannot afford not to keep a watching brief on what may render the system vulnerable to viruses!

email him at,

"email him at,"

why bother? you can't change the mind of the mindless masses.

Tommo_UK, the statement that Mac OS X was designed with little concern for compatibility with earlier versions is in many respects correct.

What we run on our Macs today is NextStep, which was designed with absolutely no concern for compatibility with Mac OS 9. The main difference between NextStep and Mac OS X is the inclusion of two compatibility environments, namely Carbon and the Classic environment.

Classic is an emulator. This emulator will only work on PowerPC Macs, and you won't be seeing it on the forthcoming Intel boxes - so a big chunk of backward compatibility will disappear with that transition.

Carbon is a re-working of the classic Mac APIs designed to be able to work on top of NextStep. The concern when designing the Carbon APIs was not ensuring 100% compatibility, it was to ensure that things would be able to work on a radically different underlying operating system. Moving to Carbon wasn't a simple re-compile job, since virtually all applications made use of old API calls that were not present in Carbon, and many apps got left behind.

Mac OS X on PowerPC isn't a truely compatible OS with Mac OS 9 - it emulates it, when required, and that's something rather different. This means that there are some things that won't work, although most classic Mac apps will run. Mac OS X on Intel is very compatible with software written for Mac OS X on PowerPC, and compatible with Carbon applications too, but not at all compatible with pre-Carbon.

little regard for bakcward compatibility?
What the heck was Classic then?
Pretty darn compatible if you ask me.

If you're in the UK, tonight's The Gadget Show on channel 5 (FIVE) at 7:15pm is going to be testing what happens to an unprotected PC when you plug it into the internet. Should be amusing watching for mac users.

Clearly, there is absolutely no support for the claims in the orginal article. This is another empty shell of an article to tell Windows users that it is okay that they have to deal with nasty things because it is all done to make sure everyone can use any program they like blah, blah, blah. The flip side is the message that all Mac users are just using some poor under used platform that nobody would bother attacking. Sorry, don't buy those illogical logics. Classic rhetoric really. Take a semi-truth (Windows has big market share) and say that because it that is true, these other things are true (Macs don't have virus problems because it has small market share).

Now, if the guy had actually done some research he might offer something of value and learn a bit in the process. As it is, he comes across as he means: to attack the Mac and build up Windows. Useless!

The overwhelming majority of security updates have been updates/changes to the open source and/or 3rd party components included in the OS. OS X includes many open source and 3rd party components that largely are the work of people outside Apple.

If they don't understand the concept of zero, perhaps these journalists should take a history lesson from the Babylonians and the Mayans.

To say OS X's security model is no better than XP's is to say that Vista's security model is no better than XP's.

Window's Vista's security model (don't automatically grant admin privileges to an app run in an admin account) IS OS X's security model.

Here are the details:
http://www.xvsxp.com/log-in/#securityOutOfTheBox

Windows is just not secure and I seriously doubt these hackers know who is on the other end and how much money they make. And I also doubt that they really even care. They just want to prove they can break in and if there making spyware for an online site then maybe it's more for profit but I doubt that they make very much money.
OSX was built from the ground up with security in mind because they already saw the issues that Windows was having and new it had to be secure.

Bill Gates said in an interview on 9/15/05 that: "Software in general, whether it was from Microsoft or somebody else, was not set up for an environment where all the computers were connected together."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/240541_gates14ww.html

If this is how Microsoft thinks, it's no wonder that they have huge security issues. So, using his logic, there is a solution to make Windows inherently secure - unplug it from the internet and use it by itself.

"the ablest writers of viruses, spyware, and worms, are motivated more by profit than glory, and Windows, with 90%-plus of the market, is where the money is."

And this guy writes for BusinessWeek? Isn't one of the first lessons of business to find the underserved market and exploit the lack of competition?

Unix was/is designed as an environment for networking multiple computers. Bill Gates just "stole" the wrong underpinnings when he was setting IBM up for the big hose job.

Does this mean now, that Vista will no longer be backward-compatible with previous software? What will the corporate world do? The software vendors, I'm sure, will be glad to sell all those upgrades. Talk about a windfall. Imagine the amount of money that will have to be spent for every upgrade to Vista: the machine cost just to run the behemoth, the software upgrades, the training.

Makes a cross-grade to Mac look pretty cheap to me. Plus, no viruses, no mal-ware, no spyware. The software works, the hardware last longer, and incorporates cutting edge technology.

MW=easy; It's an easy decision!

I think Macdailynews and the people in this thread are too hard on the author of this article. He didn't lay the lack of OS X viruses SOLELY at the feet of obscurity. He acknowledged that OS X has better security than Windows does -- even apart from the question of market share and installed base.

And here's a news flash to everyone. Operating systems are designed and written by human beings, and human beings are not infallible. OS X is an excellent operating system and I find it superior to Windows, but it is not PERFECT.

One can make this observation and still contend that OS X has the superior security.

I still say the majority of attacks against Windows is because Microsoft is perceived as evil. People just want to bring them down.

It's called karma.

And this is the best Comment on their site:

Nickname: deepkid

Review: Perhaps the sort of blatantly uneducated guesswork present in this article would have been acceptable at the initial release of OS X several years ago, but is a true embarrassment to BusinessWeek since this was published in late 2005 -- 5 versions into the OS. Even a beginner tech journalist with Google access would have been able to find a plethora of information that illustrates that Mac OS X's UNIX underpinnings and Apple's carefully-executed security implementations are the reasons that there are presently NO viruses that affect it. While the OS is not perfect, it is not the rank piece of swiss cheese that has become XP. There was a serious lack of vision and focus along with greed that has created such a slipshod OS that is XP. A seasoned journalist would have provided specific examples of viruses, since you soft-stepped around your statement that they exist. Prove it. I don't know what's more disgusting -- couch potato journalism or traffic trolling.

"virus writers go where the money is" ????? What the hell is that supposed to mean? I have been told this by others as well, and they can never explain where "the money" is in virus writing. Then they drag out the obscurity BS. Or the quest for notoriety by writing the virus and causing havoc. Most have no answer to my observation that writing a virus for a previously virus free system would make them especially notorious

Thank you.

However, it is a shame that someone who professes to be a journalist ... a TECH journalist at that would allow their names to be attached to such sloppy misinformation.

We are at a crossroads in the newsgathering world.

It is no longer just the amateur online blogger that must be questioned thoroughly in their publication efforts.

When you have an established, funded, trained news gathering organization blatantly spreading misinformation in this fashion, we're at the watershed of a new high in yellow journalism.

By the way, I followed up with a second similar comment but I'd be surprised if they published it on the site. I'm actually surprised that the first one was used, unedited.

"A few years ago, OS X probably would have come under attack just for the challenge of it. But all the evidence suggests that these days, the ablest writers of viruses, spyware, and worms, are motivated more by profit than glory, and Windows, with 90%-plus of the market, is where the money is."

This implies that the intent of virus writing is to sell virus cures and protection systems, which would imply that Symantec and Microsoft commission the viruses in order to generate profits from their virus protection offerings.

Symantec aside, why would Microsoft offer virus protection subscription services rather than take these 3 or 4 or 7 years to develop and deliver Vista as a more secure OS?

It's a racket. It's extortion. It's what I've suspected for years.

Macaholic says, "Most have no answer to my observation that writing a virus for a previously virus free system would make them especially notorious."

My reply: I often make this very point myself, that if the motivation is about glory and reputation among one's fellow virus writers, it seems to me that to add your virus to the tens of thousands that hit Windows each year is no big deal, while to be able to claim that one is the writer of the very first virus to hit a platform would bring much more in the way of accolades.

But here's the thing: Most virus writers (in my opinion) are social misfits who don't get out much and who are looking for attention, even though they can't really sign their name to what they do for fear of prosecution. (I didn't say their motives were LOGICAL.) And the best way to get attention is to cause the most disruption possible.

And one cannot accomplish this by attacking a minority platform. If you want to wreak havoc, you simply will not write a virus for OS X. So it's only the "upper class" hackers and crackers who might try to target OS X or even VMS (which is probably the most secure OS on the planet). And the percentage of virus writers who I might call "upper class" is a fraction of a fraction of one percent.

As for the motivation of money, spyware writers DO hope to capture keystrokes for user names and passwords in the hope of cracking into bank accounts and the like. But the garden variety destructive or disruptive virus is written by adolescent boys who can't get laid -- to be frank. Yes, it's a stereotype, but I think it happens to be largely true. And these kids generally have Windows computers and so that's what they write viruses for.

Sometimes things ARE that simple.

Yeah, I'd call zero "extremely rare" all right. Geez, what a dork...

>"virus writers go where the money is" ????? What the
> hell is that supposed to mean?

Much if not most spam today is sent through remotely-controlled trojaned/r00ted/pwn3d Windoze boxes sitting on broadband connections. Spammers pay virus writers to write viruses/malware that installs remotely-controlled spam-spewing software on these boxes.

Because (a) OS X is very difficult to write malware for (especially self-propagating malware) and (b) there are so many unprotected, easy-to-compromise Windoze boxes on broadband connections, it's obvious what the virus-writer-for-profit will choose

-gitbox

Many of the Viruses/Spyware written are for the specific purpose of identity theft. The next most common group are for making a 'bot that hosts porn, etc off of your machine without your knowledge.

There are currently 300 million + Windows PCs in use worldwide and less than 20 million using various versions of Mac OS X in total. If you are trying to steal ID's Windows is the target of choice. If making 'bots for illegal activity is your thing then Windows is also the target of choice.

That said, there are NO KNOWN self propagating 'in the wild' malware programs or scripts for Mac OS X. ZERO, ZILCH, ZIP, NADA. XP maladies number in the tens of thousands and older versions are even more vulnerable.

Finally, despite all of the 'improvements' in security offered by XP Service Pack 2 (read overdue security changes), the majority of commercial XP installations do not have SP2 installed. A number of surveys have shown that the SP 2 head-count at less than 1/3rd of all enterprise systems. Most IT departments will wait until a client system is replaced rather than go unit by unit and reconfigure all of the apps required to work with SP 2. The time/money required to do this is prohibitive for many IT departments.

Whats all this crap about no backward compatibility? I can use a piece of software on my PowerMac 64 Bit computer that was released for the Macintosh in 1988!!! (MacDraw by the way) True, the switch to Intel will finally do away with that but it was a heckuva run and since I just got the PowerMac I am looking at being able to continue to run really old software for the next 5 years or so (I also still actually use a piece of software that I bought in 1993 (Daymaker - a great schedule program) to look up phone numbers of hotels I have stayed in etc.) I seriously doubt if windoze boasts anything near this kind of backward compatibility. Windoze is a smelly piece of non-intuitive swiss cheese cobbled together to "ape" the Mac.

When are these guys gonna wake up, smell the gangrene, and admit that they have chosen a piece of crap for an OS? And it's just gonna get worse too, not better. Go ahead dozers, ignore reality and keep on telling yourselves that NEXT year things will be better and keep on patching patches and rebooting and shutting off your machine with the start button. Your choice of an OS is only punishing one person - yourself.

</rant>

I think there are mistakes in unix history being presented in this thread.
- MacOSX is based on BSD NET1, not unix (or SCO would have sued Apple). I realize Apple is one propergating this misunderstanding by using "UNIX" instead of "BSD".
- unix was a multi-user stand-alone computer, not networked OS. BSD extensions for unix implemented the network. BSD NET1 was designed with network.
- BSD NET1 replaced unix codes with their own codes, after being sued by AT&T;(If I understand correct, there are few header files, which came from the original unix).
- unix was not always a secure OS. In fact the first internet worm affected "BSD unix" (may be removing the unix codes helped secure BSD NET1, but the security problem used by the first widespread worm was in sendmail, so may be not). People do continue to find problems with BSD, as one can see by going to FreeBSD web site. Some of which affects OSX and even Windows (MS using Open Source codes??? [Yes]), so BSD is not problem free. Why these problems are not being exploited is still a mystery to me. May be Apple do not give enough time for the hackers to exploit the problems; or because Mac does not have IE or Outlook with ActiveX; or don't have as many unnecessary active ports.
- I understand Windows Vista will have similar access right requirement to install programs as MacOSX, which should make the OS more secure. May be it is just me, but I don't get better feeling about Windows from these changes, knowing MS is the one implementing these changes.

"using Windows because they tend to be less educated and make less money than their Mac-using counterparts."

It's funny how true that is. I have never met a stupid Mac user

Your rebuttal to Wildstrom's profit motivation argument could be strengthened. First, if Mac users are more educated, they probably know better how to protect their computers from viruses (by buying a Mac, most likely, but probably including other measures as well). Second, if you have 1000 lesser-educated and poorer people leaving $10 on their doorstep to be collected by the malware authors, while the more-educated and wealthier number only 100 but leave $50 each, then as a business decision, you'd stil go after the poorer folk. In short, it is far from certain - without seeing numbers - that it would be more profitable to go after Mac users as a simple business decision.

I'd attack his profit argument by simply pointing out that the majority of high successful viruses did not generate money for their authors in any way, but rather just caused havoc and were more about prideful chest beating than the bottom line. And, given that that's the case, wouldn't it be quite a good chest-beat to say "Yeah, that was me who wrote the first virus for OS X"?

And this line of argument takes us once again to Mac OS X just being more secure than virus-infested Windows.

It's all about low-hanging fruit. XP is easy pickings.

No security problems with Macs? You guys are dreaming. Rather than pulling unsubstantiated claims out of my butt like the author of this article, I will provide a concrete example: if a virus writer wanted to target OS X machines, he could simply release some sort of free software (a game, a pirated version of Photoshop, etc.), and have it present a window that looks identical to the window OS X uses to ask the user for the admin password. The user would then give their admin password to the virus, and the entire machine would be compromised. There's your virus.

You really can't prove viruses don't exist for OS X. All you can claim is that one hasn't been found by security experts. Since hardly any Mac users run anti-virus software, who knows how many of you are already infected with silent viruses?

I know I get ignored every time I post something like this, but there are quite a few MS Word/Excel macro virsuses that run just fine on the Mac. To claim that MacOS X (by which you presumably mean "all executables that ship with the MacOS by default") has no viruses is disingenuous. A Mac user using the most popular office suite on the planet has to deal with the possibility of a myriad of viruses and claiming that the Mac has zero viruses is harmful to those who are made complacant by that fallacy.

No OS has viruses. A virus is defined as something that attaches to an executable or a data file and is spread by a host application when it is itself infected and run, or when it processes an infected file. Thus, only applications can POSSIBLY have viruses, not OSes. And there exist Mac apps with virsues. Therefore the Mac has viruses.

So please stop spreading untruth about the Mac having zero viruses. Perhaps you're thinking of worms? (You can't be thinking of trojans, since the Mac has had a couple of those already.)

Eric, you are a lot of laugh... (I don't want to insult you personally, but your theory is out of this world)

How do you know aliens don't insert probes in your rear-end when you go to sleep at night? Maybe there are silent aliens visiting you each night?

"Silent Viruses" LOL So I guess this silent Mac virus cannot be detected by any-kind of programs, just like ghosts and flying saucers?

There are people that are almost as paranoid as you Eric that have all kind of programs on their Macs like "Little Snitch" that can detect attempts to connect to a port (kind of like zone alarm). Some others watch carefully their logs and their process monitor for any unusual activity. I don't think any viruses could stay silent for a long time on the Mac before being detected. Being a close-knitted community with central reference sites like MacSurfer, Mac users would spread the news very quickly.

Also, why would someone make a silent virus that we never hear about and that does nothing else than trying to reproduce itself? They may as well do like you did, just saying that it exists without having to build it.

How could it reproduce itself? By emailing a copy of itself to people in your address book? That would leave traces. This also mean it can't be passing for Photoshop, because its too big for that. If I received some small game by email that was not solicited, even from a friend, I'll be very hesitant to open it before asking my friend what the heck is this game I never asked for, and why that his email was so badly written and so short. Anyway if it cannot reproduce itself, it's a trojan, not a virus, and every OS can have trojans.

Also, trying to piggyback a virus on an installer while making it works normally is quite a challenge. If I tried to install something and it doesn't really install a working program, I'd investigate what happened, even more so if a game that shouldn't require a password ask me for one. Unlike on Windows, only some rare programs need to modify the System folder and ask the admin password.

One last thing Eric: WHO SAID THAT THE MAC HAS NO SECURITY PROBLEMS? Please find me just one post on a forum somewhere where a Mac user says that Macs are invulnerable to malware... Those people are in your head... Just like Silent Viruses on the Mac... In your head

Anyway, even if we had 1 or 2 "silent viruses" that don't erase anything and can't do anything else since it must remain "silent", how does that compare to the thousands of Windows viruses, spywares and other malwares with new ones every week?

Whatever the reason, it's a fact that you have much more chance of being infected with a virus if you run Windows, and at least half of machines are already infected by not so silent viruses.

When Mac users are saying that OS X has zero viruses, it's like saying "pigs don't fly". We don't have to prove that no flying pigs exist. Anyone that could prove that there is one Mac OS X virus would instantly become a celebrity, with tons of news outlets spreading the news of the "First Mac OS X virus".

Windows is constantly attacked on all fronts, it has past a point where there are simply too many of them for people to focus on one and trying to eradicate it. OS X has a clear horizon all around it, and if any malware attacks it, the community will see it come from far away and will be able to put all its efforts in eradicating it.

With only one virus to fight at a time, and central community websites like MacSurfer, it would be easy to contain the spreading of the theoretical virus and retrace it's origins in a very small lapse of time, so very few people could be affected.

Sam:

Except that NONE OF THESE MS WORD/EXCEL MACRO VIRUSES WORK ON MAC OS X (Office X).

Why Mac users are warned about them is that a Mac user could spread them to Windows users by manually sending an old infected Word/Excel file to others.

Why isn't there any reports of people losing data on OS X because of a Word/Excel macro virus? Simply because it didn't happen... Do you have a conspiracy theory about it too?

There are some Mac sites that are critical about the Mac, and expose all bugs and security issues they can find. Many Mac sites can be complaisant I will agree, but hiding virus incidents like that would require a wide-spread conspiracy among the Mac media...

Sam:

I forgot something, there were Excel/Word viruses on OS 9, but none of these work on OS X.

OSes can be infected by viruses, this is one of the way they can then attach to other programs and data files "silently". If a virus passes as a .DLL inside your Windows folder, then Windows is infected, plain and simple, don't dance around words saying that "only the .DLL is infected". Please find me where you can find a definition of virus that says that OSes cannot be infected. They may use data files to send themselves, but they can (and usually have to) infect the OS to be effective and always run even after a reboot.

Whatever, your pre-emptive strike falls apart anyway since, I must repeat, that none of those Excel/Word Macro viruses don't work on Office in Mac OS X.

So again, find just one working virus on Mac OS X that can affect files on the HD. (I'm adding that to rule out Virtual PC, which may be able to run Win32 viruses, but in a sandbox, not being able to damage or copy itself to files on the Mac HD, just like a real PC on the same desk)

Sam says: "A virus is defined as something that attaches to an executable or a data file and is spread by a host application when it is itself infected and run, or when it processes an infected file."

Sam, this is not the whole picture. I don't know where you get the idea that no virus can be an executable file in its own right, but in fact viruses are ONLY that -- they are executable files which can self-propagate. What you are confusing is the METHOD of this propagation with the nature of the virus itself.

Generally worms (a type of virus) are independent of all other applications and are executables in their own right. Maybe you are thinking instead more of Trojan Horses.

Also, you say there is no such thing as an OS virus. You are mistaken on this on two levels. First, some viruses do infect operating systems directly (as another poster has pointed out). Second, viruses are OS-specific insofar as they run native to one OS or the other. For example, we speak of Windows applications and Mac applications. Well, a virus is simply (on some level) an "application" and in order for it to execute itself it must be native to the OS/platform in question. So in THAT sense a virus can be said to be OS-specific.

Virtual-Twin:
"Please find me just one post on a forum somewhere where a Mac user says that Macs are invulnerable to malware"

Sure! How about (from the article itself), "Mac OS X is so much better, in fact, that it's literally a joke to write lines like, 'still, all operating systems have vulnerabilities, including OS X. Like Microsoft, Apple issues a monthly set of security patches to plug the holes.'"

To say something is a joke implies it is not true. And when something is "literally" (as a opposed to figuratively I suppose) a joke, well, just watch out...

People who are "paranoid" and running firewalls aren't all that likely to download games from shady websites and open strange email attachments, are they? Furthermore, a decent virus could interfere with a firewall so it wouldn't show up in the logs.

When I said viruses could be silent, I was referring to the fact that many Windows users are running malware without even realizing it, and in the abscence of anti-virus software, a small portion of Mac users could be doing the same.

"If I tried to install something and it doesn't really install a working program, I'd investigate what happened, even more so if a game that shouldn't require a password ask me for one." First of all, if you already tried to install it, it probably already stole your password, and who said it wouldn't install something? Also, the average user would not investigate. That's the point.

The rest of your points fail to invalidate the argument that OS X is more "secure" just because it is obscure.

Virtual-Twin,
You said, "When Mac users are saying that OS X has zero viruses, it's like saying 'pigs don't fly'." I'd like to thank you for making this point, because it is a perfect example of what is known as the logical fallacy of the false analogy. This sort of statement is typically used as a last-resort attempt to substantiate a weak claim. I noticed that your posts actually contained several examples of this. Now that you've illustrated it for us all, everyone will be able to identify similar statements in the future and understand why they should be ignored.

Eric says: "If a virus writer wanted to target OS X machines, he could simply release some sort of free software (a game, a pirated version of Photoshop, etc.), and have it present a window that looks identical to the window OS X uses to ask the user for the admin password. The user would then give their admin password to the virus, and the entire machine would be compromised. There's your virus."

No, there's your Trojan Horse. That would not meet the definition of a virus because it's not self propagating from machine to machine, network to network and (2) it requires human intervention (such as by downloading a counterfeit copy of Photoshop from an unreliable source) in order to perform its function.