[X Newbies] Apple and all of these viruses?

[Randy B. Singer]

Chris Walker said:

>Not that I doubt your word, (my programming knowledge is as near zero as
>makes no difference) 

My programming experience *is* zero.

>but take a look at this: 
...
>I have seen another post (which I can't find again) where the writer (who
>claims to be a very experienced Unix programmer) is saying the same -
>that these things are at best very difficult and if produced are unlikely
>to cause major damage due to the Unix system architecture. 

Thank you for the interesting citation. But have a look at:

http://www.bynkii.com/generic_mac_stuff/archives/000091.html

>One other point.  Surely if writing viruses for Unix was a relatively
>simple proposition, since a great many servers run Unix of one sort or
>another, why has no one attacked those, or is it that they are better
>protected?  To take down major servers would cause chaos.

I think that the mistake that you, and the Linux programmer who wrote 
what you cited, are both making is that you are assuming that Mac OS X is 
the same as straight UNIX, or that it is the same as Linux.  It isn't. 
I'm sure that you can think of a number of ways that OS X is drastically 
different those other two OS's.   

I would also prefer to believe that it can't be done.  But I'm not naive. 
 I can only guess that the reason that no OS X viruses have appeared 
before now is because Mac users tend to be more mature than Windows users 
(think of the hundreds of thousands of children who purchase Windows PC's 
to play games with them, and who have too much free time, and who decide 
it might be cool to create a virus). I'm sure that is one of the major 
reasons why there were so few viruses for OS 7/8/9.

Randy B. Singer
Co-Author of: The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions)

How To Deal With Common Macintosh OS X Jaguar Problems
http://www.macattorney.com/tutorial.html