[X4U] Re: Parental control software for Mac?

[Stroller]

On Dec 9, 2005, at 11:58 pm, TjL wrote:
> ...
> I don't know of any keylogging/screenshot taking software for Mac.
>
> There is no way to hide an application in OSX like there is in Windows.
> This is one of the reasons it is a more secure OS.  Even if you could 
> load
> software on the computer it could be spotted fairly easily.

I have to disagree - as almost all processes are visible in Activity 
Monitor or `top` on OS X, they're equally visible in "Task Manager" on 
Windows (XP or 2000, you shouldn't be running other versions these 
days). The prevalence of malicious software on Windows reflects the 
fact that few people look in Task Manager and even fewer bother to find 
out what each & every process on there does, in the same way that I 
don't know or care what "SecurityAgent" or "Database Daemon", running 
on my Mac as I type now, are doing.

It is possible to hide processes from the Task Manager on Windows, as 
Sony's now-famous DRM "rootkit" has recently demonstrated, but that's 
also possible on OS X. I couldn't say what the easiest way to do this 
is but it would be certainly possible by downloading the Darwin sources 
from Apple & recompiling the kernel; I couldn't do this now, but if I 
really wanted to I could learn. A Windows programmer would  probably 
find hiding a task from Windows comparably difficult.

Stroller.