[X Newbies] Apple and all of these viruses?

[Eugene Lee]

On Sat, Aug 23, 2003 at 10:27:15AM -0500, Steven Rogers wrote:
: 
: On Saturday, August 23, 2003, at 03:45 AM, Eugene Lee wrote:
: 
: >: Thank you for the interesting citation. But have a look at:
: >:
: >: http://www.bynkii.com/generic_mac_stuff/archives/000091.html
: >
: >There are number of hurdles in OS X that make life much more difficult 
: >for virus writers.
: 
: That article focuses on the ability to *write* a virus for the Mac.

I respectfully disagree.  :-)

The article strongly suggests, without actually stating, that OS X is
more vulnerable to possible viruses because there are more programming
languages available on OS X to exploit the system: AppleScript, several
shells, Perl, Python, Tcl, Ruby, etc.   Of course the only way to take
advantage of any of these languages is to trick the user into executing
some malicious bit of code.  But that's not so easy in OS X.  And the
damage would be limited to only that user's files.  The rest of OS X
would be unaffected (unless the user is stupid enough to be running as
root all the time, but the user should be shot at this point to weed out
the overly recessive mutations from the human tribe).  The multi-user
feature of OS X is hurdle.

The article also suggests that a kext could destroy an OS X box.  But of
course the only way to run a malicious kext is to trick the user into
installing it while convincing the user to enter the admin password.
And that's not so easy in OS X either.  Now say you convince the user
to installg some driver update when in reality it's some malicious kext
or other code.  If the user is fooled into doing compromising her own
system, that is an issue with human beings being too gullible and giving
out the keys, not with OS X being too insecure.  Requesting the admin
password in OS X is a hurdle.

: PC users will also point out that PCs can be *made* secure, its just 
: that the users don't update or configure them correctly.

Sometimes, this is not the case when certain security measures require
regedit, something that should not be expected from the average Windoze
user just to make her machine safer.


-- 
Eugene Lee
http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/