It has been a very good year for Apple

stuppy said:
Naw. Would suck ass.

Keep OSX on Apple products. If they allowed OSX to run on any joeschmoe computer they would be shooting themselves in the foot. OSX is one of the main reasons (if not the main reasion) that people buy Mac Hardware. Yeah you would still get sales of their products but the numbers would dwindle as people could just pay 140 quid and install it on their run of the mill Dell.

Also, if Apple were to support other computers, then they have to start making it compatible with every hardware setup possible. With them just support their own hardware its much easier for them to keep OSX running tip-top.

I am really happy that Apple are building their reputations and market share and all that - but I really would hate to see them become so big that virus coders/spyware making ********* think OOOOO lets attack the new big boy - and before you know it we have to isntall A/V on our Macs. Now that would suck arse.
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AJUK said:
There aren't any viruses for Mac OS X at the moment, because it is too hard for them to write, if it wasn't they would have done it!
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Do you bury your head in the sand or something? I provided information on a few OSX virii. Virus's don't cease to exist when the exploitation vector is patched. OSX has its fair share of vulnerabilities like any other software. From a security researcher point of view, windows is a much easier target than OSX/BSD/*nix indeed.

Its easier to find exploitable code in open source, but due to peer review most things get fixed. This is a huge security bonus for open source software.
 
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Where are these exloits then, all we have been presented with is scam software vendors, proof of concept papers and a psuedo-trojan that required the user to give it permission to run?

WHere is the case study of an actual user being effected by malware on OS X? I have been using Macs for a good few years and frequent all of the major Mac news sites and several forums, not ever have I ever seen a single exploit in the real world being reported.

Maybe I have my head in he sand, but, like OS X, it is nice and safe there. I am so confident, if you can write some malware for OS X I will gladly run it and publically apologise, sell my mac and buy a PeeCee! Ain't gonna happen. :p

IIRC, there was an open challenge to virus writers to create some self propogating malware on OS X, although the prize money was withdrawn for legal reasons, the challenge stood. That was five years ago and not a single in the wild virus exists.
 
AJUK said:
IIRC, there was an open challenge to virus writers to create some self propogating malware on OS X, although the prize money was withdrawn for legal reasons, the challenge stood. That was five years ago and not a single in the wild virus exists.
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This is because virus writers don't care. Writing a virus for OS X is a waste of time - if you control 10% of macs, you control 0.5% of the desktop computers on the planet. If you control 10% of winboxen, you control nearly 10% of the desktop market, and a whole bunch of servers which when you're looking to send spam and build botnets, is a much better target. Why waste time on a more difficult target for minimal gain when that time is better spent uncovering one of the many holes in windows?

However, as a result, there appears to be this false sense of security amongst OS X users that they are impenetrable and viruses can't be written. In all likelihood, there are security holes in OS X that allow remote unauthorised root level access. This is true also of Linux, BSD and pretty much any OS out there.It's just no-one's been bothered to do the hard work to find the vulnerabilities, because there's no point. Security updates for linux packages are not exactly rare, and windows is patched almost every week. The proof of concepts out there even show that it's possible to write an OS X virus. Is it more secure than windows? Yes. Is it a secure OS? There's no such thing.
 
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The reason Macs don't get virii is not because there are not enough people that use them. It's the infrastructure of the filesystem that keeps them safe from virii. For each file there is a Check file that ensures the integrity of the file. A virus isnt able to incorperate itself in the check file and thus any file that were to get infected would be corrected. or request a correction Via OS CD.
There has been people who have tried to write Virii for the mac. They have been trying for over 20 years. So to that end Macs have a HUGE advantage.
 
Hacking is not the same as a virus attack though, any computer can be hacked by the simple fact that it is connected to the internet.
 
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