Why is there no virus on the mac?
- Thread starter magick
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Soldato
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Because the muppets that write the viruses are Mac lovers
Its just the sheer combination of factors, you need a good amount of experience with Mac OS, LOTs of experience with Unix/BSD on top of being an accomplished programmer, have experience programming for Macs and have the type of mindset needed to (A) be creative enough to find and exploit holes in security (B) actually be the type to create a virus or trojan in the first place. Couple that with the logistics issues of getting it into the wild and spreading and no one really wants to bother.
Why doesn't anyone of you come up with the simplest of answers to the question?
Windows is exploited because when installing and uninstalling programs it uses a closed operating system. So no registry entries are made and no libraries are installed to the sysytem root to take advantage. On a Windows PC you have to uninstall programs which leaves fragments in the registry and in the root library. On a mac nothing enters the system so if you don't want the app anymore, you just delete it. A lot simple than taking up time wasting resoures that are just not needed.
All this time you system remains untouched because it in someways operates more like a closed Rom. This is why it is easy on system rebuilds. you just backup your data.
Windows 7 has just encorporated something similar in their "boot.Part", but most ignore this protection and re-encorporate it into their main partition leaving them open to viruses once again.
Windows is exploited because when installing and uninstalling programs it uses a closed operating system. So no registry entries are made and no libraries are installed to the sysytem root to take advantage. On a Windows PC you have to uninstall programs which leaves fragments in the registry and in the root library. On a mac nothing enters the system so if you don't want the app anymore, you just delete it. A lot simple than taking up time wasting resoures that are just not needed.
All this time you system remains untouched because it in someways operates more like a closed Rom. This is why it is easy on system rebuilds. you just backup your data.
Windows 7 has just encorporated something similar in their "boot.Part", but most ignore this protection and re-encorporate it into their main partition leaving them open to viruses once again.
In Apples defence I have found that MS have copied almost every aspect of their operating format, but because most of it comes from the public forums Apple cannot claim copyright on the commercial aspect.
As for the system registry not being tampered with yes in some senses this is true, because Users tend to spend all their time on the Apple Mac doing a specific task rather than having to solve some issue as to why the Mac isn't doing something.
Also if the Operating system does become corrupt it is much easier and faster to wipe it and restore from a backup than Windows is. Admitedly Data is always slow to restore if there is a lot of it but at least you don't have to worry about it as much as you do with a PC.
And now with so many new applications wanting to get in on the Mac especially with the Intel processor running virtually any piece of software that will run on the PC will run on the Mac. Even Windows 7. So my advice is Close those Windows and open a good MacBook.
As for the system registry not being tampered with yes in some senses this is true, because Users tend to spend all their time on the Apple Mac doing a specific task rather than having to solve some issue as to why the Mac isn't doing something.
Also if the Operating system does become corrupt it is much easier and faster to wipe it and restore from a backup than Windows is. Admitedly Data is always slow to restore if there is a lot of it but at least you don't have to worry about it as much as you do with a PC.
And now with so many new applications wanting to get in on the Mac especially with the Intel processor running virtually any piece of software that will run on the PC will run on the Mac. Even Windows 7. So my advice is Close those Windows and open a good MacBook.
Man of Honour
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I think you'll find that this has very little if any bearing on current Windows exploits at all.
You are right there because what windows always does is leave its registry easy to copy and rewrite itself. Also the Shared Dll's are still out there and most of them are both in the system directory and in the application directory. Sometimes The virus detection systems only follow the system directories and don't even bother with the application folders.
UAC often leads virus detectors in the heuristic band to find viruses where none often are. Some people I know have ended deleting their latest work because of these.
But the Apple OS hasn't got to worry about these even though it does lose a directory now and again. I have had to reclaim a directory more than once recently. But my PC needs taming all the time. My PC has XP, Vista 32,Vista 64 and Windows 7 currently on it. Although the windows 7 will be coming off soon. A waste of Disk space.
UAC often leads virus detectors in the heuristic band to find viruses where none often are. Some people I know have ended deleting their latest work because of these.
But the Apple OS hasn't got to worry about these even though it does lose a directory now and again. I have had to reclaim a directory more than once recently. But my PC needs taming all the time. My PC has XP, Vista 32,Vista 64 and Windows 7 currently on it. Although the windows 7 will be coming off soon. A waste of Disk space.
I'd be careful about championing the security of OSX as an operating system over Windows. Just one example would be OSX still doesn't have a firewall enabled by default. Guess which OS learned that lesson the hard way? XP Service Pack 1.
I'd be more interested to see a worm for the Mac platform, but as mentioned I suspect there aren't enough hosts out there for it to make any significant impact. The weak link is fast becoming, if not already, the user/administrator of the computer. There simply aren't enough Mac users.
I've been a happy Mac user for years but it's certainly not as bullet proof as some would have you think, it just reaps the rewards of a giant shield of obscurity.
I'd be more interested to see a worm for the Mac platform, but as mentioned I suspect there aren't enough hosts out there for it to make any significant impact. The weak link is fast becoming, if not already, the user/administrator of the computer. There simply aren't enough Mac users.
I've been a happy Mac user for years but it's certainly not as bullet proof as some would have you think, it just reaps the rewards of a giant shield of obscurity.
In all my years I've never had a software firewall enabled (on Windows or more recently OS X). That's what my router is for.
Soldato
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I think I've commented on this before. There are known exploits for OS X they get disclosed all the time. However it's the rate at which exploits are discovered in MS code that's often the problem. So I'm just looking over my inbox and I can see about 20 exploits being disclosed for MS products (3 for IE alone) but non for Apple products in the last couple of months. You can see some that where disclosed last year here: http://labs.idefense.com/intelligence/vulnerabilities/?intYear=2009
Mac's recent past of having very little problems from a security stand point has far more to do with the relative obscurity of the platform rather than the fact it uses Darwin. If I was a betting man I'd say it's far far more likely that a any virus attacking macs would more likely use software running on the OS rather than the OS itself.
Mac's recent past of having very little problems from a security stand point has far more to do with the relative obscurity of the platform rather than the fact it uses Darwin. If I was a betting man I'd say it's far far more likely that a any virus attacking macs would more likely use software running on the OS rather than the OS itself.
That's the side effect of a NAT router vs the world. Of course you must also personally know and and trust all computers on the LAN, which might be true on a home network but probably not anywhere else.
I am not championing the security of OSX. In fact it is very easy to get into. The problem is that there is very little to be done when you get in. Not only that, unlike windows it doesn't rely on permissions when you get into the OS. Like the original IBM and Novell it relies on calls. If one of these calls is branched or intercepted the program closes. Setting up a dbf file to intercept those calls takes up space and as soon as a program is using more resources than was reserved for it at startup the call stack collapses. Perhaps this is why the only Viruses introduced to the Mac are Trojans. They only populate a small part of Hard memory rather than residential memory. But waiting for a Trojan to create havoc on a Mac is worse than watching paint dry.
Windows worst enemy is Vitual memory which is the biggest propergater of viruses I have ever known. Load up IE and the first thing that happens is the webpage is copied to vitual memory. Any Pop-ups etc on that can be Bots. Even when you close the page that bot is still on your HD and in VM. All the Bot has to do is copy itself to any open source on the system and there goes your security. Firewall-what firewall.
Windows worst enemy is Vitual memory which is the biggest propergater of viruses I have ever known. Load up IE and the first thing that happens is the webpage is copied to vitual memory. Any Pop-ups etc on that can be Bots. Even when you close the page that bot is still on your HD and in VM. All the Bot has to do is copy itself to any open source on the system and there goes your security. Firewall-what firewall.
wush is correct regarding the firewall. A host-based firewall is always recommended particularly when connecting to public networks. On a Mac there would be almost zero chance of catching anything nasty but on Windows it's not worth disabling the firewall that is on by default nowadays.
Just to start I wasn't addressing your post directly, but the thread in general. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "not relying on permissions when you get into the OS" as pretty much everything has a permission associated with it.
If I understand you correctly you're saying that, on Windows, anything loaded into main memory has full access to everything on the system? Because quite clearly this is not the case.
This subject has been done to death a little bit but I always think it is worth revisiting every now and again since Apple stuff is getting more and more popular.
Just to start I wasn't addressing your post directly, but the thread in general. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "not relying on permissions when you get into the OS" as pretty much everything has a permission associated with it.
If I understand you correctly you're saying that, on Windows, anything loaded into main memory has full access to everything on the system? Because quite clearly this is not the case.
This subject has been done to death a little bit but I always think it is worth revisiting every now and again since Apple stuff is getting more and more popular.