On Feb 11, 2006, at 6:37 AM, James Fraser wrote:
"There is no ActiveX in Safari and there is no ActiveX equivalent.
That makes it harder to go to a web page and have your Mac
compromised."
Substitute "harder" with "impossible"?
Wow...you're really flinging down the gauntlet here. ¬_¬
And he's wrong to boot.
Not that there is ActiveX, that open sore of exploitation, but there
have been exploits that affected non-IE browsers, and one in
particular I can think of that affected Safari: remember the
'autoinstalling widget' kerfuffle after the release of 10.4?
Now, this is a couple orders of magnitude removed from IE's
vulnerabilities (it didn't run under administrator rights and widgets
run in their own memory sandbox), was rapidly found and fixed, but
should have served as a lesson to all of us not to let our guard down.
Pay attention, in particular, to things that want Admin privileges,
ask you for your password. Things that are not programs should never
ask that on installation. Certainly 'hot pix of nekkid britney'
should never ask for that.
It's obvious now, but if spyware and viruses ever do emerge for the
Mac, don't click on pop-up (or pop-under) windows offering to "test
your system for Spyware".
I suppose I have to also mention that that nice man WHO WROTE TO YOU
IN HIGHEST CONFIDENTIALITY doesn't *really* have $27 million dollars
to give you, and your systems administrator will never make you run a
program to give you your network password back after you were
investigated in relation to child pornography.
That last one got one of our users just this week. (after we have
repeatedly told them that they should NEVER respond to or click on
one of these messages, that we don't do things like that. Heck,
*I'm* the one that sends most of those warnings...do those fake
'change your password' emails sound at ALL like the way I write?)
We're Mac users, let's not turn into PC users, okay! We're better
than that ;-)
--
Bruce Johnson
"No matter where you go, there you are", B. Banzai
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