It is simply a wrong assumption that because there are so few Macs, there has to be few viruses.
The thing is that that a spyware program "infects" the windows registry database and does a lot of stuff there, including making sure that the program is run with every login or restart or whatever. There is not a real similar thing like the weird registry database on a Mac, and just because of that, it would be much more difficult to hide the spyware here. It is also a terribly wrong assumption, that a large market share necessitates the number of virus we see on the Microsoft platform. For instance look at this graph on the number of webservers: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html As you see, there are more than three times the number of web servers out there running Apache than are running Microsoft IIS, but guess which one has the most troubles? The seriousness of Windows exploits are so much greater than those that are know and have been for OSX, which - unlike Windows - is built with security in mind, and it is one of the great fallacies to believe that just because the market share of OSX is low, the security is high. It is so because Apple does take security serious, or at least have shown to take it very serious until now. Windows on the other hand is based on the open doors policy: rather give the users a new feature fast, than make sure it is not terribly insecure first. Have a read in this document, that I just linked to: http://isc.sans.org/presentations/xpsurvivalguide.pdf (Warning: 1.2 MB) And ask yourself: why don't I have to do this on a Mac? The answer is not because of "security by obscurity", but because it is not running Windows. Thank God :-) Cheers, Kim On 01/12/03 21:20, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > As far as I know, spyware is a problem that really only affects Windows PCs. > This is true for the same reason that computer viruses mainly only affect > windows PCs. if I was going to write a virus or spyware program, I would want > to make it run on the most computers I could. therefore I'd write it for > Windows PCs. Macs make up too small of a market segment to be of interest to > people trying to cause mass hysteria. -- The iMac List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | - Epson Stylus Color 580 Printers - new at $69 | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> iMac List info: <http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/imac-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
