On Dec 04, 2004, at 11:02 PM, Harry Jacobson-Beyer wrote:
> I've heard hackers don't attack Mac machines because there are so few
> of
> them (relative to the pcs). If the roles were reversed, ie Macs having
> the major share of the market, wouldn't the hackers be writing code to
> get to them?
>
What you have heard is one of those urban legend things. Macs on the
'net are attacked as often as the other OSes. But they are not broken
into as often.
Not too long ago some computer security firms tracked this and found
that the most targeted systems were Linux and Mac OS-X based with
Windoze based machines actually being the least targeted. Targeted here
means that the attackers are specifically looking to exploit weaknesses
in that type of OS.
BUT, In terms of being broken into, it (usually) goes like this:
1) Windoze systems (very easy, many home users have been broken into
and do not know that they are their machines are being used to send out
the gobs of spam and viruses that infest the internet.)
The things that attack Windoze directly as opposed to other systems are
most often looking to either get credit (identity) information likely
stored on the computer or to take the machine over to use as part of a
zombie network.
99) Linux (pretty tough -- you have to find a system running with a
very sloppy sysop that does not keep up on things)
100) Mac OS-X (not impossible but very tough, see 99). )
(Actually, if Macs and Linux systems could be easily broken into, they
would be targeted even more, as these systems may have more vital
information stored on them).
Jerry
p.s. Even with Windows SP 2, there are known exploits out there to
break into the systems. You might notice in the article none of the
honey pot systems that had SP 2 running got broken into. Since SP2
basically just turns on a firewall, this shows that attackers are not
having to work very hard at all to break into a Windoze machine.
p.p.s The above does not mean that you can blindly skip those periodic
security updates that Apple releases. Keep installing them!
> Saturday, December 4, 20045:03 PMRob Kerstinglaffmakr at aye.net
(the rest cut out).
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