I'd suggest that no hacker targets a Mac, they're too close to a UNIX box from a hackers point of view to make them special. They run the same services and tend to have the same vunerabilities. SSH being a favourite of hackers as it's such a trust bottleneck.
There are probably more attempts to hack into UNIX than into Windows, simply because all UNIX boxes are inherently easier to get into than Windows boxes (UNIX is designed to be remotely used, while Windows has the concept patched on). Also because important servers tend to be on UNIX and once you're on a UNIX box, you can do a lot more. Virus writers are a different matter. While what I'm calling a hacker here is someone who attempts to break in through the front-door, a virus writer would attempt to break in through the back-door and viruses are mostly going to be at the application level or the application-services level. This is where MS have a huge market dominance and Aqua/Cocoa/whatever is a much newer and cleaner setup than the years of clutter that litter the MS world. Hell, most virus writers probably don't even have access to a Mac :) While a hacker can learn how to break down Macs from afar, a Virus writer needs the machine and the software to figure out what to do. So it splits into two camps, one that is popularly called hackers, relies on walking in through holes in the front-door and tends to do better with UNIX and one that is generally called viruses, relies on back-doors and user-initiation and works better with Windows. The update tool makes a difference too, plus the strategy of releasing updates. MS are known for being very late to release updates, while Apple seem to do a pretty decent job of getting them out quickly. I've been struggling to admin in the Linux world because my distribution of choice only supported updates for 2 years and then you're on your own. Suffice to say, they're no longer my server distribution of choice (I've moved from SuSE to Debian/FreeBSD/OpenBSD. Debian being the best so far). There's my tuppence :) Hen On Sun, 5 Dec 2004, Jerry Yeager wrote: > > 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. | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be January 25. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>
