William, neither of the examples you mention are viruses. One is a
piece of applescript (like a batch file) the other justa non harmfull
file. Niether could self propagate.
Antonio
On 17 May 2004, at 21:28, William Kane wrote:
Antonio,
I hate to correct you on this, but there have been 2 recent Mac OSX
viruses/trojans. The first was a file that appeared to be a music
file. When the media file was played through a program (such as
iTunes) nothing bad happened, but when the file was double clicked on,
it popped up a message box indicating it's presence. As I said, not
really that malicious.
However, the more recent virus is fairly nasty, though I think it's
also just . . . It's a file that is circulating around the various
warez programs and sites . . . basically it's an AppleScript file that
advertises itself as a fully usable version of Microsoft Office 2004
for Mac. Upon clicking on the ridiculously small file, the script is
run which removes the home directory of your account (analogous to the
My Documents folder for Windows users). This one is a bit more nasty
on first look, but upon reflecting upon it, I think I like it. After
all, the people who get this trojan loose their own mental property as
they were attempting to rip off others mental properties . . .
IL Bill
On Monday, May 17, 2004, at 01:59 PM, Antonio Aparicio wrote:
John, nobody is bashing anyone. Calm down. We are just discussing the
merits of one OS over another. They are just tools/machines. Clearly
virus and spyware are more prevalent on the Windows OS thatn elswhere
PRECISELY because of the design of that OS. To date there have been
Zero, thats right a 0 viruses on Mac OSX for example. Your "security
through obscurity" explaination for this is just a sign of how much
some poeple seem to be in denial about this. I use both Windows and
OSX for work and play, and it doesnt take a genius to realise that
there is a big difference in quality between the two. If an 18 year
old can sit in his bedroom and write a virus capable of spreading to
millions of Windows PCs in a matter of minutes doesnt that raise your
suspiicion about the secirity of that OS at all? Arent you just a bit
concerned?
Antonio
a myth to explain why that is the case
On 17 May 2004, at 20:39, John Francis wrote:
Thats right, viruses and spyware are different, but are both
examples
of the substandard quality evident in the Windows OS, which is
where my
contribution to this thread began.
Antonio
Do you think we could take the mindless Microsoft bashing somewhere
else,
please?
The main reasons why viruses and spyware are more prevalent on
Windows
is not because of any underlying inferiority of the OS (the NT-based
OSes are at least as secure as Linux or OS-X in that regard): rather,
it's because most of the virus and adware writers target the Windows
platform because it is where most of the payback can be found. It's
not worth attacking the small Mac part of the marketplace, nor Linux.
The main weakness come with the applications. And that's because the
inherent design of the protocols underlying the web, email, etc. were
crafted in the days before trusting your neighbour became impossible.
Viruses, spyware, etc. propagate in such an environment, just as spam
does. Why? Because it's not easy to set up a secure system. And
as the marketplace seems to value connectivity and flashy graphics
more than security, that's where the development effort is going.
It's just as hard to run a secure Linux box as it is to run a secure
Windows box (possibly even harder; there are less tools available).
In fact many of the compromised email servers on the net are Linux
systems; sendmail buffer overrun attacks aren't aimed at Windows.
The biggest weakness in the whole setup is the stupidity of users.
That wouldn't change, even if everybody switched to Linux overnight.
People would *still* download Trojan Horse programs disguised as
pornography, and they'd still click on virus-laden email links.
