While this is very much a very old well and used pot calling a
relatively new kettle black it must be noted that essentially he is
a saying what we knew all along regarding Mac OS if it got "to much"
market share and brand awareness.. and not helped by many non
official Apple advocates blowing off far too long and and far too
loud about Macs being virus free (and often proclaiming just as
loudly that Apple was missing their biggest sales clincher by not
using this as their official promotional pitch)
The fact is that malware programs for mac are out there and security
through obscurity (the way apple has evaded the virus/work/Trojan hit
list for the last 10 or so years) will no longer work.
given that most so called "serious" computer types had Apple written
off and kept saying it was going down the drain then why would
people bother writing malware? it would be like writing a virus for
the Commodore 64.
There are even IT lecturers here and at my old job who honestly
thought Apple had, in fact, gone bankrupt and out of business until
a few years back when the iMac really started getting attention.
Now Apple's name is in the spotlight again and even with it's low
market penetration it's attracting attention both ways - it brings
buyers and it brings curious/malicious attacks
Mac numbers _may_ never reach the "critical mass" required for
viruses and worms to reliably self propagate over the Internet but
once it hit close to 10% phishers and the like will consider that
not writing malware targeted to macs will be to lose to many
opportunities.
you can have it one way or the other not both- either a healthy Apple
company but some malware or Apple staving off bankruptcy and blissful
complacent users.
so
backup your critical data regularly & keep these copies off line and
preferably on write once media (like CD's & DVD's)
install the Apple security patches.
never let Keychain/safari keep login names, passwords and autofill
details for anything with account details (including, obviously,
banking sites but also your apple store, ebay and other similar login
details)
seriously consider having a antivirus program scan your computer at
startup or once a day even if you disable its active real time
monitoring.
try to keep a basic bootable operating system with some data recovery
software on a removable hard disk (or like I do - put it on your ipod)
- remember that the last truly malicious attack was "Hong Kong Flu"
that attacked the system through a executable in the resource fork of
JPEG files was back in the days of LC (that's the original LC "1")
and OS 6 so still a very good track record.
Two recent articles in Australian IT <http://australianit.news.com.au>
1. Hackers loose worms on Apple, Chris Jenkins, MARCH 22
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,12618742%5E15321%5E%5Enbv%5E15306,00.html
2. Macintosh attacks on the rise, Correspondents in San Francisco, MARCH 23
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,12634231%5e16123%5e%5enbv%5e,00.html
Looks like Chris Jenkins has too much time on his hands -- suprising
for a PC user who must spend a fair bit of time each week
installing/updating security patches and anti-virus software. Chris
must have decided Apple are doing too well so he let loose with some
very poor journalism.
The first article moves from OS X to Firefox and in the transition
implies that the Firefox vulnerabilities are somehow OS X problems.
Apple is in the title but most of the article talks about
vulnerabilities that plague _other_ OS or software.
There is significant overlap (dare I say plagiarism) between the two
articles. And some fun quotes:
Symantec challenged popular perceptions that the Mac is virtually immune to
attack.
Well, has anyone on this group suffered _one_ attack yet?
"Contrary to popular belief, the Macintosh operating system has not
always been
a safe haven from malicious code," Symantec said.
Perhaps Symantec are talking about OS 9?
An Apple spokesperson was not immediately available to comment.
Always a nice way of avoiding a rebuttal ...
The most objective statement is from the second article:
At the same time, the report said that while those vulnerabilities
in the Mac
operating system will increase, "they will likely be outnumbered in other
operating systems for some time to come."
Cheers,
Paul
--
~
Mark Secker Computer Support Officer
ph#6488 1855 (ECEL) <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
University of Western Australia - CRICOS Provider No. 00126G
~
"Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible."
- Miguel de Unamuno
"It takes an idiot to do cool things.... that's why it's cool"
- Haruhara Haruka (FLCL)
<http://ecel-mark.ecel.uwa.edu.au/~marksecker/index.htm> (sometimes works)
