Mac OS is really secure than Vista?
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I find it amusing that the second hit contains 'Apple Macintosh users could be making themselves less secure by installing Symantec’s flagship anti-virus application.' - kind of reflects my anti-Symantec bias :-)
Ditto :laugh: Out of the 4 computers my friends have had me look at lately, 3 of them stopped being crashtastic after I uninstalled Norton AV -- although that's more a case of Norton killing performance and reliability than making them less secure.
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I find it amusing that the second hit contains 'Apple Macintosh users could be making themselves less secure by installing Symantec’s flagship anti-virus application.' - kind of reflects my anti-Symantec bias :-)
I do totally agree your anti-Symantec bias. I uninstalled it three years ago: it took several steps, trials and errors, I had to download a bunch of uninstalling appls from Symantec then decided it was safer (even though longer) to re-format my system disk and reinstall everything, but NAV. I installed a free version of another antivirus and I never had to worry : it also seemed to find viruses in the coming mail, the same messages NAV was not able to detect a week before. But, just as a curiosity... did you notice the sponsor in the top area of the site? -- modified at 3:46 Friday 31st August, 2007
Marco Turrini
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I never seen much discussions on Macintosh security issues. Apple boasting their new features of their OS X operating system. Is it really secure than Vista or way back?
-Sarath_._ "Great hopes make everything great possible" - Benjamin Franklin
My blog - Sharing My Thoughts, An Article - Understanding Statepattern
True security also depends on the following factors: 1) Number of Audience (bona fide users and hackers) and how the system manages the crowd amicably. 2) The response time from the OS vendor when a compromise or an anomaly is reported.
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar Personal Homepage Tech Gossips
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I never seen much discussions on Macintosh security issues. Apple boasting their new features of their OS X operating system. Is it really secure than Vista or way back?
-Sarath_._ "Great hopes make everything great possible" - Benjamin Franklin
My blog - Sharing My Thoughts, An Article - Understanding Statepattern
There have been several reports out by security analysts claiming that the Mac OS-X operating system is really no more secure than Windows. However, due to the small market share of this OS there is little reason for hackers to concentrate on attacking it.
Steve Naidamast Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@ix.netcom.com
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Judah Himango wrote:
It's Unix, and their security model -- that no one runs day-to-day as admin -- is fundamentally more secure that Windows "everybody's an admin" thinking.
I'll agree with that - I run as non-admin on OS X AND Windows (XP, not Vista) at home. No anti-virus and I seem to have remained exploit free - they seem to be reasonably equivalent so long as you're not handing out admin access on a plate.
Stuart Dootson wrote:
I'll agree with that - I run as non-admin on OS X AND Windows (XP, not Vista) at home. No anti-virus and I seem to have remained exploit free - they seem to be reasonably equivalent so long as you're not handing out admin access on a plate.
Ditto, I'm running on XP as a limited user here at work, have been for years now. No anti-virus required at home or here at work.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. I'm currently blogging about: Roman Catholic Relevance? The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
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I never seen much discussions on Macintosh security issues. Apple boasting their new features of their OS X operating system. Is it really secure than Vista or way back?
-Sarath_._ "Great hopes make everything great possible" - Benjamin Franklin
My blog - Sharing My Thoughts, An Article - Understanding Statepattern
One aspect is that a lot more hackers have a religious hatred for Microsoft than feel the same way towards Apple. That puts the primary focus on Windows and not OS-X. The truth is that each major OS, including UNIX (in its many variants like LINUX) can all be exploited greatly if they had the total number of man-hours dedicated to screwing it up that these no-account hackers put towards Windows.
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I never seen much discussions on Macintosh security issues. Apple boasting their new features of their OS X operating system. Is it really secure than Vista or way back?
-Sarath_._ "Great hopes make everything great possible" - Benjamin Franklin
My blog - Sharing My Thoughts, An Article - Understanding Statepattern
I have a mac and Vista, Mac is more secure except for one thing i noticeed, they go on about not needing anti malware, well i downloaded a trial of an anti spyware just to see and it discovered 2 spyware programs, one was googles ad tracking thing and the other from some other marketing nothing dangerous, however since these both were in my cookies i would assume that keyloggers etc could potentially get in. In my opinion Mac OS X is far more secure (for now anyway) except that they need to warn users of this threat as most mac users arent exactly experts in the field and probly just assume there safe from anything cause apple says so. mikie
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I never seen much discussions on Macintosh security issues. Apple boasting their new features of their OS X operating system. Is it really secure than Vista or way back?
-Sarath_._ "Great hopes make everything great possible" - Benjamin Franklin
My blog - Sharing My Thoughts, An Article - Understanding Statepattern
I think the only deciding issue is who is running the machine and their level of knowledge. OS X is a glorified version of Unix that can be just as insecure as you wish it to be depending on how you use it. Likewise, you can open Windows to all kinds of attacks if you do not know what you are doing. If you have little knowledge of your OS, then you may change some setting or install an application that makes your box insecure. Of course, you will find more attacks against Windows as it has such a large part of the market which makes it more desirable for attack. The only safe OS from attack over the network is one that is not connected to it :)
Rocky <>< Blog Post: Windows Live Authentication - Easy Stuff! Tech Blog Post: Vista ReadyBoost! Tech Sites: SilverlightCity.com ~ TheSilverlightDirectory.com ~ TheWPFDirectory.com
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I never seen much discussions on Macintosh security issues. Apple boasting their new features of their OS X operating system. Is it really secure than Vista or way back?
-Sarath_._ "Great hopes make everything great possible" - Benjamin Franklin
My blog - Sharing My Thoughts, An Article - Understanding Statepattern
It's a complicated topic. If you're looking at actual numbers of security vulnerabilities in the software, Mac OS X actually has more than Windows XP. Apple's attitude seems to be even more 'keep it quiet' than Microsoft's, and they don't appear to be making serious efforts to reduce the number of vulnerabilities. Selective reporting means that you hear loads about Microsoft patches every month, whereas you don't hear much at all when Apple make one of their rather more infrequent updates (which fix a large number of issues). Also, Apple only provide updates for their most recent OS release, not for earlier releases as Microsoft do. However, largely because of their much lower usage share (5% or lower) attackers tend to aim at the vulnerabilities in Windows, not those in OS X. That said, most of the viruses, spyware, and other malware do not actually attack using vulnerabilities. Instead, they use social engineering to persuade users to run the software. Their dangerous payloads simply use regular Windows APIs in a dangerous way (which is why it is impossible to eradicate viruses). Again, this software is targetted at Windows simply because there are so many more users running Windows. The Mac avoids this only by being unable to run the programs. If you're careful, and avoid opening everything you're sent unsolicited, you can avoid almost all of this. Still, inevitably you will execute something that tries to modify the system in some way. In OS X, you normally log on as a limited user, so system modifications cannot occur. In Windows XP, you typically logged on as an administrator and anything could be modified - if you executed something bad, game over. In Windows Vista, administrator accounts have been neutered; you have to confirm the UAC prompt to actually get the administrative privileges. The UAC prompt is a roadblock that makes it harder to make these mistakes. It's still better to run as a standard user, though - and here Vista has registry and file redirection to allow legacy applications to function and yet not overwrite privileged locations. Standard user in XP is perfectly possible, but a bit painful in places. It is still possible for malware to be written that works as a standard user - it just won't be able to attach itself to system functions in the same way. While 90% of users run as administrators, however, there's little incentive for attackers to actually make their attacks work on standard users. Right now you're relatively safe if you reduce your everyday privileges. The first
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I never seen much discussions on Macintosh security issues. Apple boasting their new features of their OS X operating system. Is it really secure than Vista or way back?
-Sarath_._ "Great hopes make everything great possible" - Benjamin Franklin
My blog - Sharing My Thoughts, An Article - Understanding Statepattern
The first virus was written on a mac by a ninth grader. http://www.physorg.com/news107790413.html[^]
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I have a mac and Vista, Mac is more secure except for one thing i noticeed, they go on about not needing anti malware, well i downloaded a trial of an anti spyware just to see and it discovered 2 spyware programs, one was googles ad tracking thing and the other from some other marketing nothing dangerous, however since these both were in my cookies i would assume that keyloggers etc could potentially get in. In my opinion Mac OS X is far more secure (for now anyway) except that they need to warn users of this threat as most mac users arent exactly experts in the field and probly just assume there safe from anything cause apple says so. mikie
sly44 wrote:
in my cookies i would assume that keyloggers etc could potentially get i
How does that work?
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
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The first virus was written on a mac by a ninth grader. http://www.physorg.com/news107790413.html[^]
:laugh: Classic. Thanks :) (I am a Mac user.)
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...