Give 100 people Macs, and give 100 people PCs (like many companies today are setup) and I guarantee the PCs will get infected with virii/spyware/malware before the OS X systems.

For a long time now people have used the "no one wants/cares to hack the Mac OS" excuse...but if you could be the first person to write an actual virus for the iPlatform you'd be an instant celeb.

Exploits and vulnerabilities alone aren't enough to make me install an AV client on my Mac. I would venture to guess that at least 50% of the people on this discussion board do not have any AV software on their Mac. I'd like to see a group of Windows enthusiasts who can claim the same.

Let's start new. Close off that environment. There's no malware there, clean environment. Create one worm for PC and one for mac. It's fairly trivial on both to create something that will mail itself around to the others. Even without abusing any bugs in the system or requiring admin privileges. Both systems will create an equal mess of things.

I'm sure I can whip up something within a few days for a Mac, even though it's been years since I programmed anything. Last thing I wrote for anything Apple related was on an Apple ][. Why haven't I done it? I don't want to get arrested for doing research. The only way to make the Mac zeolots (my Mac is more secure then your pc types) shut up about it would be to release it into the wild. And that will definitely get me arrested, if the wrong kind of people get hit they'll even try me for 'terrorism' :eek:

True. But what happens when no intervention is taken?

The average person in the typical setting would be safer using a Mac than a PC.

Of course there are exceptions to the rule...and anyone who says the Mac platform can't be hacked in kidding themselves

I take exception to that characterization, even were it spelled correctly. ;)

You don't frighten us, English pig dogs. Go and boil your bottoms, you sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called "Arthur King," you and all your silly English K-nig-hts.

(Also, Rick Roll? Really?)

Anti, Jay, Calm Down!! You're just being annoying and cluttering the thread up

I hate to say this, but as a Mac user myself, the macheads do tend to get on my nerves a bit. I see a Mac and a PC as tools, that is it. Tools humans use to get certain tasks or jobs done, and for entertainment purposes. At the end of the day, if your computer does what you want it to do, then you accomplished your goals.

To outright say one is better or more secure is a mere matter of opinion when you come down to the bottom line of it. The days of outright virus attacks are over, and almost all security exploits and malicious software revolves around the user now.

I work in a 1:1 environment. That means every student and teacher has their own Macbook. Total of 6,000 at my job. I have the task of managing them. Not a week goes by that I get an email or a phone call telling me that their Mac got a virus and they tried to download some random AV software to fix it, which the AV software itself was in fact malware (or highjack ware I guess?) which wanted to sell the end user a license to some magical software that will get rid of all your problems.

Luckily, most, if not all of that crap is written for Windows and will not execute on a Mac. Some staff have admin rights to their machines too, so they could have totally installed it. They would have installed it. Then their mac would have been rooted if it only ran on the Mac.

We have a small number of machines that run CrossOver to run a stupid testing app, and a few of those got infected since it installed via crossover.

Having a Mac does not make you immune to committing bad practices as a computer user. If you ever read Mitnick he always says the human element is the weakest link, and I would say that man knows a thing or two about social engineering.

True. I'd also posit it's true that a sound social engineering method to get people to dislike you is to start calling them names. It displays a level of maturity in the tech industry and the tech press that doesn't do it any favors.

In my opinion. Of course I'm an old guy. :cool:

I was pointing out that the fundamentalist mac users tend to rub me the wrong way. I wouldn't consider anyone who is regular on this forum to that level. In fact, this forum is very civil and for it being Mac centric there is not a lot of bashing the other guys that goes on here. Which is why I have stuck around for such a long time.

I did not mean to come off as immature, and apologize if I did.

Nah, you're all fine. And yes, we do try to keep this a no-bash zone.

I've been frequenting too many other sites lately and it must be affecting my brain. Which could be considered yet another kind of social engineering, I suppose.

Ah...glad to see someone understands me. And yes, a rickroll, even though its several years out of being "hip". I was just trying to ratchet up the annoyance quotient :).

@renaultsoftware -- Yeah, you're probably right. We're just pulling a prank for the most part. Perhaps we should just stop hijacking the thread.

Please understand, we've seen this kind of thread topic pop up repeatedly over the last few years. And each time we see it, it turns into some giant flame war. Fortunately, this time, most of the major flame throwers are MIA. So perhaps this conversation, if tired, will at least remain civil (at least now that it's reclaimed it's civility, that was a close one tlarkin & Craig! ;)).

I just think the whole argument of "Macs are better than PCs" or vice versa is childish and stupid, at best.

I have no problem defending Macs when a stupid PC pundit goes out of their way to say something stupid like "OMG, ONE BUTTON MOUSE?!" or some stupid statement that holds no water.

Topics like these displease me, because pretty much anything's vulnerable. There's holes in everything. One is not better than the other.

As for why the Mac doesn't get attacked as much? The user base has a zero-tolerance for viruses and spyware. If it's found, it's reported and dealt with. The Mac user base sticks together much like a community. The Windows users not so much. Just a theory. Not fact.

Oh, yuck. In servers, no less.

Hardware based trojan horses.

This one could definitely affect everybody, since none of them actually produce their own components anymore.

Typical Dell.

Yes, typical Dell… my grandpa has one and it's so slow and ancient. TBH I don't get why we use like 5 different virus scanners and all that. On my great-aunt's ancient Gateway the Norton tools are so consuming that the computer was running 100% of the CPU. Nothing left for internet browsing.

Someone made the argument that Dell is nothing, their computers are just comprised of components manufactured by other companies, and it's only a brand.

Doesn't matter, Dell has poor choice of these "other manufacturers".

I wonder if there was a farmer in those servers.. harvesting data.. in the Dell.

What bugs me is that anyone could write an app that could potentially delete everything, in a line of system() or whatever. The code is hidden from the user so we'd never know, until everything's gone…

Yeah, typical Dell. Apple would never be so incompetent as to sell hardware preinfected with malware, and even if they did, they would certainly own up to it and deal with the situation with class.

Oh wait...
http://www.apple.com/support/windowsvirus/

haha... it's been several years, but there was a point at which some disks were coming from Apple containing the ancient auto-start worm. (I'm talking early-mid 90's here)
It was quickly cleared up, but still.

I have PROOF that somehow, someone wrote a spyware app. Here it is:
Attachment 3937
Whew, just kidding. I made that using AppleScript (do shell script "foo -bar" with administrator privileges). Good though