MacDailyNews - Where Mac news comes first

Don't you think openly promoting our immunity to viruses is too much like a challenge to virus writers to write one and make Apple look stupid? Sometimes the less said the better.

There's no way Apple can just run an ad touting OSX as virus free but they can dance around the issue by having a Switcher talk about his/her SPECIFIC experience - like stories I've heard from other macdailynews threads like - "I've had my OSX running for 6 months without a crash, etc ..." that's the kind of switcher campaign to begin to sway IT people.

The prejudice against macs were not built overnight and you can't change them overnight - and Apple should run TV spots on Sunday morning news programs. They have overall low ratings but they are watched HEAVILY by CEO's, COO's, CFO's, etc ... if you want to change the Mac is a toy precept, that's where to begin ... and NOT the G5 spot with the guy being "blown away," CEO's and CFO's want to see substance. If you had a senior level tech guy talking about uptime, running Office, accessing SQL, etc ... AND you close with something like "64-bit desktop computing is here - The G5 - Apple Macintosh."

That's how you begin a switcher campaign.

I noticed some webhits coming from macdailynews.com and traced this back to Seahwak's mention of my site. Thanks!

The discussion here on what Apple should advertise is fascinating. My experience with PC people is that you can show them as many Mac facts as you like - better, cheaper, more productive, take your choice - and they'll accept that as long as you're standing there with them. Walk away, and ten seconds later they're back to believing the PC is better, faster, cheaper, etc etc.

Dumfounding isn't it?

Perhaps a Pixar annimated version of the original lemmings commercial might help -- with viruses, worms, costs, and animated complexities (MS Bob?) driving people over the edge while us happy Mac users try hard not to applaud?

I am a longtime Mac user who got his first wintel machine last year. I like having a mixed environment because it gives me more flexibility and functionality.

Ironically, this virus resulted in my internet connection on my MAC getting hosed, not on my PC. Our IT people were trying to stop the spread of the virus and were disabling internet connections based on some sort of IP signature. My mac fit the signiture for some reason and internet access was shut off (but the intranet access was OK). Imagine, I was able to access the internet with my PC, but not the mac. I wasted half a (frustrating) day trying to figure out what was happening, because IT never bothered to notify me that they hosed my connection (Luckily, I went to talk to them before field stripping my mac).

Anyway, one machine often helps me troubleshoot the other, and I have had issues with BOTH. BOTH are great and suck in their own way.

Does anyone else find it strange that this site starts with the latest post first. Maybe this is just a cultural thing (west vs. east, so-to-speak), but I find it damn frustrating.

Just a thought, no offense intended.

Signed,
Long time reader, First time poster

why would we want week old news on the top?

What kind of company survives through a day because of email??!!! The post from the anonymous reader says the Mac solved the problems because it allowed the company to communicate by email to the outside world... guess what genius, Macs and PCs are there for more than email and if that's all your company needs to make revenue, it is a lame ass company and I feel sorry for any of your clients/customers. C'mon, if the Mac saved the day by running real applications, this would be interesting... as it is, it demonstrates only the incompentence of your whole company. (Guess what, companies used to have _relationships_ with their clients generated by crazy doodads called phones among other items. If you need to send documents, there are things called _faxes_.)

I agree with the people who have said that Apple should make an ad out of this one. They should also try to do it quickly--while the news is still fresh. It doesn't have to be a TV ad--those can be slower to produce--it could be a newspaper ad. Just get the word out there while it's still fresh in people's minds: Macs are not affected.

"What kind of company survives through a day because of email??!!!"

You're kidding right?

What century are you currently in you dolt?

Sheesh!

These Wintel jerkoffs won't let up, even when their house of cards is starting to fall around them.

"Don't you think openly promoting our immunity to viruses is too much like a challenge to virus writers to write one and make Apple look stupid? Sometimes the less said the better."

I say let them try!

The practical invulnerability of a Mac even configured as a Web Server and available 24/7 was demonstrated with Mac OS 8.x several years ago. A public announcement that a certain text file on the Mac server had a certain line of text, sufficiently unique so as to be impossible to simply guess. The IP address of the server was provided. An invitation to break into this system, read the text file, and provide its contents was said to be worth a $10,000 prize for the first person to do it. Almost two months later, the server was shut down as no takers had come forth. The conclusion was that it is IMPOSSIBLE, not just difficult, to hack into a MODERN OS as found in all Macs, OR that the ability to do so is deemed worth more than $10,000.

Some will argue that it was because the Mac has a smaller user base. I would counter that the Mac OS takes a SENIOR HACKER to crack in and once you're in there, then what? Its not like a simple worm would be able to pull that same stunt off over thousands of Macs over the internet.

Bah! Like I said, let them try. If they had any real hacking skills they could at least try to impress someone by doing something HARD instead of something as easy as hacking into a Windows machine.

Macs cost more? Go price a PC with similar ad ons...not that much of a difference. Sometimes the Mac is cheaper. Take the G5 for instance go price a similar PC if you can...on most pc sites you will have to look at workstations to get what you get with the dual G5 & the PC's prices are not cheaper.

I don't want week-old news at the top. I want the first post at the top, so I can maintain the thread of conversation.

I don't think that is too much to ask.

Excuse me, Smarter, but what good are faxes when all of the printers are NETWORKED? How do you use the phone when all of your phone lists are ONLINE? How do you do business when you are required to maintain all of your work products on the SERVER? Or are you going to tell us about the crazy doodads called typewriters that can produce hardcopy without a printer? And that typewriter users store their documents in special storage devices called folders? You are obviously a troll.

"Tom" said:
"Steve . . . are you listening Steve? Put your ad agency to work immediately and put out an ad which documents what this virus did and how many computers were infected. Then the simple killer punch line - Not one of them was a Macintosh."

EXCELLENT idea.

Cost of a mac 3,000 (highend mac too - not talking about G3 emac).
Cost of seeing the windows world sputter and crash after each and every worm attack. Priceless
(Actually the last worm attack was estimated to cost 1 billion dollars in lost worktime, and this one will probably do as much or more damage so I guess the old adage is true- you get what you pay for.)

I think one of the main problems with windows and why it is so susceptible to viruses is because of the registry. Viruses and worms get into the system and rewrited system files. OSX doesn't have a registry and the system folder is extremely hard to modify. (I'm not even sure if a virus would be able to access it) As such even if a mac were to get a virus (when was the last time THAT happened?) it would unleash havoc like a virus does to a windoze PC with its laughable registry.
It's great to be a mac user.

Ask any agriculturalist, biologist, ecologist, or forester. They will all tell you that monocultures (i.e. all crops/animals/trees the same) are dangerous, because a deadly enough disease can wipe them out. Diseases that are fatal to a variety of species (i.e. PCs, Macs, Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc.) are extremely rare, hence having a non-monoculture computing environment just makes common sense. I'm sure some in IT would find it more inconvenient to deal with a non-homogenious set of computers, but presumably the organization is not run soley for their benefit.

aout wahat ershler wrote : "Attacking a Windows system is like trying to find holes is swiss cheese."

As a person using Wintel systems (ok, don't start with me, I am one of the few open minded ones on this side of the border ) and living in Switzerland, I resent that !!

Swiss cheese, in general, do not have holes. Only a particular type of cheese in Switzerland has holes. It's called Emmenthal and doesn't sum up for more than 4% of the swiss cheese market !(ok, that may be stretching it in terms of parallels, but you get my point.)

The idea of all Swiss chees having holes is like saying that all Wintel users are stupid or all Mac users are retarded. A little bit of a mental shortcut, better suited for governmental reasoning than for semantic accuracy.

Actually, in our company we use Wintel systems on every level. Heck, we even have a contract with the devil (read "a partnership with Microsoft"). However, none of our systems had any problem during the Blaster attack...

I'm not saying that one is better than the other, I'm just saying that if the IT guys do their jobs right, there's no reason for such a collapse to happen...

But hey, I like Apple products nonetheless. I even thought about buying an iPod last month

laterz
Le Chninkel

Ok.
Here it is.
The difinitive name for you know who:
Micros**t

Let's be realisitic about

I am a Mac-o-phile all the way from that SE 4/40 in 1989.
Been spreading the word ever since. I can tolerate good PC
hardware in my computer if it runs Linux. The elegance is not
there, but it is usable for what I do. Even the present Mac get booted in Yellowdog Linux every once in a while.

It is Windows that I simply do not like. Security issues, fear of monoculture, GUI aesthetics, whatever the reason.

Let's be realistic about something here, shall we?

OS X security is about average for non-microsoft OS's. A newly-installed OS X box doesn't vend any services, and it's fairly difficult to use remote-root exploit on any box that's not listening on the ports you're trying to use to break in.

HOWEVER, OS X isn't intrinisically any more secure than any other UNIX. UNIX suffers from a few serious design flaws. The first one is that there is such a thing as a root account. Compromise root, and you can do *anything*. It's great that OS X ships with the root account disabled, but there's only so much that can be done when an OS implements the setuid function at all.

Let me put it this way: OS X is a brick-faced, wood-framed house. With a bit of attention, it can be secured from fires. Windows is a balsa-wood house, covered in gasoline-soaked flash paper, with crates of TNT in the attic, and boxes of kitchen matches (the kind that strike on any surface) scattered about the floors.

The long and short of it is, OS X's security really only looks this good because windows is SO bad.

Let me add, though..

Apple's server group is very good about putting out potential fires as soon as they become aware of them. Most of the security vulnerabilities that OS X has ever had, have been patched by a software update long before the script kiddies had a chance to damage any OS X hosts.

indeed John,

usually Apple comes with: "here is a security patch. It fixes this flaw" and that is the first time you hear of the flaw.

Microsoft comes as: "here is this flaw, a patch will follow" and that is the last time you hear of the patch in months.

Hey R.V.- I truly hope you are not a server admin. It's the same iginorance that you have shown here that has caused this virus to wreak havoc in the business world. Switching to Macs is not going to keep the world safe from viruses and worms, and whatever else may be coming down the pipeline. I work in a fully Wintel environment. We were not affected by this worm in any way. Why? Because our Windows admins made sure our systems were patched, and configured correctly. Also that proxies and firewalls are in place and those were configured correctly.

Oh, and the Macs you mentioned that were impossible to hack...were hacked. It's a contest that they run every year or two. Not a one-time thing. it was hacked last year. Macs don't get hacked, but not because they are impossible to hack. They don't get hacked because there aren't enough Mac servers to worry about hacking them, nor are there enough people out there who know enough to hack the Mac. What kind of serious damage will you really cause if you are able to hack a Macintosh? Big whoop! It would take you longer to actually find enough mac servers out there, than to hack them.

By the way...What platform was the first virus found on, genius?

Look, I'm truly just interested in the answer to this--no axe to grind:

Aren't large Unix servers quite common. And, if so, why aren't they bothered by viruses? Why is it always only the Windows OS's?

"Aren't large Unix servers quite common. And, if so, why aren't they bothered by viruses? Why is it always only the Windows OS's?"

I'd be very interested to hear the answer to this too. And don't pass it off with "it's because there aren't enough of them out there for anybody to care." That is the standard excuse that is made everytime something like this happens. If anyone has a REAL answer to the question though I'd love to hear it. It just seems very odd to me that OS X has NEVER had a documented virus and I don't hear stories about Unix or Linux boxes being hacked on a nearly daily basis either, only the ones with Windows...

Probably because all hackers know thousands ways to break into a Windows system (there are even instructions on the web), very few know how to do that on Unix systems (which get pacthed fairly rapidly not in matter of months as per Windows systems)

Even the existing tips on how to break into a Unix systems require serious misbehaves on the part of administrators - not just being late to apply the latest Microsoft patch which usually is able to break as well critical corporate applications: admins need to test thos Microsoft patches thoroughly. Even they do not trust Microsoft in that respect.

OS X default is not to listen to ANY port (almost) so per se most of the times it is not even visible on the internet. Have you ever tried? There are sites which test your visibility and security. An OS X machine does not even appear to listen to common hacker accessed ports.

The way they operate is by automatically scanning ports: whoever system listens (and acknowledge) becomes *visible* as a beacon. OS X does not ackowledge hence practically *invisible*.
OS X can be made not to acknoledge to even 'ping' and 'finger'. It is as if the machine is - for an external bot - shut down

Do the same with a regular Windows installation: it screams "I am here, I am here" all over the place, ie, internet.

Oh, BTW, the first virus was "The Creeper" virus created under the Tenex operating system and used global computer networks to spread itself. The virus was capable of entering a network by itself by modem and transfer a copy of itself to remote system. "The Reeper" anti-virus program was created to fight this virus, it was the first known anti-virus program.

Forgot: The Creeper appeared on the first half of the '70 . No Apple computers were around then. The very first incident (late '60) which may be well called an epidemic of "a computer virus", happened on the Univax 1108 system. The virus called "Pervading Animal" merged itself to the end of executable files - virtually did the same thing as thousands of modern viruses do.

What "whatever" refers to is: "Elk Cloner", a bootable virus epidemics which started on Apple II floppies. The virus attached itself to the boot sector of diskettes to which there were calls. It showed itself in many ways - turned over the display, made text displays blink and showed various messages. SInce Apple ditched floppies long time ago could it still attack PCs today?! )))

Still, it needed a floppy so nothing comparable to todays internet virii and infected the diskette rather then the computer. Hence I would not call it an Apple virus but a floppy virus. So, whatever: WHATEVER.

Another detail makes Windows-based systems easier for malicious code writers to create and spread worms without complex programming knowledge. Windows is based in COM technology, short for Component Object Model. COM makes it possible for any application to use the capabilities of other installed applications with simple statements. For example, a program for compressing files can use Microsoft Outlook to e-mail the compressed files, without the code author having to know how Outlook operates or even details of e-mail protocols. COM would need to embed high security though, in order to prevent exploitation. Which does not happen.

Seahawk, You are absolutely right. That is exactly how I have my server set up. Only the ports I need most often are opened. Everything is is shut down. The beauty of it is, if I really need to open a port for some reason, it takes less thana minute to do it.

Even out of the box, OSX is pretty much locked down.


Also, there aren't a lot of them out there to bother with

Sorry, had to. But it is true. It is a valid argument, not an excuse. How many knuckleheads have PCs and can send these worms out, or start a DOS attack for no reason other than they can.

Most of these guys are half-assed wise guys and couldn't code their way around a shell if their life depended on it.

But the ones that do come out for UNIX (true, not often) could cause much more damage than any of these windows worms can. Now, remember that damage is different than inconvenience, which is what pretty much all of these jokers do and think they are God's gift to hackers.

Whatever: I mostly agree with that although if the situation were reversed in terms of market share (Wintel PCs <--> OS X) the situation would be less dramatic for those two factors: closed ports and no COM architecture.

The average computer user does not interfere with its machine guts, so the end result would be that the majority of OS X systems would be inherently secure while the majority of Wintel systems are inherently unsecure. How many PC users know about XP firewall features and close the ports they do not use? An average OS X user (say as illiterate on computer science as Wintel counterpart) has a system which does not expose itself on the internet.

I disagree with the supposedly little damage Windows lack of security would cause: there are (IDIOTIC IT staff) hospitals who run Windows.
But again: Windows requires less computing skill than hacking Unix (and OS X which is BSDUnix nonetheless).

You say they are 'jockers', fine, bu remember: thieves and pickpockets go after the easy prey. It is just coincidental that they are the majority around

That's kind of my point. And to continue your way...Anyone can "Smash & Grab". But it takes an true artist to take a dime from Ft. Knox.

The little guy is going to get a few bucks here and there. The one going after the gold will hit the motherload, and can retire (or rot in jail, which ever comes first).


Enjoy, everyone. Time to get back to work.

Amen

All this is interesting, guys, but what about my earlier question:

Aren't large Unix servers quite common. And, if so, why aren't they bothered by viruses?

Whatever,
you said that viruses for Unix are more damanging but rare. Why are they rare? Is there sometime about Unix that is more secure? Honestly, maybe its just me, but I've never heard of a virus on a Unix system.

Last post of the day. Just remembered. There has been recently a hacking contest. The scoring system was:

Hack a Windows system: 1 point
Hack Linux: 3 points
Hack Unix and OS X: 5 points.

No scores were reported for the last entry (Unix and OS X).

Not to say it was impossible but it took far less time to crack 5 Windows systems then attempting to crack a Unix/OS X one.
Concluding with whatever analogy: there are very few Ft Knox compared to the "We cache cheques 4 you" stores. So sure, they get robbed more frequently. BUT, what if they were all Ft Knoxes, security wise?

Just be helpful and sympathetic when those who have recently lost a loved PC come around. You're up and running when they are crippled. They will ask how. Be upbeat and happy while they're sad, but don't rub noses in it. Fun is infectious, especially when the other guy ain't havin' none.

Has anyone ever heard of a Unix or OS X server being sucessfully invaded by a virus?

Just Asking, Yes there are/have been viruses on UNIX. OS X, depends on your view. Since it is a true flavor of UNIX, then my answer would be yes, there are viruses available to infect OSX. Are there any viruses specifically directed at OSX, probably not. At least, not that I know of.

Nothing is completely secure. You must remember that.

Also, there is a difference between hacking a system and a system being infected with a virus. It is possible to hack a UNIX box, it's just much more difficult than a Windows box. Take a look at the security updates already supplied by Apple and what they could have been capable of allowing.

JustAsking: yes, there have been viruses in Unix. But as we said they are much more difficult to create and security holes are usually found and filled in before hacker had time to find a way to explit them.
Security patches for Unix (essentially the same OS X received) are released. Probably it is due to the fact that where Unix servers are at work the number of million $ is just off the chard (Cisco, Oracle, Nasa, etc). Security there is top priority.

in '88 a network virus called 'Morris' infected 6000 Unix Vax and Sun platforms in the US, including Nasa. The virus was sniffing users passwords.
In 1989 IBM released its first own anti-virus program. By early '90 Unix systems pacthed essentially most of the security flaws. First Windows virus in 1992. Since then practically all virii are on the Windows side.

In 1997 "Linux.Bliss" - the first virus for Linux (a Unix clone), in same year first macro-virii for Windows appeared. Focus is there (exploting COM lack of security). SInce '97 appearance of macro-virii exploting practically ALL Microsoft applications see the light.

In 1998 the first virus affecting Java executable: essentially a naive Windows user can get infected by visitng a web page.

All in all: I would be VERY scared if I was a naive Windows user. On a second thought: a naive Windows user does not even suspect how exposed his PC is. And the way virii spread pretty much confirms that.

Thanks, Seahawk, that's the info I was looking for.

Very good explanation!

Wow... Too many people care about this.

STOP POSTING ON HERE AND GET BACK TO YOUR ILLEGAL DONKEY PORN!

You know, the reason those PCs went down was because, in addition to MS's bug, the users failed to download the patch that Microsoft released last month. I use a PC and it was running just fine because it was patched and firewalled. Despite all the potential perils with PCs, I would prefer them over Macs. The difference between PCs and Macs is the difference between sex and masturbation, respectively. Sure, there are PC and sexual viruses, but you're safe as long as you play it safe and use protection. Macs and masturbation just aren't as powerful or fun.