“Mac owners have long boasted of their immunity to viruses. But with Unix-based OS X, it’s a whole new ball game,” Alex Salkever writes for BusinessWeek.
“In the wake of the MyDoom/Novarg fiasco, every Mac columnist has an easy out. After yet another virus attack has hammered the Windows world, the automatic response has been to pen the standard Mac gloat. It goes something like this: I didn’t get this virus because I have a Mac. In fact, I never get viruses. Never have, never will. That’s because Mac software is simply better than Windows software. So there,” Salkever writes.
“The game changed for Apple when it transitioned from OS 9’s fairly unique operating system to the Unix-based OS X. That meant any attack aimed at Unix machines could affect Macs. And there have been plenty of virus and worm attacks aimed at Unix. In short, now that Apple has Unix under the hood, Steve Jobs can’t rely on security through obscurity. The argument that Apple is safer because of its marginal place in computing’s cosmos no longer applies. With its embrace of Unix, Apple has joined a big family — and it keeps growing, thanks to Linux and other open source versions of Unix,” Salkever writes.
Salkever then plods through the many reasons Mac OS X is more secure than Windows XP and concludes, “Not everything in OS X is secure. The relatively short length of the passwords for accessing individual accounts isn’t a good thing. And security experts have found a steady stream of bugs in OS X requiring fixes. But for lowest-common-denominator attacks coming through e-mail attachments such as Mydoom, Apple offers far better protection than Microsoft. That’s particularly encouraging now that the Mac is playing in the far rougher and more populous Unix neighborhood, where security shortcomings could lead to disaster.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Salkever tries the “Security Through Obscurity Myth” on for size, but is rather unconvincing – particularly because it isn’t true. The underlying tone Salkever tries to weave throughout is that Mac OS X could be suseptable to worms and viruses, but he proves nothing and fails to state that there are no worms or viruses for Mac OS X to date. Quite a large fact to leave out of such an article, Alex. So there.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Gates: Windows ‘by far the most secure’ system; tries to use ‘Mac OS X secure through obscurity’ myth – January 27, 2004
Is Mac OS X really inherently more secure than Windows? – August 26, 2003
BusinessWeek’s Haddad gets it wrong; thinks low market share spares Macs from viruses – August 28, 2003
Shattering the Mac OS X ‘security through obscurity’ myth – August 28, 2003
Fortune columnist: ‘get a Mac’ to thwart viruses; right answer for the wrong reasons – September 02, 2003
New York Times: Mac OS X ‘much more secure than Windows XP’ – September 18, 2003
Columnist tries the ‘security through obscurity’ myth to defend Windows vs. Macs on virus front – October 1, 2003
a quick visit to:
http://www.ciac.org/ciac/bulletinsByType/bul_vendor_list.html
will give a definitive list of why Unix is just more secure
While it’s true that it would be unwise to claim that OS X is “impenetrable”, I think it is fair to say that SO FAR it has been impenetrable to virus attacks. As for the future, who can predict? But we have to judge things like this based on historical evidence. I am no programmer but from what I have read, it is hard to imagine how a virus would propagate on the OS X platform without hooks from the email client to the system itself. Indeed, this would be quite the same situation in the Windows world if EVERY Windows user moved to Eudora rather than using Outlook. No hooks, you only infect your own machine and not everyone in your address book.
Most widespread security threats to Windows are trojan related. The user gets a .zip or other attachment and they open it (or Outlook opens it for them).
Q: What is the definition of a moron?
A: Someone who opens up executable attachments they know nothing about.
This is true for both platforms. Applescripts can be sent to Mac users and they can just as easily execute them as a Win user can run a .exe but I know from experience, even the most novice of users I support are wary of opening any file, even PDFs, from someone they don’t know. So this begs the question; because surveys show that Mac users are more educated as a group than Windows users, do we have security through obscurity? Or do we have security through superior intelligence?
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Cheers,
-B
Should there every be a Mac virus, I want you all to know I will be especially gracious that day. Seeya, got to go install a patch.
Unix viruses? If Salkever had named even one it might have lent some credence to what is otherwise a load of buncombe.
DakRoland said,
Boy, I got into an Improptu discussion about Mac security this morning with another Internet Tech Support guy, and it’s absolutely amazing the kind of absolute REFUSAL to believe that anything could be better than Windows. The conversation is absolutely…mind numbing. I could copy and paste it here if anyone is interested in reading this.
–
Oops!
DR, please I’d love to read it. As painful as it is to read, it’s amazing how educational these stories are.
Knowing what Bill Gates is like, I cannot imagine he doesn’t have several tame hackers somewhere working around the clock to develop a Mac virus. If they succeeded, they would be on a pension for life and Gates would be taking out four-page ads in every newspaper in the world telling all and sundry! Funnily enough, nothing has happened which probably means it won’t
I really do not think that the Mac world is overlooked in the Virus world. I remember a couple of high profile viruses (high profile for the Mac – which would equate to low profile in the PC World) during MacOS 7-9 days. Also, with all the attention to the Mac being more secure than the PC you would think this would pose a challenge to virus writers, and OSX would be inundated with viruses soon. I realize many virus writers write to the PC world because of their disdain for the M$ monopoly.
I also remember a couple of contests to “crack a Mac” during MacOS 9 days. These contests offered $10,000 to anyone who could comprise Mac security. Apparently, no one had claimed the prize for a long time until a group of people from Denmark succeeded. Still, pretty impressive.
The Mac is just that much more secure than anything on the PC side. I just hope Apple stays vigilant with security. I believe it could be a big selling point for the Mac going forward (for both the home and corporate world).
I know this is extremely old but I love how ignorant people are… and yet I only love it for the humour factor. I’m not against macOS given that it’s Unix based but you guys do know that one of the first (maybe second but I can’t recall quite right) worms and certainly the most infamous – was for Unix, right? Well obviously you don’t which is really funny and yet also pathetic. Never heard of Robert T. Morris? Shame really… It caused huge problems. In fact the creator might have got away with it if it wasn’t for a design flaw that brought systems to its knees. Oh yes, the year? 1988. No the Internet isn’t the same thing as the web.
This is even besides the fact that Unix is easy to exploit (though not as easy as it was 15-20+ years ago). The fact it has a smaller user base and thus less reason to target doesn’t change this fact.
Rather pathetic. And oh so typical too. Fact is: if you can make it you can break it.