“The recent ruckus about the claimed growing vulnerability of Mac OS X from certain sources has caused an indignant outcry from Mac advocates who claim the stories are mostly media hype. According to an expert in Unix and Linux systems, the outcry is not without justification,” Stan Beer reports for iTWire. “Con Zymaris has been working with Unix systems for nearly three decades and for the past 15 years has been running a consultancy on open source software implementation. Zymaris says that, while it is true that a Mac can get infected with a virus, it is not easy and it is not likely to cause much damage. What’s more, Mac users don’t need to install firewalls and anti-virus software. ‘All platforms are capable of getting viruses, including both Mac OS X and Linux. If you did your work, you could create a virus which would infect some Mac systems but not many systems, not by any stretch all Mac systems and you’re not likely to do much damage,’ says Zymaris.”
“According to Zymaris, at the most basic level, Windows machines get infected by malware through poor design, which is not the case with Macs. ‘Where do these things called viruses come from? In Windows there are a number of different vector approaches,'” Beer reports.
Zymaris outlines a number of Microsoft Windows’ security deficiencies and describes why Windows boxes are so easily infected. Zymaris then covers the superior protection afforded to users of Apple’s Mac OS X and explains that Mac OS X machines simply cannot be as easily infected as Windows.
Beer asks, “So do Mac computers need firewalls and anti-virus protection?”
“Essentially no is the answer. Why do we need firewalls? We need them if and only if you have services which offer connectivity from the outside world into your box. So if you’re running a standard workstation and it does not have a mail server or an FTP server or a file sharing server or a web server or none of these other things that offer the outside world the ability to come and connect to your box, you don’t need a firewall. On the Windows machines by default it goes off and creates all these services that sit there and create these gaping holes. Having said that, firewalls are by default available on OSX and Linux and there is no reason not to run them if you’re running a small office environment,” Zymaris explains.
“As far as anti-virus software is concerned if you’re running Mac OSX or Linux, you don’t need it. How is a virus going to infect you? If you’re a Mac or Linux someone has to send you a program and tell you to login as root and run this program as administrator – that’s how you would get a virus. What are the odds of that happening? In the Windows environment, you don’t have that kind of rights segmentation, so when you click on that fake greeting card that someone sent you by email, the program will happily infect your system because the system didn’t have to ask you to login as administrator and give it permission to make changes to itself. Having said that, there are ways around the system but they take an immense amount of work and, to do real damage, other than deleting files, a virus writer would have to be lucky enough to deliver the payload to someone logged in as administrator,” Zymaris explains.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jeff P.” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: What’s the point of this exercise? Why the truth now? On Monday, Stan Beer wrote one of the most ridiculous pieces, full of misconceptions and incorrect garbage regarding Mac OS X and now, on Wednesday, Mr. Beer miraculously gets the story straight. What is this, journalistic penance (or suicide)? Guess what? We’re not Beer’s priests and we’re not in a forgiving mood. Get it right the first time, before you publish it. How’s that for a revolutionary idea? Penance articles are nice, but the damage is already done and not so easily fixed. To establish some integrity, many more articles like this are required, Mr. Beer, and an public apology to Apple’s Bud Tribble is definitely in order.
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