“A report by Agence Presse-France from this year’s DefCon hacker convention in Las Vegas centered on comments from security analyst Cameron Hotchkies. Hotchkies, who works with Zero Day Initiative to find and report security vulnerabilities in Apple software, gave a talk on Mac OS X hacking this past Saturday to a packed room. ‘There are a lot more people getting into it and really getting their hands dirty,’ he told AFP. ‘I’ve been seeing a lot of reverse engineering on the Apple platform,'” Chris Foresman reports for Ars Technica.
“The article goes on to ‘explain’ that an increase in Windows ports and iPhone jailbreaks are evidence that users should start to be worried about hackers and malware,” Foresman reports. “The truth is that increased scrutiny could lead hackers to target Mac OS X, but users jailbreaking an iPhone or a Windows developer porting poorly-written code to Mac OS X isn’t going to lead to rampant malware problems overnight. Users jailbreak iPhones to add software capabilities that aren’t approved by Apple; a bad Windows port is not likely to sell in very high numbers on a Mac.”
Full article, which also rightly reminds readers to be wary of social engineering (phishing and trojans), here.
MacDailyNews Take: Somehow this is “news” yet again, this time to Agence Presse-France. The same “report” has been published quarterly, at least, for the last half a decade. Yet, somehow, we Mac users manage to survive and surf the Web unimpeded on our Macs in the face of all of these “reports.”
In the full Agence Presse-France article, Glen Chapman reports, “Hackers have historically focused devious efforts on computers using Windows operating systems because the Microsoft software has more than 90 percent of the global market, promising evil-doers a wealth of targets. Macintosh computers have been gaining market share and catching the interest of hackers.”
That the Mac is secure via obscurity is a myth. Why, if obscurity means security, in April 2007 was there a virus for iPods running Linux (a few thousand devices total, at most, in all the world), but there are no viruses for the 30 million or so Mac OS X computers that are currently online? Hello? Bueller?
Uh, oh – logic is certainly not what AV software peddlers, Windows PC box assemblers, and the rest of the leeches stuck to the Windows ecosystem want people to hear. Fear is what they’re after. Increased Mac sales always result in increased anti-Mac FUD. It’s as sure as death and taxes. The sheep must be kept in the Windows pen, no matter the cost to reputations, reality, productivity, sanity, etc. Far too many have far too much invested in Microsoft Windows for them to stand idly by and let it all slip away due to a vastly superior solution from Apple. But slip away it does nonetheless.
The idea that Windows’ morass of security woes exists because more people use Windows and that Macs have no security problems because fewer people use Macs, is simply not true. By design, Mac OS X is simply more secure than Windows. Period. For reference and reasons why Mac OS X is more secure than Windows, read The New York Times’ David Pogue’s mea culpa on the subject of the “Mac Security Via Obscurity” myth here.
“Security via Obscurity” is a defense mechanism for the delusional and also tool for Microsoft apologists and/or those who profit from Windows to keep the sheep in the pen. 30 million Mac OS X installs is not “obscure” at all, but seven (7) years of Mac users surfing the ‘Net unimpeded certainly is “secure.” Besides social engineering scams (phishing, trojans; no OS can instill common sense) the only thing by which Mac users are really affected are large swaths of compromised Windows machines slowing down the ‘Net with spam and nefarious botnet traffic targeted at exploiting even more insecure Windows boxes. Get a Mac.
All your /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks are belong to us.
It seems like we see this same article every year. When are the attacks coming?
Well duh. Pretty obvious article.
The attacks will come when Apple is stupid enough to allow their apps, to do the stupid crap Microsoft lets their apps do (like allowing applications to download and run apps without user permission).
iPhone, iPod touch maybe… those are cool, nice, useful, so poised to huge worldwide success.
Mac not at all because too expensive to have a big enough market share to attract hackers attention.
@Sum Jung Gai
There will come a day when no one has any clue what that reference is to anymore.
2D Games… huh???
“Mac not at all because too expensive to have a big enough market share to attract hackers attention.”
yeah.
why attack small rich targets that nobody else is attacking.
that is why nobody goes after the big iron with billions of dollars in transactions on it, instead they prefer to target windows 95 machines run by people with 4 digit a year incomes.
….or, maybe it because certain computers have such poor security they are natural targets.
Nah!
i always find the argument funny …
“Macs are just as vulnerable”.
Fine, i conceed. But there just aren’t any viruses out there right now.
“There will be”
Fine. So what? There aren’t NOW. Would it be a better idea to get a Windows computer and get all the viruses out there right off the bat, or why not use the other platofrm, where there are none, and let them gradually show up?
Is it misery loves company, or are you actively trying to get people to have the worse experience NOW?
“a virus for iPods running Linux”
I am sorry I can’t help myself laughing. I mean seriously. Why on earth do you want to install Linux on an iPod? Please guide me here I am lost, 24 years in the Apple world as a professional and this news is cutting my arms and legs. Maybe it’s time to retire like Bill Gates?
Hey is there anyone here running symbian on their iPhone???? I need a damn virus right NOW!!!
“maybe it because certain computers have such poor security they are natural targets.” – shen
“maybe it because certain computers have such poor security they are natural targets” – shen
“But there just aren’t any viruses out there right now” – the other steve jobs
Sorry guys, Macs are just as vulnerable + they crash too.
If hackers focus on the Mac seriously, they’ll break into it.
I’m not saying Macs are crap, but just they’re expensive and got flaws too.
And so far, their 3.6% worlwide market share has been their best protection.
As I’ve said before, the only entity truly capable of hosing a Mac system is the USER themselves. OS X is too well built to allow the kinds of security exploits you can find on Windows systems.
At best, a hacker can mess with Safari or Quicktime. That’s about it, really. They have no access to the root and kernel of the system – as OS X requires user permission, first.
I guess the author of the article had nothing else better to do than pretend that OS X will suffer the same fate as Windows. Considering the world essentially runs on Windows software and that the OS is built like Swiss cheese, I suspect hackers would actually favor it over OS X.
When you’re looking to show off your ‘mad skillz’ why not just take the easy route? Hacking OS X, if even possible, requires effort and will have an impact far diminished from the chaos you could inflict on Windows computers. See?
I am pissed.
Windows users have ALL the viruses, and we Mac guys have NONE.
This is grossly unfair – lets start a campaign so that we can have our very own OSX virus!
Oh – I just realised – we do have a virus – its called ‘Intelligence’ – and we have just enough of it to know that buying a Windows computer is simply insane.
OK, I am going back to my breakfast now……West Coast time, late night, blah blah, girl, etc….
It should have already happened, not “may” happen, if Mac OS X was as insecure as Windows.
The truth is, Windows “attracts hackers” because Windows is easy. Hackers are lazy and will obviously go for the easy target. Even if Mac OS X gets to 50 percent market share, hackers will still target Windows.
“The truth is, Windows “attracts hackers” because Windows is easy. Hackers are lazy and will obviously go for the easy target…”
100% false.
Mac+
I hate it when mainstream media cannot distinguish hackers from malware authors. Hacking is not automatically bad. Many people like to tinker with/hack their computers or electronic devices and come up with ingenious way to make things better and fun, just because they can. The increase in the hackers’ interest to work on a device is always welcome and hacker community knows that no one should complain about voiding warranty and breaking their devices because of poorly written apps or poor hardware mod. The risk comes with the territory. Writing an article complaining about breaking devices due to hacking is stupid.
Malware authors, OTOH, are quite different. They are 100% interested in doing illegal things on their victims’ devices. May they be infested with real viruses.
<< Sorry guys, Macs are just as vulnerable + they crash too >>
“Just as vulnerable” ????
Ah- NO; not even close- I spend several hours per week as a network administrator for 400+ user network. 10% are Macs- Guess which 40 workstations I don’t have to worry about.
Unix has been more secure than Microsoft Windows for as long as there has been a Microsoft Windows. Period.
Unix has been engineered to be secure in multi-user networked enviornment since before Windows existed.
Macs run Unix.
Macs are more secure than machines runing Windows.
QED
To say otherwise shows either your ignorance or that you are intentionally attempting to spread disinformation. I’m not sure which, in fact I don’t particularly care, but MacDailyNews is probably not the place for either.
Any virus needs a population to infect. With 3% share, that population just isn’t there yet.
Even if for argument’s sake you assume OS X and Windows were as likely to be affected you’d need to attack 30x as many systems to get the same number of OS X based systems.
Alternatively to level the playing field you’d have to have a 30x higher chance of compromising an OS X system than a Windows one. And no-one believes that.
And by the time you’d attacked that many systems trying to find the three in a hundred Mac OS X systems hiding among the forest of Windows systems, you would have set off so many alarm bells that you’d be shut down.
So it’s fairly obvious why nobody hacking for money bothers with OS X. With 90% compounded interest you money grows a lot faster than with 3% compounded interest.
Ok, you said it, now I have to wonder. …
” the only thing by which Mac users are really affected are large swaths of compromised Windows machines slowing down the ‘Net with spam and nefarious botnet traffic targeted at exploiting even more insecure Windows boxes.”
If all the infected windows computers were dropped off the net and replaced by Macs. Would the internet be faster????
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Mac+
Crackers (the actual term for this kind of activity), just like water, will take the route of less resistance.
@loloontheair
From what I understand the main reason it’s done is to run Linux on an iPod… the other reasons include extra format support (Ogg, WMA, etc) and compatibility with Linux (since iTunes is win/mac only, no Linux version, therefore can’t sync music between regular iPod and a Linux box).
Never said they were great reasons… just reasons…
There are cookbooks available on the net for making Windows Viruses.
Any script-kiddy can make one.
There is no one on this planet that has made a Mac OS X virus. Even in a anti-virus company lab with physical access to a bench full of Macs.
Why not?
Because UNIX is very hard to compromise and Windows is not.
That makes you, Mac+, full of crap.
@Mac+,
“Sorry guys, Macs are just as vulnerable + they crash too.
If hackers focus on the Mac seriously, they’ll break into it.”
ABSOLUTELY!!! ….. After tons of study and surveys ( asked by wife and she told me to shut up), you hear it here first.
When the Mac world wide share reaches 32.65%, all the PC hackers will suddenly stop hacking pcs and release thousands of complex viruses that will swarm the net and take over all Macs, all over the world. These viruses will expose SECRET and here-to-fore HIDDEN holes in the Mac OS that have existed since OS 7.
Chaos will prevail and the world economy will crash.
However, there is a bright note. Apple stock will climb over 3000 percent on the news that Apple software crushed the world.
Suddenly, only Apple stock will have value. Buy now and hold. Survive.
Just a thought.
en (or maybe it isn”t really me!!!! )
The headline is true.
This is also true:
Increased popularity of Macs and iPhones <italics> may attract </italics> Female Supermodels to my house.
Both are technically true… but, still, I’m not vacuuming the rug any time soon!
“Unix has been more secure than Microsoft Windows for as long as there has been a Microsoft Windows. Period.”
Maybe true, but at any given point in time there’s always been exploits for Unix. The first Internet worm was a Unix phenomenon not a Windows one.
Can you really count pre NT operating systems in the list because, there Microsoft made no pretense that security was a goal. To get the equivalent root, all you had to do was sit down at the system.
But then that’s all you’re really ever had to do with a Unix box either. it just takes a few more minutes.
Unix has now surpassed Windows in terms of vulnerabilities being discovered and it’s likely to stay that way.
In 2007 five times the number of security flaws were discovered and fixed in Mac OS X compared to XP and Vista combined.
What’s clear is that Mac OS X is a holy as a piece of swiss cheese, but nobody can be bothered attacking it.
I