Mac OSX safe as houses not Windows May 4, 2006
Posted by vinnyt in : General , 4commentsThe recent ruckus about the claimed growing vulnerability of Mac OSX 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.
Again my point has been made for me. Mac users do not understand what the hell is going on. An operating system by itself on a computer is secure. This assumes no network connection, and no phsyical access to the console. Once you introduce phsyical access to the system either via a network connection or through a key board you begin to lose that security. The fact of the matter is apple has always catered to that crowd of people that frankly can barely use a computer. There are the occasional intelligent one who have no common sense and use a mac but for the most part we’re talking about Granny’s and morons so the user base is not exactly what I’d say are security gurus. I was at one time in my career a “secuirty consultant” for Ernst & Young LLP. Essentially we auidted network security for companies, and how we did it was to plug in our laptops and get root. I focused on UNIX because for the 4 years prior to that I had only worked on Solaris and IRIX and Linux( P.O.S.) so I was extremely well versed in how to setup and maintain secure UNIX. Mac users as a whole can’t draw on this experience, now I’m sure apple takes precautions to ensure some level of default security, but a dumb user who doesn’t understand what’s going on can very quickly enable a service that could lead of a compromise of the system and not be any the wiser. Hence the outcry from the mac community that they are secure is just like those cats living under a smoking Mt. St. Helen’s and saying it has never errupted since I lived here so it isn’t going to now.
Macs Are Virus Targets, Some Experts Warn May 1, 2006
Posted by vinnyt in : General , add a commentAnother story by pseudo-journalists warning us about Mac viruses. Go buy Sophos or McAfee or Norton or go get a ClamAV opensource package and protect yourself. End of story.
In my life I’ve never once encountered a sane mac user who was not a massive snob. Nearly every mac user I’ve met has no comprehension of technology. In the rare case their are the few and far bwtween who are educated but still the snob comment applies. The Mac user base got it in their head at some point that Mac OS was a secure platform, and frankly no one could hack them. Unfortunately, they don’t appreciate the mind of a hacker which now… Is going to come back to bite them. As a hacker it makes better sense to make a big splash rather then just a small ripple. In the past the apple market share was insignificant at best and so targeting mac’s no one would really ever know. Now the market share is growing, and so guess what you’re firmly in the cross hairs. I really hope the snobbery that is the mac user base goes away. Frankly, I’m tired of the snobbery. No more mac store sales men explaining to me the greatness of a mac. I’ve got an advanced computer sciene degree, and an advanced math degree and I’ve been using writing code on UNIX before these kids even pushe their mac mouse across the floor. Make it stop.
