A Question for our Mac Users

[VideoTechMan]

With all the virus problems that most of the PC users have to contend with so many security flaws and holes, do those that use Macs ever come across these kinds of problems? Or buggy software or where you have to use firewalls and things? I was just curious; usually most of the virus and spyware situations are usually PC related things. I was just wondering if Mac users have these kinds of issues too. Thanks

VTM

[stiltman]

Why create a worm or virus when it will only affect 1% of the computers on the net?

But yeah, they have security holes like every other OS made
http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsid=1497

[Faustus]

Well spyware and virus on the mac ARE possible. We do get security fixes. But as was said by stiltman virus authors tend to target the easeir/bigger target. That way you get as many people as possible.

I've never had a piece of spyware on the mac, and never heard of one. The last MAJOR virus on the mac IIRC was AutoStart which infected floppy disk if that tells you anything.

There was the one mp3 virus thing, but that was more of a proof of cocept virus with no truely harmful payload attached.

In general mac users surf the web pretty damn freely. Even our default browser has a popup blocker.

[miksu]

Have been using Mac last 17 years, since System 6 and Mac+. I have had somekind of PC since -89 (slick 386sx/16, win 3.0). Currently have 450Mhz G4 with OSX and PII/350 with w2k Pro as gateway.

Based on personal experience, Mac is just more hassle free. Of course, every system has securtiy holes and trojans etc, but fact is that it's also computing culture and practises the maker has matter. Microsoft really doesn't have very good security culture, as can be seen. You need new critical patch every two week. Everyone knows those famous RPC flaws and how buggy different IIS versions are. And those ActiveX-things. And Outlook things...

Microsoft believes that we live in a world, where only people with goodwill exist and therefore, ActiveX, one example to mention, is simply based on trust. One problem is, many security holes are so critical that you can't even download fix, before you have trojan. Happy rebooting, 60s, 59s, 58s...

From the other hand, OSX and other *NIXES, have security and other policies based on the fact that somebody maybe doing some nasty. *NIX is built in a such way, it's goddamned difficult to do anything really nasty.

It's not just matter of numbers. It's also the code under the hood. Some OSes are just more robust and have better security. Windows isn't member of this secure family.

*NIXes have, by the way, far better multitasking. Even newest windowses (XP Pro) have those weird "not-blue-screen-but-I'am-thinking"-moments, when nothing happens and you have to wait eternity to see taskmanager. It happens even on the fastest P4/Athlons (using 'em at work, doing Microstation etc. stuff). Never happens on my five year old 450MHz G4 and OSX. And yet OSX feels much snappier even on old hardware than windows does on brand new HW.

[flaninacupboard]

if you use webmail and Opera your chances of getting attacked are very slim. sat behind a hardware firewall with AVG and a software firewall on top of that i've had no problems (except spyware, but spybot and adaware take care of that).

[miksu]

Uh, I could use Lynx and do lot of things to make my box even more secure. But common users don't do it. It has to be quite safe right out of box, without lot of patches etc. Let's take analogy: You buy car, say, Jaguar (Apple). It's complete, needs to be serviced once a year. Or, Yugo, and maker sends you box of bolts every week, since they noticed something critical is missing, they send you brake discs (Windows)...

Even worse, windows update uses ActiveX-component. If you want easy updates, you have to use it and grant rather free permissions for it (and other ActiveX-comps). Even if you use Opera or whatever, take a look at Internet Options. Defaults make kinda worried.

MS recommends using other firewall than the one included in XP. HW firewall costs you money. OSX has more than decent firewall included.

IE's marketshare is declining, likely cause is poor security:
http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/20040713-3985.html

Some US govt agencies have given recommendation to use other browsers than IE and obtain other OSes than windows (namely *NIXes for x86 and OSX/Apple). Reason is security. You can read it in Arstechnica and lot of other places.