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Wednesday at 12:18 pm
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Ron Bailey, Brian Bufalo, Mathieu Ayel and 24 other people liked this
Those captions = GOLD. - Mona N.
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haha yes, liked just for the captions alone :) - Dennis Jackson
I'm really tired of Apple getting a bad wrap for having a higher quality product. As an apple enthusiasts it gets to me. - orionstarr
It's not that they have a higher quality, it's that most malware writers are on Windows machines. It's the same reason Linux viruses are rare, too. Read the article, the author nails it. - Mona N.
Wait, what Mona? That's only one reason: "But suppose this was some bizarro world where OS X was king. Would Microsoft run ads about how virus-plagued OS X was? Well, it would still be more prudent to run anti-virus software, since there'd be a lot more thrown crap thrown at the Mac OS, but if malware acted mostly like it does today, it likely wouldn't have the same impact as it did on Windows pre-Vista.
A lot of that is because of the way permissions work in OS X vs. Windows. Basically, Unix-based systems are architected so that they require administrator privileges to modify the OS and are traditionally more strict in enforcing them. - Roshan Vyas
Yes, the design and structures are completely different - but I wasn't going to flap my gums since I am definitely no expert on OS X and or Linux. ;) - Mona N.
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you'll find that the kernels of windows, linux and osx are pretty much water tight, almost 100% of exploits now adays are taking advantage of 3rd party software with the threats discovered valid across all 3 platforms. Long gone are the days where something like natchi or the one that attacked LSASS in windows would spread from windows box to windows box on a network. In fact there are a hell of a lot of them that rely upon the user to give them the OK - which shows up the one great threat endemic to all ;) - alphaxion
Mona, I don't buy the market share argument, though I hear a lot of people make it. Unix-based malware isn't proportional to market share; it's nearly non-existent. And Unix isn't all that great from a security architecture point of view. It's just that Windows is worse. - Bruce Lewis
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Well think about it this way. Larger market share = more users = higher probability of bored people creating viruses / malware. - Mona N.
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Viruses aren't really created out of boredom that often. Nowadays it's all about the botnets and monies. =) - Daniel Bruce
Mk, wrong word choice. :) - Mona N.
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Well isn't the camry the most selling car in U.S.? Does that make it better than a BMW? Don't think so, just the cheap alternative. The world may own mostly windows, doesn't make it better - orionstarr
Doesn't make it worse, either. Just different. - Jordan Hofker
Don't open attachments that come in spam, and don't download strange stuff from the internet, and you don't have to worry about viruses. And AV software is such a resource hog that it practically qualifies as a virus itself. I scan my system now and then just to confirm I'm virus free (never found one), but I'll be damned if I leave that stuff installed and running. - Eric P
mona: actually you'll find the VX'ers who used to make viruses for (in)fame(y) or to prove a point have all but died out, now the malware scene is full of people making them for commercial gain hence why many of them are attempts at stealing financial details and/or cons to make you pay money for crapware. It's basic economics - windows has the greater number of gullible users ergo more money to be made. - alphaxion
I like when people complain about AV software being a resource hog (NOD32? a resource hog? nope) but then have no problem running a browser, Firefox, that often will happily eat up 300 megs of RAM with just a couple of tabs open. - Akiva Moskovitz
I think the problem is a browser can be the place where you actually get all your work done. AV is just something running just in case something happens. You aren't actually doing anything with it. - ♫ Rahsheen ™ ★
Can we stop this? People just want to fight about windows vs. pc. It gets to me. - orionstarr
@mona, those captions are actually RED. ;-) - .LAG
People who write malware to get a feeling of power would love to write something that affects Unix-based systems. People still remember the 1988 Morris worm, while the horde of Windows malware is mostly forgotten. Taking either the OSX community or the Linux community down a peg would be an enormous ego boost to a malware writer. - Bruce Lewis
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orionstarr: There's a Hide button right there ^ =) Personally I find that as long as you have a decent firewall (a NAT router works just as well) and common sense, you should be fine. I haven't had a virus on any of my computers (windows or not) and I never run AV. - Daniel Bruce
How are virus spread? By e-mail downloads? - orionstarr
E-mail attachments/links, infected files on P2P networks, drive-by downloads on infected sites, subversive software (registry cleaners are a prime suspect), and probably hundreds of other methods. - Daniel Bruce
I had a virus on my computer, but I was being careless and I downloaded stuff I had no business downloading. I used to want to write a virus because the very idea of a living program was freaking cool to me. Never actually did it though. - ♫ Rahsheen ™ ★
you'll notice the majority of these infection points rely upon the user to do most of the leg work. The few that don't either use flaws in browsers (predominantly flaws in flash to be specific) or rootkit tech that "cloaks" itself. - alphaxion
Yeah, self-spreading worms aren't that common anymore, the most prevalent virus these days are trojans which, really, are platform-agnostic to some degree. - Daniel Bruce
A trojan is not a type of virus. Neither are most platform-agnostic. - Tanath
Tanath, the vast majority of existing types of malware for Windows are trojans, not viruses. Yet that doesn't stop people talking of Windows having a big "virus" problem. And there's very little to stop people writing highly-effective (and highly damaging) trojans for Mac OS X. - Ian Betteridge
I remember watching code red do a driveby login attempt on my FTP server using all the standard IIS and windows guest accounts.. was funny cause I don't use IIS for FTP because it's one of the most abominable implementations of an FTP server ever created >.< - alphaxion
Ian, it used to have a big virus problem; and people are ignorant. The name stuck. Virus is synonymous with malware to many people. - Tanath
