I read there are over 100,000 known viruses in Pcs. Zero for Mac. They say Mac OS X has helped the Mac keep its clean bill of bealth with a superior UNIX foundation and security features that go above and beyond the norm for PCs.
So here's the question. Say you have a Mac and a Pc computer a home, and one day you happened to download a file containing in virus infecting your PC computer and now I wanna see how a Mac computer will respond to such virus, I decide to copy/paste this file into a usb drive and transfer it to my Mac, what would it happen?
People tell me Mac has a more sefure environment and everything and it comes bundled with a buil-in firewall but no anti-virus protection software and one of my friend has a G4 and I asked him about it and he said he has never gotten a viruses and he download all kind of shit off the internet and doesn't have an anti-virus in his coomputer and what amazes me the most is when he said he has never gotten a virus in his G4 before.
I find it odd that [invalid URL removed]there are companies selling antivirus software for Macs. You think there wouldn't be much of a market for these kinds of products if there are no known viruses. I guess it makes it easier to write them though if they don't have to accomplish anything.
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pinc_noiz Deactivated User
758 Posts 6/05
Posted - Sep 19 2006 : 4:41PM
+1 for this amazing sentence
The more I read, the more I feel like buying a Mac. As I'm used to PC, I can get my future Mac look like a PC, don't I? Than I would probably have the best of both worlds I suppose. Am I right in this?
Still wanking after all these years. 8082 Posts 10/00
Posted - Sep 19 2006 : 5:49PM
There is very little need really, if you don't want your computer infected and I don't know any Mac user that has antivirus software, and yes they are knowledgable users. The market is with corporate clients, who just have to have an antivirus in place no matter what (company policy? zero risk as opposed to 0,00001 per cent risk?), and to catch and destroy viruses in E-mail attachment's you'd received from the Windows world and want to forward to someone else in the Windows world.
Nothing says I love you so much as a tongue in the ass. 2884 Posts 1/03
Posted - Sep 19 2006 : 10:17PM
There have been worms that have made it through to the mac in the classic OS. The only real reason it isn't more vulnerable is because there aren't many people who are willing to put the effort into bringing the mac down. There just aren't enough of them. I will caution anyone networking macs and pc's. Viruses can reside on the mac and infect the pc through the network connection. I had it happen with an email virus and had to run Norton through the network to expunge it from the mac. Took forever. It doesn't hurt to have some kind of antivirus on the mac, hopefully one that recognizes pc vermin.
Unix isn't immune from virii, as far as I know. It is a percentage thing though. Most computers out there are PC based. So who writes a virus for the Mac? Same reasoning as evolution - more potential hosts, more successful. Though the new Intel Macs with the dual OS capability makes this more interesting.
Macs are just as suseptible as PCs... but there aren't many viruses for macs because everyone is targeting the market leader, windows and internet explorer.
The same logic explains why you don't hear linux people complaining about viruses, they just complain about no drivers.
pinc_noiz, using the free software Boot Camp you can install windows XP on a mac but that opens you up to XP problems. There's also a program called Parallels that lets you switch between OSs without rebooting.
I wonder if hacking/modding games is the usual introduction to programming these days. Maybe the Mac doesn't get targeted because the script kiddies all grew up playing Doom on Windows.
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pinc_noiz Deactivated User
758 Posts 6/05
Posted - Sep 20 2006 : 8:32AM
No real 'best of both worlds', I see. Can't I have a Mac OS, while having the GUI of a PC?
I've always thought it was strange that Mac uses no viruses as a marketing point, but if the advertising works and Macs do become more popular, won't viruses start to crop up in the Mac world on the fact of their being more popular?
"These days"? That was an important phase I went through in the late 1970's.
A Macintosh really is harder to attack because there are no privileged users: no "root" logins. Windows theoretically can do this too via "limited" accounts, but in practice it is almost impossible to actually use such an account and it is rarely used.
If a virus manages to "break out" of a mail program or web browser on a Mac then it can wreak havoc on your files (have you done your backups?), but not the system. It would have to convince you to type in the master password when prompted in order for it to get superuser access.
So you can get viruses on a Mac but it really is harder to take down a Mac than a Windows system.
As for unix, the very first network virus/worm, the RTM worm, attacked unix systems in 1988. That also ranks as the most "successful" worm as it infected ~ 10% of all computers connected to the Internet. The FreeBSD security list does still average a couple of issues a month, but nearly all are denial-of-service issues an not penetration issues, and in the last ten years the only change I've had to make to avoid a security risk that I can remember involved ssh(1).
The Parallels Virtual Machine is a very good way to contain virus/worm issues but is expensive since you have to buy a license for Windows as well as Parallels.
Macs seems somewhat niche, not matter what they do. For some buyers, that is part of the appeal. In buisnesses you really only see them in the art/marketing departments - that is a big chunk of buisness right there. I think they have fluctuated between 2-10%, not in danger of becoming 30% of the market.
They probably don't care at the moment. Seems most businesses take a "We'll deal with that if and when it happens" approach. All they care about for the moment is making money. Whatever it takes is what they'll do.
The biggest difference between Mac and PC users is that Mac people are very proud of themselves. If there is any slight problem found in a Mac, they will immediately blame it on something else. Parallels, an Mac application that allows you to virtually use Windows, according to Mac people is buggy because of Windows when the problem may lie within the Mac OSX environment itself. No, Mac people are just too perfect to blame anything that has anything to do with Mac. Oh and by the way, my IPod, an Apple product crashes every couple weeks and I have to reboot. So who do we blame for that one? But I never seen PC people blame Macs for their problems. They just move on.
I've also never had connectivity issues with my PC. Camera, new drive, whatever. Just hook up the cable and run installation CD. It isn't the nightmare Mac people make it out to be.
I have currently two web cams, two tablets, one scanner, two USB DVD writer, one external drive (Firewire), one iPod and an IPAQ PDA, not to mention the printer, which I leave off most of the time and only fire up for print jobs. I won't even go into what's inside the box.
I heard of a few virus hit Mac but the there is way more PC then Macs. So if you were gone make a virus to hit as many computers as you can which would you spend your time targeting. Yup PCs, Macs are not immune there just not worth the effort……..YET! Yani Z
I stopped using my PC a while back and did not even have anti-virus software on my Mac until a few days ago. No real reason other then I am going to be doing a lot of traveling in the future which will mean a lot of strange places to boot up and a lot of wireless internet log-ons (even in other countries) so I decided better safe then sorry.
There were a couple of virus's on Macs in the last few years but nothing major.
jrv is right the easiest way to protect you Mac is with limited access log-ons.
Introducing Kalani Luana
Posted - Sep 19 2006 : 3:56PM