How safe are apples?

Blacksheep1979

So ever apple fanboy on here constantly goes on about how apple macs are safe, unhackable etc etc. So how long exactly will a new fully patched and up to date software wise apple mac stand up against hackers vs fully patched windows and linux machines? Which will be penetrated first?

http://www.macworld.com/article/132733/2008/03/hack.html

Food for thought.....

DatabaseError

i don't think its true that macs are more secure than windows pcs, just the relatively small userbase makes it less worthwhile to the hackers.

superscaper

Also apples contain some cyanide.

PrinceGaz

superscaper wrote: »

Also apples contain some cyanide.

Organic ones shouldn't. Overall I'd say apples are safer or at least less harmful than most processed foods.

But seriously, Apple computers are fairly safe because they have such a small market-share that hackers don't target them much. Why bother writing a virus or trojan that at best only has a chance of infecting maybe 10% of desktop/laptop computers, when by targetting Windows you have a chance of infecting over 80% (a few people using PCs will be running a Linux variant and that is even less targetted than Mac OS, because people capable of using Linux tend to be at least a little geeky and will know what to watch out for).

You can't be complacent though- Apple Macs do still need a firewall and AV software to be considered safe. They are probably safer than Windows XP/Vista for a total computer-novice, though.

digerati

PrinceGaz wrote: »

You can't be complacent though- Apple Macs do still need a firewall and AV software to be considered safe. They are probably safer than Windows XP/Vista for a total computer-novice, though.

Macs OS X 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard (and earlier OSs too) include a very strong Firewall as part of their standard install. If I recall correctly almost 99.99% of the viruses that affect Mac OS X, are solely targeted at Microsoft applications, which by themselves can't harm the OS.

I have several Macs running different flavours of OSX and I seldom bother scanning for Microsoft viruses. In the 6+ years I've been using OSX I've only encountered a few viruses. Not one was targeted at the OS, rather they were OS-independant Microsoft macro viruses...

If you use a secure browser like FireFox with Jscript then you stand very little chance of getting hacked or inadvertently downloading a viruses.

epz_2

tonyhague wrote: »

i don't think its true that macs are more secure than windows pcs, just the relatively small userbase makes it less worthwhile to the hackers.

nope the root/user seperation of the unix platform they are based on make them a lot more secure.

basicly it prevents users from writing anything to a path that could be exicuted so if you download a virus it just sits there doing nothing

that said you can secure a linux box to nsa standards very easily and be virtualy impervious, or just go totally mental and openbsd with its one vunerability in a decade.

BillScarab

epz wrote: »

nope the root/user seperation of the unix platform they are based on make them a lot more secure.

basicly it prevents users from writing anything to a path that could be exicuted so if you download a virus it just sits there doing nothing

that said you can secure a linux box to nsa standards very easily and be virtualy impervious, or just go totally mental and openbsd with its one vunerability in a decade.

More secure than XP with it's default admin rights, but a similar system is built into Vista with it's annoying but useful UAC.

Whatever OS you use though the biggest security risk is the person using it.

superscaper

PrinceGaz wrote: »

Organic ones shouldn't.

Why? The cyanide is naturally occurring in the seeds. :rolleyes: You didn't think I was referring to pesticides or something were you?

BillScarab

danivtec wrote: »

A hacker in an legit organised competition hacked into a macair within 2 mins using an undisclosed flaw.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20080327/tc_infoworld/96676

You may want to read the first post in this thread! :rotfl:

superscaper

alexjohnson wrote: »

Can anyone hijack your machine to make it dial up very expensive lines? Nope.

How many people nowadays are still on dial up though?

superscaper

Just looked it up, apparently at last check last year it was 11.6%. And I'm guessing that's made up of all computer type users including macs so actual windows users will be less. Hardly anything worth considering significant in terms of security risk.

Has anyone said macs are not safer?