Why Mac's are not prone to viruses

The reason there are not viruses for the Mac is pure marker share.

Umm...this reason was already refuted earlier in the thread.
And it is market share, not marker share. Don't rush to post what you know nothing about. Read carefully. The hacking contests were controlled environments where exploits were routinely made possible by opening known hacking holes, the average user would have no knowledge of how to open themselves. That too refutes your arguments. It takes a significant amount of social engineering to render a Mac OS X system insecure.

Message was edited by: a brody

But that is just the point. You made my point for me. It is not the machine as much as the one behind the keyboard. Everyone can be exploited. They can be tricked to surf a website and get their machine hacked. Most machines that are compromised are done so through the browser. Safari and Firefox were done so very easily. Why was the Mac hacked so easily then? Why not a Windows or a Linux box? Why not using IE? If you are saying that a Mac just sitting on the network won't get hacked then you are probably right but I like to actually use my machine. Any piece of software can get compromised. There are exploits in every OS. Go back and read the interviews with the winner of the pwn2own contest and he will tell you that the exploit he used has been known for 2 years at least and it still has not been patched by Apple. Also read the inetrviews with the hackers turned security consultants at Tom's Hardware's website. They will tell that they use Macs! Why? because there just is not as much stuff written for them. And that is the only reason...... at least do your homework. You are so uniformed. Do your research before you post. Thats all I'm going to say. I am not going to get into this back and forth with you because it serves no purpose. I work in data security. My company employes firms to to do intrusion tests on a daily basis and they will all say the same thing. Macs will be more vulnerable when their market share dictates it. Don't just be a fanboy do sonme research with an open mind.... I'm done...no sense arguing with a fanboy....

I'm no "fanboy". The rest of what I've said has been expunged by me, as I don't believe it has anyplace in this forum.

Message was edited by: a brody

Why? because there just is not as much stuff written for them. And that is the only reason...... at least do your homework. You are so uniformed. Do your research before you post. Thats all I'm going to say.

It's not wise to go around on internet forums advising people to do their research when its obvious you haven't done basic research yourself.

I have the following questions for you, the so called "data security" expert:

1. What exactly is the tipping point going to be when Mac viruses will be created, because they have enough market share? 10 million Macs in use? 20? 50? 100??? There is already an installed base of over 25 million Mac OS X users that is estimated to be greater than 10% of the personal computers in use in the United States. Most of these users don't run any sort of internet security software. I would say that's a pretty large target for "hackers". Further, don't you think that these "hackers" would want the notoriety of causing the first widespread attack on OS X? There has not been an attack yet because the effort needed to do something like this on OS X is monumental compared to the joke of engineering something for the swiss cheese that is Windows (of any flavor).

2. Why did OS 9 and earlier Macs suffer from viruses? Apple's market share was 1/4 of the current value at that time. Yet Systems 7 through OS 9 suffered from a few, yet easily contained "viruses". OS X does not, despite a much larger market share. Explain that one for me, please. People just got tired of making viruses for Macs when OS X was introduced?

3. Why, when Vista was more "obscure" than OS X did it have attacks against it already? The thing had viruses written for it when it was in Beta, for crying out loud. Even in the early days of Vista, when it had less market share than OS X, there were hundreds more exploits for it than OS X.

Your "security through obscurity" argument does not hold much water at all. The Pwn2Own contest is mostly illegitimate. The "hackers" have unlimited amounts of time to find and figure out "exploits" before just clicking a button at the contest. If the guy had targeted Windows instead it is safe to say it would have been "hacked" too. I use the term lightly.

Note one more thing: I am not trying to say that Macs are somehow invulnerable. All computer software has vulnerabilities. All I am saying is that the "security through obscurity" myth is garbage. There have been many more "obscure" platforms attacked than OS X. The primary reason why there has not been a successful attack on OS X as of yet is because it is inherently more secure than the other prominent OS out there, Windows. That's all I'm saying.

--Travis

Message was edited by: Travis A.