Using Power Book G4 with OSX 10.5.8 okay from virus attack?

The issue lately in the news concerning iOS was fixed for those product users, & the OS X version that had been said to be an issue, should have been fixed for those product users whose Macs were able to run Mavericks OS X 10.9. (on intel-based Mac)

The recent event had no effect on older systems.

Your computer (powerPC G4) has no recent alert status pending any more concern or careful browsing than before this unrelated alert. And there is no update for Safari in OS X 10.5.8, essentially it is not supported in Software Updates.

If you feel you need a more secure browser, you could get another

such as TenFourFox; or iCab. Or SeaMonkeyPPC. These have

seen more update work than the older Safari.

Good luck & happy computing! 🙂

Hadn't noticed you essentially had asked the same question twice

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5940591?tstart=0

or I may not have replied at all.

Was there another reason behind this?

I have three Macs running 10.5.8...

Good luck & happy computing! 🙂

Lawrence1946 wrote:

Is my Mac Powerbook G$ with OSX 10.5.8 safe from virus attack or do I need to protect Safar?

It is very important to speak precisely about these matters to avoid jumping to unfounded conclusions that lead to erroneous reactions. You said "virus attack" which is a mischaracterization of the problem. It was a vulnerability, only the potential for a man-in-the-middle attack which has absolutely nothing to do with viruses.

For your Mac to be attacked, it would have to be attempting an SSL connection with Safari or other related frameworks, and there would have to be another user on the same wifi network as yourself intercepting the transmissions and skilled enough in network coding to implement a man-in-the-middle attack. So users on school and public wifi networks using Safari were vulnerable, but home users on their own password-protected networks or Chrome/Firefox users were not particularly vulnerable.

From the articles on Mac sites that I read, which described all of the above, it was also said that only Mavericks was vulnerable. However, there were other security updates issued for Mountain Lion and Lion to address other issues.

10.5.8 along with 10.6 are no longer supported due to age and no longer receive security updates.

You posted this on Wednesday. On Tuesday, the day before, you marked my response to your identical question on another thread as solving your problem. Is there something you're still unclear about at this point?

As to your question about people who claim knowledge of what Apple knew and when... anyone who makes such claims is so full of hot air that they make a hot air balloon look like a child's toy. To say Apple knew about this in October and did nothing is pure speculation, and can only be speculation with an agenda behind it, with the intent of making Apple look bad. I'd suggest you not listen to those people.

The Mac OS X market may consist about 20% of the computers today.

The Mac OS X 10.6.8 market may consist of about 18% of those 20%.

Powerbooks are not even in the 18%, as none can run the 18%.

Which means for it to be a genuine targeted attack, it would have to concentrate on significantly less than 4% of the computers out there today.

Natively, Powerbooks can't even run .exe files.

Though some people run windows in its own closed off emulation environment on Powerbooks, and that is vulnerable within that enivronment.

Practice safe computing:

1. On a Mac, never open a .app, or .script or anything that looks like a script attachment, or Word attachment, unless the person has cleared with you they aren't using macros for Word.

2. Do not use Peer2peer software.

3. Do not open ports on your sharing firewall system preference without knowing whom you are connecting with.

4. Do not get optimization software without first backing up your data, as that software may actually slow you down!