From: Mr. David M. Ensteness (denstene_at_mac.com)
Date: Fri Aug 12 2005 - 09:01:07 PDT
While we should probably starting moving onto all things Newton in
the near future I would say that worms are still less a threat to
*NIX and Mac OS X systems than to Windows as applications in a
Windows environment require dramatically less authentication. Its
true that the default user on a Mac OS X system is an administrator,
but to alter most of the critical settings, functions, etc ... that
administrator is still required to authenticate manually. Thus while
Mac users may be equally susceptible to executing a worm, we are far
more likely to only delete or harm data within the bounds of our own
home directory.
That said, most users probably care far more about their personal
data being deleted than their computer being hijacked and used to
spread the worm, but in the scheme of things, we should all care more
about the reverse. My worry is not that you will lose your personal
photos because you executed a worm, my worry is that you executed a
worm and it hijacked your system, enabling it to spread farther and
do more damage.
Lastly, one should note that in the past several years it has not
been "foolish Windows users" who spread Windows worms, the worms have
spread themselves through opportunities to auto-execute within
Microsoft applications such as Exchange, Outlook, Outlook Express,
and Internet Explorer. In one respect UNIX users are safer because
most of our code is better protected, however, those developing new
code for new functions must of course be very steadfast in their
coding and functions that they do not open up new holes where none
existed before. One scary function is that Safari, based on the quite
respectable KHTML, by default opens "safe" file formats after
downloading them. This was a decision by Apple and can be toggled off
in the Safari General Preference Pane, but it is a potential security
exploit, though a minor one.
David
> On 12/08/2005, at 07:34, Toby Hutton wrote:
>
>> Sorry, but that's mostly a crock. These days there are very few
>> actual viruses infecting Windows users - it's the worms that are
>> doing all the damage.
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