Monday, November 05, 2007

Morons and shysters: Apple virus hype and tripe

I suppose it was predictable that the revelation of a virus aimed at OSX would start the choruses of that Macs are now as vulnerable to malware as Windows users.

This "security through obsurity" argument is absolute tripe. The simple fact is that if the Mac OS was easy to exploit, it would be. A 1, 2 or 5% share of the computing world is still a lot of computers.

Should you encounter any "security expert" who says something like ""I don't care what operating system I use. The issues are the same but unfortunately people do not agree" tell them to get back to emptying your rubbish bins, because that's all they are qualified to do.

That rant over, there is no doubt a lot of Mac users are cavalier about security. I've come across a number who think they are immune from phishing scams because they use a Mac.

It's clear too that some Mac users will be fooled into being infected. The simple fact though is that the majority of Mac users don't have root access and that one fact makes it difficult for malware to spread.

A Mac virus was inevitable and it is a risk to mac users. But it will not create the problems we've seen with Windows viruses. So let's cut the hype and BS.

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