Thread: The tide is turning?

Originally Posted by Delta_Farce

Good for you Weeds. You will be virus/exploit free, and you're probably the only person on this site that can claim that unless there are some OpenBSD users here

er...yep straight out of the box, too scare to do anything just incase

Originally Posted by Delta_Farce

Good for you Weeds. You will be virus/exploit free, and you're probably the only person on this site that can claim that unless there are some OpenBSD users here

Not so fast! Our computer is now a couple of months old and the only non-standard software on it is skype, firefox, and i-work.

I don't really need anything else...

Originally Posted by Captain_Rightfoot

For people that torrent steal software and install their pirated software... you are stupid and you deserve anything you get. Norton will gladly sell you something to fix this, or try not stealing software.

Can't say I disagree with that. Down loading things from dodgy sources will eventually lead to problems. It is not really relevant whether it is a Mac or a PC. For instance - Mactalk - Search results being hijacked - 02/03/2010

I like these quotes from the forum exchange:

"This is the first time I've seen something like this on Mac! Was my friend delving into places insalubrious? Is that where he picked up this nasty?"


"If you want it fixed, wipe the Mac and install 10.4 from scratch."

"I can't find where the bastard is to trash it Lutze. Spotlight doesn't work and it's nowhere obvious that I can see."

Now you would think they are talking about a PC, no its a Mac. Some more of the details can can be found here - My First OSX Trojan

"Let's make a pause here and sum up our findings. What we have so far is a generic trojan that can be hidden inside any osx installer file. This trojan runs as root on your computer and executes whatever gets published by the CGI script at "94.247.2.109/cgi-bin/generator.pl". Notice the simplicity and efficiency of the mechanism: it is space efficient (a few lines of shell and perl script), it is reasonably obfuscated (uuencoded), it gets its active payload from a web site hence only relying on a working internet connection and on HTTP, a protocol seldom blocked by firewalls. It does not even matter if you are not online when installing the trojan since sooner or later cron will run AdobeFlash while you are connected and whatever payload 94.247.2.109 publishes at the time will be executed with root privileges on your computer.

So in other word, your computer has just been turned into a bot, a zombie, and 94.247.2.109 is your new master."

As said before, you can find any number of people having problems with PCs just look at the PC based forums. Of course it is easy enough to find any number of people having Mac problems, just look in the Mac based forums.

Yeah, the tide is turning but so what.

Originally Posted by Captain_Rightfoot

Not so fast! Our computer is now a couple of months old and the only non-standard software on it is skype, firefox, and i-work.

I don't really need anything else...

Meaning your machine is now exposed to all of the problems in those applications, and therefore the security has changed from the factory standard.

The point I'm trying to make here is that arguing over which OS is more secure is null and void when we load these machines up with applications that have their own problems. How many ports does Skype open up? Is your machine acting as a Skype super-node? Etc etc ad nauseum.

Virus' are ONE way of compromising security, not the only one. If I wanted to collect someone's data there are far easier ways to do it than writing a virus.

I'm no Mac fan. I think it's a nicely dressed up Unix, but it isn't the best one in terms of security. Most user friendly, sure, but you get locked in to Apple software, service and Apple approved hardware. I don't like that idea, I'd rather be able to buy or use what I want.

As opposed to the 'old days' when people like SCO gave a specific list of preferred hardware?

Originally Posted by Delta_Farce

Most user friendly, sure, but you get locked in to Apple software, service and Apple approved hardware. I don't like that idea, I'd rather be able to buy or use what I want.

This is the problem with the Mac. I have a Mac and like it a lot but I don't like where they are heading. Look at the iPhone and iPad, you can only put stuff on it that Apple says you can, how long before they move this over to their computers in the theory that people like being looked after and being told what they can and can't do with their hardware. Apple has also shown in the past that it will screw over customers if it suits their business plans and then there's the screw ups that they remain tight lipped over until a magic update appears.

I think I'll have a holiday from Apple and wait and see where they are heading. At the end of the day a computer is just there to get a job done.

mmmm, perhaps I should create a good virus for the iPhone then lol

Originally Posted by Scallops

Distinguished Colleagues,

For those of us with enlightened wallets.....
Livin' the dream,

Scallops out.

fixed it for you