For all you Mac haters...
28 January 2004, 10:37 AM
#1
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28 January 2004, 12:52 PM
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What a *****!!!
Its like ripping the engine out of your Ferrari and replacing it with that of a Ford Anglia. It wouldn't have been as bad if he'd have put an x86 Linux, BSD or Solaris OS on there.....but Windows!!!
He must enjoy having people laugh at him....
.....although he can't know much about computer architecture as he's using Windows.
Its like ripping the engine out of your Ferrari and replacing it with that of a Ford Anglia. It wouldn't have been as bad if he'd have put an x86 Linux, BSD or Solaris OS on there.....but Windows!!!
He must enjoy having people laugh at him....
.....although he can't know much about computer architecture as he's using Windows.
28 January 2004, 01:47 PM
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403.9 Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected
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28 January 2004, 02:02 PM
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Its been posted spymac, appleturns, thinksecret, and probably every other Mac page there is today. So I'd expect some trouble connecting.
Its worth seeing though.
Its worth seeing though.
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28 January 2004, 03:19 PM
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Its too bad Apple decided to mount the board on the opposite side, because you can only fit a Micro ATX board due to the location of the slots.
29 January 2004, 01:18 PM
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As a result, Mac users are generally immune to the incessant security problems plaguing their Windows counterparts, and that somehow bothers PC Magazine columnist Lance Ulanoff.
If only people knew the truth!!!
29 January 2004, 01:30 PM
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I know absolutley nothing about Mac, but it obviously seeme alot more secure then Windows. What is the software availability like for it? And can you play games on it?
Geezer
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29 January 2004, 02:14 PM
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I think alot of the inherent security comes from the fact there are a whole army of sad little f**ks with nothing better to do than cause widespread disruption, to cause maximum damage you need to target the largest user base and that is typically Windows, so Macs and *nix platforms tend to suffer fewer attacks.
Mac games? Sure You can play doom, quake Im currently playing warcraft 3 plenty of stuff out there, o and emulators for all the old stuff too.
Gary
Mac games? Sure You can play doom, quake Im currently playing warcraft 3 plenty of stuff out there, o and emulators for all the old stuff too.
Gary
29 January 2004, 02:23 PM
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The reason macs are so more 'secure' is not because they are *actually* secure, it's the fact that 95% of viruses, worms etc and about 70% - 85% of hacking, cracking etc is targeted at windows systems.
I wonder if that could have anything to do with the fact most of these people hate bill gates / MS!?!?!
If all that malicious activity was directed at macs, I wonder just how long they would stand up!!!! The other factors to take into account are the fact that about 60% - 80% of computers connected to the net are running a microsoft OS in some form or another.
The same applies to linux, it only seems 'more secure' due to most activity targetted at windows based machines!
EK
I wonder if that could have anything to do with the fact most of these people hate bill gates / MS!?!?!
If all that malicious activity was directed at macs, I wonder just how long they would stand up!!!! The other factors to take into account are the fact that about 60% - 80% of computers connected to the net are running a microsoft OS in some form or another.
The same applies to linux, it only seems 'more secure' due to most activity targetted at windows based machines!
EK
29 January 2004, 02:34 PM
#19
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It's not just the fact that the majority of computers run Windows. The same flaws just don't (and can't) exist on non-Windows operating systems, the entire core architecture is completely different. A mail client/web browser/etc on a UNIX system simply cannot be infected the same way a Windows machine can because the application layer isn't tied into the core architecture like it is on Windows, so even if 99% of users were using UNIX the level of infection would be significantly lower, because it's _much_ harder to break the system. Presuming it's configured correctly obviously.
You get the odd buffer-overflow exploit made available, but how many UNIX-based viruses have been reported in the past ... twenty years?
There are trillions of documents on this subject.
You get the odd buffer-overflow exploit made available, but how many UNIX-based viruses have been reported in the past ... twenty years?
There are trillions of documents on this subject.
29 January 2004, 02:52 PM
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The reason macs are so more 'secure' is not because they are *actually* secure, it's the fact that 95% of viruses, worms etc and about 70% - 85% of hacking, cracking etc is targeted at windows systems.
I wonder if that could have anything to do with the fact most of these people hate bill gates / MS!?!?!
If all that malicious activity was directed at macs, I wonder just how long they would stand up!!!! The other factors to take into account are the fact that about 60% - 80% of computers connected to the net are running a microsoft OS in some form or another.
The same applies to linux, it only seems 'more secure' due to most activity targetted at windows based machines!
I wonder if that could have anything to do with the fact most of these people hate bill gates / MS!?!?!
If all that malicious activity was directed at macs, I wonder just how long they would stand up!!!! The other factors to take into account are the fact that about 60% - 80% of computers connected to the net are running a microsoft OS in some form or another.
The same applies to linux, it only seems 'more secure' due to most activity targetted at windows based machines!
Thank you Steve, you saved me a whole lot of typing in your reply.
To to point out what Steve said......
......you cannot break unix like OS' in the way you can break a windows system. The underlying architecture of unix, Linux, Mac, BSD etc are very different to that of Windows......
I'm not gonna go into the technicalities of it, but when you've worked with security on both systems, you learn understand them very well.
The best thing Windows users can do to quickly boost their defences, is to remove IE and outlook as best they can (remember, its tied into the OS core) and use safer options like Opera and Mozilla.
Well, its a start.....
29 January 2004, 03:11 PM
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very very untrue
I was not refering to an specific flaws or vulnerabilities. it's pretty obvious the same flaw on windows can't be exploited on other OS's for the simple fact that they, as you said, are completely different.
Also I am not saying windows is sure or anything like that, and yes, it probably does have a lot more flaws than some other OS's, but it doesn't make what I was saying untrue.
What I was getting at refering to that mac article, is that one of the reasons that the mac OS enjoys largely less targetting of vulnerabilities that windows.
If your going to write an internet worm you are hardly going to design it to target a type of OS that only makes up for a small portion of the OS's used on the majority of computers linked to the net are you?!
What I am simply saying is that every OS has it's security flaws and you cannot simply label it as secure just because there are not many worms or security related incidents targetting it.
Take Linux for example, compared to windows it is not as widely used, some claim it is the most secure OS and doesn't have all the issues windows has (which partly is true), but it still has it's own flaws within itself. I seem to remember, correct me if I am wrong, that with many of the linux distributions patches are released on a fairly regular basis, but with linux it tend to be revision a, a few hours later, revision b of the same path, oooh, a few days later, revision c, and with each update the kernal or what ever requires being recompiled.
Also look at the number of linux / unix webservers that get hacked into compared to windows, there maybe less, but when you consider there are less unix / linux machines running world wide, the actual ratio between hacked machines on these OS's are in fact quite similar.
Hmmm, that was more than I intended to type! oh well. Simply, all OS's have thier security flaws and no system is immune to successfull attacks, to say so is simply fool hardy.
29 January 2004, 03:31 PM
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If your going to write an internet worm you are hardly going to design it to target a type of OS that only makes up for a small portion of the OS's used on the majority of computers linked to the net are you?!
Even if worms were written solely for say, Mac or Linux, they would never amount to anything. You can't exploit weaknesses like you can in Windows, you just don't have access to the OS internals to do this.
Unix like systems are dominant for servers, thats probably why Windows web servers and home users take the brunt.
I'm not saying the others are unhackable, there are thousands of techniques and exploits, but they are generally down to buffer overflows and badly configured networks, not down to bad design of the OS.
I can see your not gonna go along with this, but you have 3 people trying to push this.....me, Steve and Richard Forno who I think are all computer scientists and have or do work with computer security.
I can see were gonna have to agree to disagree here
Come up to DNSCON this year. You bring a Windows laptop, and i'll bring a BSD laptop and we'll play 'hack the flag' see which systems hold up the longest...hehe
29 January 2004, 03:51 PM
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alls i can say is
Edited to say, if you look at it we're kinda saying the same think, I am just clarifying that any system can be hacked if the hacker is determined enough.
Regarding you saying that certain OS cores are designed in such a way that they cannot be exploited, that is not eniterly true, I would agree to say that it would be extreme difficult and would require a hacker with a fundamental understanding of the OS core systems to be able to do it, but it doesn't mean it is impossible!
Only a few months ago there was almost a (possible) very serious security flaw within the linux kernal, all be it, it required a hacker to hack into the system and change a flag within the kernal, but had that made it to release, god knows how many linux systems would have been at risk to a hacker gaining high level admin priviledges of those linux systems. Luckily it was discovered before publication!!!!
But it goes to show it doesn't matter how secure an OS core system is, there is *ALWAYS* a flaw, granted they may never be found nor exploited, but they will exists none the less. It's just a matter of time till some knowledgable hacker with too much time on his or her hands stumbles across it!
[Edited by EvilKyote - 1/29/2004 4:01:31 PM]
Edited to say, if you look at it we're kinda saying the same think, I am just clarifying that any system can be hacked if the hacker is determined enough.
Regarding you saying that certain OS cores are designed in such a way that they cannot be exploited, that is not eniterly true, I would agree to say that it would be extreme difficult and would require a hacker with a fundamental understanding of the OS core systems to be able to do it, but it doesn't mean it is impossible!
Only a few months ago there was almost a (possible) very serious security flaw within the linux kernal, all be it, it required a hacker to hack into the system and change a flag within the kernal, but had that made it to release, god knows how many linux systems would have been at risk to a hacker gaining high level admin priviledges of those linux systems. Luckily it was discovered before publication!!!!
But it goes to show it doesn't matter how secure an OS core system is, there is *ALWAYS* a flaw, granted they may never be found nor exploited, but they will exists none the less. It's just a matter of time till some knowledgable hacker with too much time on his or her hands stumbles across it!
[Edited by EvilKyote - 1/29/2004 4:01:31 PM]
29 January 2004, 04:52 PM
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Agreed, everything is hackable from phone systems to the London underground.
My point was back to what the article said.
Pretty much everything he said was true. Windows systems are open to exploit in a way unix like systems could never come close to, simply because of the underlying system. Windows software is free to roam about the OS, alter dll's and if running as admin (as most do as this is the default account) get into registry hives, etc.....pretty much anything. As this comes back to IE and Outlook, thats the reason virus writters are so succesfull with Windows architecture.
There is no way you could do the same damage on a unix like system.
You would first of all need to get root. Something which cannot be done via email worms and viri. Worms would need to target the machines one by one and find holes in them, get root and then do what ever it is they are doing.
That would be a pretty advanced and large worm....heh.
(maybe running an inteligent worm via nessus plugins??? just a thought....heh)
The kernel flaw you reffer to would have required a vast knowledge of the Linux kernel and networks to use. Also, it was oply spotted because the kernel is open source. This hole was so advanced, its likely no one would have ever found it throughout its lifetime had the code not been available to the public.
I dread to think how many holes are in windows if they are missing things like the RPC DCOM hole of recent time, to name but 1 of the many.
Redmond has already accidentally admitted if the Windows source ever leaked, it would be disastorous.
My point was back to what the article said.
Pretty much everything he said was true. Windows systems are open to exploit in a way unix like systems could never come close to, simply because of the underlying system. Windows software is free to roam about the OS, alter dll's and if running as admin (as most do as this is the default account) get into registry hives, etc.....pretty much anything. As this comes back to IE and Outlook, thats the reason virus writters are so succesfull with Windows architecture.
There is no way you could do the same damage on a unix like system.
You would first of all need to get root. Something which cannot be done via email worms and viri. Worms would need to target the machines one by one and find holes in them, get root and then do what ever it is they are doing.
That would be a pretty advanced and large worm....heh.
(maybe running an inteligent worm via nessus plugins??? just a thought....heh)
The kernel flaw you reffer to would have required a vast knowledge of the Linux kernel and networks to use. Also, it was oply spotted because the kernel is open source. This hole was so advanced, its likely no one would have ever found it throughout its lifetime had the code not been available to the public.
I dread to think how many holes are in windows if they are missing things like the RPC DCOM hole of recent time, to name but 1 of the many.
Redmond has already accidentally admitted if the Windows source ever leaked, it would be disastorous.
29 January 2004, 04:57 PM
#28
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I'm no security expert and I don't want to keep this argument going but. security through obscurity is not a good excuse. People are now well aware of the Mac faithful banging on about how secure our shiny computers are. Is this not the biggest invitation to shoot us down? Would this not entice the hackers to have a go?
29 January 2004, 06:03 PM
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Ah, I am guessing this is the chap that took the G5, a pressie from mom and pop and put a PC motherboard in it. Kinda nifty idea, but if I was the kids parents I'd be rather upset that he'd done this, kinda rude isn't it?
I'm a massive mac fan, and I was not filled with hatred about this, but some of the other chaps here were, very sad I'm afriad! lol
It is a great pity OS X does not run on Intel, that would be lovely, really would, then again, OS X aint everything it's cracked up to be. 10.3 is what 10.0 should have been. We develop security software for the Mac and we have spent the last year and half getting an OS X version ready as there are a lot of problmes with system level things, for example, we can automatically mount volumes at login, this seems to be somewhat flakey, and it's not us, it's the Mac OS itself that is failing. We've asked apple developers about certain things and how they work and they have bascially said "we're not sure how it works!" and this is from the team that wrote it! madness!
I don't think we'll see OS X for other chipsets as Apple knows it's market is from hardware and not software, and if they do an intel version then not many people would buy Apple hardware, they'd just build a kick *** pc setup for way less than the Apple machine would cost.
I'm a massive mac fan, and I was not filled with hatred about this, but some of the other chaps here were, very sad I'm afriad! lol
It is a great pity OS X does not run on Intel, that would be lovely, really would, then again, OS X aint everything it's cracked up to be. 10.3 is what 10.0 should have been. We develop security software for the Mac and we have spent the last year and half getting an OS X version ready as there are a lot of problmes with system level things, for example, we can automatically mount volumes at login, this seems to be somewhat flakey, and it's not us, it's the Mac OS itself that is failing. We've asked apple developers about certain things and how they work and they have bascially said "we're not sure how it works!" and this is from the team that wrote it! madness!
I don't think we'll see OS X for other chipsets as Apple knows it's market is from hardware and not software, and if they do an intel version then not many people would buy Apple hardware, they'd just build a kick *** pc setup for way less than the Apple machine would cost.
29 January 2004, 06:08 PM
#30
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Hi angrynorth.
Were not arguing, were debating
Agreed about security through obscurity. Its one of the most dangerous forms of peice of mind going.
I wouldn't worry about people attacking macs. Good hackers with knowledge to penetrate them arn't really interested in home machines.
The good virus writters exploit windows for the thrill.
skript kiddies do it for control of machines as zombies and other things
The only real reason hackers would go after home stations is to use a proxies to bounce through. Many homes have quick connections now with unsuspecting users behind them. Perfect for hiding your tracks
Unless your gonna start running services from them (e.g. webservers, FTP servers etc) they are pretty secure out of the box. Make sure you have the firewall on (the mac firewall is good. Its derrived from the BSD wall).
Just keep up to date with patches etc..
Were not arguing, were debating
Agreed about security through obscurity. Its one of the most dangerous forms of peice of mind going.
I wouldn't worry about people attacking macs. Good hackers with knowledge to penetrate them arn't really interested in home machines.
The good virus writters exploit windows for the thrill.
skript kiddies do it for control of machines as zombies and other things
The only real reason hackers would go after home stations is to use a proxies to bounce through. Many homes have quick connections now with unsuspecting users behind them. Perfect for hiding your tracks
Unless your gonna start running services from them (e.g. webservers, FTP servers etc) they are pretty secure out of the box. Make sure you have the firewall on (the mac firewall is good. Its derrived from the BSD wall).
Just keep up to date with patches etc..