Re: Macs in Astronomy Updated; Canon 20D under Mac & Windows

From: Chris L Peterson (clp_at_alumni.caltech.edu)
Date: 03/01/05 

Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2005 20:57:35 GMT

On Tue, 01 Mar 2005 15:36:45 -0500, Davoud <star@sky.net> wrote:

>Davoud:
>> > Why should someone have to "know how to configure" a personal computer
>> > to make it secure?

I agree, it is best that security not depend on manual configuration.
Certainly, the Mac installations have been better in this regard,
although Windows is catching up quickly. My point was that this says
nothing about the operating system itself, and everything about the
operating system deployment method. OS X and Linux installations have
been way ahead in that respect for a long time. But a properly
configured Windows installation is no more vulnerable than OS X or
Linux.

>Chris Peterson wrote "There have been OS X viruses..." to which I
>replied "Please name one OS X virus, and name one individual or academy
>or industrial site that was affected by it."
>
>I'm still waiting. And I'll add to that one security breach or one
>piece of spyware.

I didn't respond because I don't consider the lack of viruses on Macs to
be significant, given how trivial they are to avoid on PCs. I do believe
that the lack has much more to do with the small market share of Macs
than anything else, but that is arguable (and I'm not inclined to argue
it beyond that). There have been a number of OS X vulnerabilities
identified, and in most cases corrected. Just because nobody exploited
them doesn't mean those vulnerabilities weren't there. How is it
different from a Windows vulnerability being identified and corrected
before it is exploited?

Last year, there was the Opener script, an OS X malware script that
deletes some system files, opens the firewall, and installs a backdoor.
I recall getting a security notice about it from Apple. I think it
infected some machines in the wild, although never became a serious
problem.

There have also been several benign proof-of-concept viruses and trojans
posted over the last couple of years that demonstrate ways of exploiting
OS X, although as far as I know none have been made malicious (or the
vulnerabilities, once identified, have been fixed).

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

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