Re: help me understand how a Mac is virtually immune to viruses?

Chris L Peterson wrote: 
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 20:28:27 -0500, Davoud <star@xxxxxxx> wrote:


My mistake, absolutely. It slipped my mind that your Mac OS, and thus
your experience as a Mac user, differs from that of every other Mac
user in the Western Spiral Arm.



I was hoping for a more constructive comment. I honestly know of no Mac
environments, single or multiple user, where the users have full
administrative privileges in normal use.

Yes and no. The user/owner is provided with opportunities to create an "administrator" account and to add such privileges to his user account upon setup. The "no" part is that basic Mac "administrator" account privileges are not true "unix root" privileges, but a subset designed to keep the naive user from screwing the pooch. "Unix root" privileges ARE available, but slightly harder to obtain.

On the subject of virus/malware on Win and Mac/Linux, first, IMO it's a combination; unix just basically has better designed security AND there's a smaller target space which discourages potential attacks. If Mac and/or Linux became equally common environments wrt Win boxes I think attack attempts would be as common as on Windows; fewer would succeed because of the intrinsic better security.

Second, Microsoft just does incredibly stupid things leaving gapping openings in their security. I suppose in each case management thought "it was a good idea at the time" but MS has smart people - I bet those poor smart people cringe every time a MS manager enters the programming offices.
.

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