Date:         Wed, 9 Apr 2003 22:12:41 -0400
Reply-To:     David Brodbeck <gull@GULL.US>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         David Brodbeck <gull@GULL.US>
Subject:      Re: vanagon Digest - 9 Apr 2003 - Special issue (#2003-395)
Comments: To: jbrush@AROS.NET
In-Reply-To:  <200304100007.h3A073KD086998@mail.aros.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed

Anonymous Digest wrote:

> Oh yea, they are much harder to infect because they are built from the
> ground up to resist such outside takeover.  The issue is not popularity.
> Its in the architecture that supports the spreading of viruses. The Mac
> system is well thought out and built from the ground up to be much more
> difficult to infect.

That's just not true.  MacOS and Windows are both single-user operating
systems with no real user limitations.  Once you have access to the
machine, you can do pretty much anything.  Neither operating system has
much of a concept of privilage seperation.  (What is there in Windows
was tacked on.)  Compare this to a server OS such as UNIX or VMS, where
user access usually doesn't let you tinker with the operating system itself.

MacOS is easy to infect, and there have been several viruses for it,
it's just not many people want to put in the effort to write viruses for
a platform that only has around 5% of the market.  Thanks to the concept
of Resource Forks, though, MacOS offers the unique opportunity for
viruses to infect data files as well as executables.

--

David Brodbeck, N8SRE
'82 Diesel Westfalia
'94 Honda Civic Si