Thread: What's Your Current OS

Mac virus.....no chance - especially now the kernel is BSD Unix

Software exploit - all too common, unfortunately
but chances are any malicious code explouts can only affect the buggy software itself, and not be able to affect the underlying OS or any other apps

OS exploit - there's been half a dozen exploits discovered in OS X itself
Eg. http://secunia.com/advisories/11622/

Software is software
mistakes happen

*nix isn't some magical entity that prevents stupidly written software from causing problems
But it does minimize the impact of software bugs and exploits

All it takes is one vulnerable process running as root....

That wouldn't work on a well protected system. A system that is vulnerable would be protected by OSX's security system called File Vault. Each user's files are encrypted and for every user the encryption is different (it's encrypted through the password.) Not even root can access these files, and when Leopard comes out everything will be backed up on a separate hard drive by Time Machine.

OSX is open source, if there was a vulnerability, one of the hard core geeks would have found it and offered a fix, just like Linux.

Afaik, only the kernel (Darwin) is open source
most of the OS components (Aqua, etc.) aren't


*edit*

Just found this
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...chitecture.svg

Doesn't matter if the files are encrypted. You can still delete encrypted files as root

Originally Posted by ninja9578

That wouldn't work on a well protected system. A system that is vulnerable would be protected by OSX's security system called File Vault. Each user's files are encrypted and for every user the encryption is different (it's encrypted through the password.) Not even root can access these files

FileVault is not "OSX's security system"; it's just a service that encrypts your home folder when you log out, and its only purpose is to prevent confidential files from being read by someone who steals your hard drive. FileVault takes up a ton of space on your primary hard drive, which sucks if you're using it on a laptop (and no one uses it on desktops anyway). Besides, FileVault doesn't encrypt your system files, so you'd be just as vulnerable to this hypothetical virus. And lastly, this virus or trojan could log input from the keyboard, so your password that protects FileVault won't remain secure very long.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

when Leopard comes out everything will be backed up on a separate hard drive by Time Machine.

I'm sure everyone has the money to buy several external hard drives to continually back up all the data from their laptops, but I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

OSX is open source

It most certainly isn't. The Darwin subsystem is open source because it was based on the source code for FreeBSD, and a few other components are open source (probably for similar reasons), but Mac OS X as a whole operating system is not open source. Eric Raymond cautions against using it ("Under Mac OS X [learning to become a hacker is] possible, but only part of the system is open source — you're likely to hit a lot of walls, and you have to be careful not to develop the bad habit of depending on Apple's proprietary code."), and you'll certainly never see an FSF member using Mac OS X.

Skittles and milk... mmm

Oh right - on topic. Am I the only Windows user who has never ever gotten a virus (with the exception of the ishost/isearch shit that came as a result of running a 'keygen')? I've never ever used antivirus software in the 10 years that I've been on the internet. I used to use ad-aware before I realized it was all BS when all it turned up were about 700 "tracking cookies" every time I scanned. Average computer users (the stereotypical stay-at-home-Mom, the doesn't-know-much-about-computers-but-thinks-he-does-Dad, and the clueless Grandma) tend to think that connecting to the internet without any antivirus or firewall is one of the most unholy sins one could ever commit. However, from my personal experience, this seems to not be the case. Then again, I hardly ever visit sketchy sites looking to pirate software - I get all my shit through a middleman. I'm also careful as to where I get software, and never run random .exe's out of curiosity ...anymore. Anybody else have similar experiences? I'd like to hear from the Windows users themselves for a change, I've heard enough from the Digg sensationalists and Mac commercials.

Have been using Vista now for about 2/3 weeks and its awesome! Being a windows user I'm very impressed and echo the above comments I have NEVER had a virus etc on my PC - I run Norton Internet Security 2007 always keep it up to date and dont seem to have problems...

MSG
just out of interest
how do you know you've never had a virus
(generic name, read "any malicious infection")

contrary to any films you've seen, viruses don't generally advertise their presence
there's no screen corrupting into a skull with a slow menacing laugh....

By far the biggest problem at the moment, are Botnets
These compromised computers periodically check for instructions from the botnet operators
and then carry the instructions out

Usually, they secretly connect to an IRC channel
and instructions are sent in the form of special keywords to the IRC channel

This can be used to send spam emails, start a distributed denial of service attack, or whatever the operator wants
Suddenly there's thousands of machines, all across the globe, doing the operators bidding, all at the same time
All this usually happens without the owner of the compromised machine even knowing

Even if you have anti-virus & firewall software, you may not be protected
As rootkits can easily conceal what's really going on from the OS (and so any software running on that OS)

Anyway, a few links to news items recently

Botnet operation controlled 1.5m PCs

FBI: Operation Bot Roast finds over 1 million botnet victims

XP. I'm waiting until they fix all the bugs in Vista. I set up my father in law's computer that came with Vista. I like it, but had to install XP because the program he needed it for isn't supported by Vista yet. I do like Vista though.

Currently booting XP Pro for gaming and uTorrent. I get double the frame rates in XP vs Vista--but then, I've got 64 MB integrated graphics....

Anyway, also booting Ubuntu 7.04, Ubuntu Gibbon Alpha 1, Fedora 7 and Slackware 11 on my three PC's.

Overall, I prefer Linux to Windows, just because I've been messing with some bizarre hardware setups that Windows tends to balk at. Going to start a Beowulf cluster soon, my mom's school's selling off their computers soon. Two or three year old boxes, but they're going for $25 per tower (Pentium 4's, ~2.0 Ghz, 512 MB RAM), $10 per monitor (17" CRTs and a few 15" and 17" LCDs) and $5 for a keyboard/mouse. Needless to say, I'm not passing up an opportunity that good. They're battered, but fully operable.

Originally Posted by Raven12

XP. I'm waiting until they fix all the bugs in Vista. I set up my father in law's computer that came with Vista. I like it, but had to install XP because the program he needed it for isn't supported by Vista yet. I do like Vista though.

Vista wont support the program, the program would require a driver/update depending on what it is

off topic but am i the only one missing the good ol DOS?

Originally Posted by Snooze

off topic but am i the only one missing the good ol DOS?

Yes.

If you'd have said Dr. Dos, however....

Originally Posted by AdamA

Vista wont support the program, the program would require a driver/update depending on what it is

There isn't one available yet. I made boot disks with Vista, so whenever they do have one available, I'm switching it back over to Vista. The software company said it may take as long as 6 months.

Originally Posted by Ynot

MSG
just out of interest
how do you know you've never had a virus
(generic name, read "any malicious infection")

contrary to any films you've seen, viruses don't generally advertise their presence
there's no screen corrupting into a skull with a slow menacing laugh....

By far the biggest problem at the moment, are Botnets
These compromised computers periodically check for instructions from the botnet operators
and then carry the instructions out

Usually, they secretly connect to an IRC channel
and instructions are sent in the form of special keywords to the IRC channel

This can be used to send spam emails, start a distributed denial of service attack, or whatever the operator wants
Suddenly there's thousands of machines, all across the globe, doing the operators bidding, all at the same time
All this usually happens without the owner of the compromised machine even knowing

Even if you have anti-virus & firewall software, you may not be protected
As rootkits can easily conceal what's really going on from the OS (and so any software running on that OS)

Anyway, a few links to news items recently

Botnet operation controlled 1.5m PCs

FBI: Operation Bot Roast finds over 1 million botnet victims

Good point, but if you look hard enough, you can find them. I try to keep my startup programs list clean and at a bare minimum (using the classic msconfig->startup, and occasionally SysInternals Process Explorer, looking up unfamiliar processes). (Yeah it's a downside of Windows - making sure your computer doesn't get flooded with crapware, but I'd take this over typing apt-get install update -lkfasdfk chmod /dev/pca/ > /dev/urandom/ every time I want to change my desktop background any day). I can't stand computers that take 5 minutes to boot because their owners have all this crap installed. Ugh.

Originally Posted by Raven12

XP. I'm waiting until they fix all the bugs in Vista.

Yar, that's what the Beta was for.

Originally Posted by Snooze

off topic but am i the only one missing the good ol DOS?

Yeah, but there's not much to do in DOS nowadays, sadly.

Im running windows xp

Originally Posted by Replicon

I'd love to see a major MAC virus take them all down, just to shut up all the people whose understanding of viruses is based entirely on the commercial where "fat pc" has a cold, and "unemployed arts graduate mac" doesn't get colds.

Please, please write one!

Oh, and what's up with the poll? 73%, 30%, 13%, 7%: doesn't add up to 100...

It thinks there are 52 voters, when there are really more. Administrators can doctor poll results, maybe this is the result of one doing that very poorly :p.

Either that, or there's a bug in the software and someone was able to hit 'refresh' and resubmit the post.

Originally Posted by Replicon

It thinks there are 52 voters, when there are really more. Administrators can doctor poll results, maybe this is the result of one doing that very poorly :p.

Either that, or there's a bug in the software and someone was able to hit 'refresh' and resubmit the post.

Well you could vote twice for people with multiple computers or dualboot

Mac OS X Version 10.4.9 (Tiger) and Windows XP.

I like Tiger more.

Originally Posted by MSG

Well you could vote twice for people with multiple computers or dualboot

But doesn't it require you to be logged in, in which case it would base it on your userid?

Originally Posted by Replicon

But doesn't it require you to be logged in, in which case it would base it on your userid?

No I meant Ynot allowed multiple vote entries for this particular poll because some people run multiple operating systems. A few people voted twice, hence the numbers don't match up.

Originally Posted by Lord Toaster

Wow I'm surprised at more linux than Mac

Me too. I think Macs are the best.