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Date:      Thu, 12 Apr 2001 05:42:46 -0400
From:      "Dan Langille" <dan@langille.org>
To:        freebsd-chat@freebsd.org
Subject:   comp.risks mentions BSD and Mac OS X
Message-ID:  <200104120942.f3C9gpe01529@ns1.unixathome.org>

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This just arrived via the moderated newsgroup comp.risks (Message-ID: 
<CMM.0.90.4.987039292.risko@chiron.csl.sri.com>):

Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2001 21:17:56 -0500
From: "Craig S. Cottingham" <cottingham@mac.com>
Subject: Re: Future Mac Viruses? (PC Rescue, RISKS-21.32)

> Mac users have been crowing for some time that their system is less prone to
> viruses than the horrible alternative. Could this be about to change?

First off, any person who claims that Mac OS is less *susceptible* to
viruses than the "horrible alternative" is mistaken. The greater part of Mac
OS's relative dearth of viruses is due to "security through obscurity" -- in
this case, a much smaller developer base. All the tools you need to write
code for Mac OS, virulent or not, have been freely available for download
from Apple's web site for more than two years.

> "The box contains three installation CDs -- Mac OS X, Mac OS 9.1 and a CD
> full of developer tools, including the Cocoa programming environment, which
> is reportedly simple enough for school kids to use."

Secondly, Linux has included, from day one, developer tools simple enough
for school kids to use, as evidenced by the number of open source projects
started by students. (The most notable example that comes to mind is
Napster; I believe its author was a high school student when he created it.)
Following that logic, there should be a preponderance of viruses for Linux.
Instead, there are, to my knowledge, none. (Worms which exploit security
holes in daemons are a horse -- a Trojan horse? -- of a different color.)

The security model built into Linux and other Unix-like operating systems --
of which BSD, on which Mac OS X is built, is one -- contrasts sharply with
the security model, such as it is, built into the variants of Windows. So
right from the start, Mac OS X is starting from ground more solid than
either its predecessor or that "horrible alternative."

What remains to be seen is how well Apple has balanced the Unix-like
security model with the expectations of a user base that is used to having
free run of the machine. I haven't installed Mac OS X on any of my machines
yet, but it appears from the posts to one OS X mailing list that the
security model is obvious for tasks which require superuser rights.

Craig S. Cottingham <cottingham@mac.com>
  http://pgp.ai.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xA2FFBE41>;

-- 
Dan Langille
pgpkey - finger dan@unixathome.org | http://unixathome.org/finger.php
got any work?  I'm looking for some.

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