brainslurper said:
Twilight_guy said:
brainslurper said:
Twilight_guy said:
*snip*
*snip*
Okay..Wow...
Linux and Unix are kernels. Mac OS X runs on the Unix kernel. Ubuntu runs on the Linux kernel. Most things running on the Linux kernel are open source, meaning anyone can see the source code of the operating system if they want, so it is easy to find security holes and exploit them.
[sigh]
A fellow Escapist urged me to unleash my pedantic fury onto your woefully misguided post. First and foremost, Mac OS X is not impervious to malware. There have been numerous cases of malware on the platform (e.g., MacDefender, various Safari exploits). OS X is not a magically secure operation system. That being said, it's probably safe to run on OS X without using any kind of malware protection other than the kind provided by Apple's patches. Since there is so little of it, they tend to get to fixing exploits quickly... or never fixing it at all. You can never really tell with Apple.
Unix is an
ex-operation system. It has transcended being merely software and is now a software philosophy. What Mac OS X has is the Mach/Darwin kernel which combines elements from BSD (a non-AT&T distribution of UNIX, probably one of the oldest distributions that has its roots in today's software) and NeXTSTEP.
Please note that portions of OS X's kernel as well as portions of user programs are Free Software, which typically permits distribution in source code form; not that that's a very great security risk for the underlying system. What is a security risk is user utilities expose the operating system. Safari is notorious for allowing great control over the operating system, yet it uses the Free Software WebKit rendering engine shared with Google Chrome, among others. The exploits come from different places. Consider the following C code:
char *local_file = filename_from_form(file_input_form);
char *syscall_buffer = malloc(sizeof(char) * 512);
strcpy(syscall_buffer, "chmod 777 ");
strcpy(syscall_buffer, local_file);
system(syscall_buffer);
The preceding code is prone to a wide-variety of security exploits and bugs, including but not limited to: buffer overflow, allowing arbitrary code from unknown sources to be run, not checking for memory allocation errors, lack of safe variable initialization, a flagrant disregard for UNIX file permissions, memory leaks, etc. The operating system does not prevent any of these! (Except for maybe permissions, but chances are, the coder running this code would try running it in root :/)
OT: I'd recommend Microsoft Security Essentials, because it works perfect for my uses, however it apparently tries to detect you're a pirate, sometimes incorrectly. Sorry about that, mate. I typically use my Macbook for most things and my PC for gaming, with MSE as a lightweight back-up solution in the event I do something stupid on my Windows machine.
