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Open Source And VirusesOpen Source And VirusesPosted Jun 6, 2004 12:37 UTC (Sun) by utidjian (subscriber, #444)In reply to: Open Source And Viruses by rakoch Parent article: Open Source And Viruses I think one of the major problems with Mac OS X is that the default user or machine owner is a member of group 'admin'. Take almost any given Mac OS X system and the primary user of that machine logs in with 'admin' user permissions. Sure they have the root user account disabled by default... but what use is that when the most common user that logs in has 'admin' user permissions? The 'admin' user has permissions rwx on /Applications and /Library... stuff gets written to those folders willy-nilly with no questions asked. This permissions arrangement is set by design, for ease-of-use. There are other security 'holes' in Mac OS X that are by design. The recent security patch (Security Update 2004-05-24) is a partial fix for the Help Viewer. This hole existed in Mac OS X since the beginning and Apple was made aware of the problem three months before the patch came out. Another problem with Mac OS X is that there is no consistent method for installing and checking the authenticity of software. The only software installer that does PGP checks is SoftwareUpdate.app and only for system and security updates from Apple. In my opinion, the only reasons Mac OS X has been relatively 'safe' from malware and viruses is that no one has taken an interest in it yet and its relatively low density. -DU-...etc...
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