Need some advice regarding viruses (if any)

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Madhusudan Singh - 25 Jun 2005 04:38 GMT

Hi

I am not a Mac user (have used Linux for a very long time and am not
looking to switch). However, a member of my family was recently in the
market for a laptop. Her choices were between the numerous wintel laptops,
HP's Linux laptop and due to my prodding, a Mac ibook G4.

She chose the ibook, because I did not want her to go through the needless
and completely avoidable headaches associated with owning a windows
machine, and did not have the opportunity of configuring a linux laptop for
her due to geographical separation.

I know that Apple's OS is based on BSD, so I have no serious worries
regarding any stability issues. However, I am wondering if the operating
system as a whole has a problem with viruses ? If so, what kind of issues
can she expect to face (being spoilt in this respect, my definition of a
virus problem is pretty liberal), and does she face the miserable existence
of a windoze luser ?

Somewhat related question - does Mac support pf (OpenBSD) style firewalls
or iptables (Linux) style, or does it have its own proprietary solution ?

I have very little experience in using Macs and no experience in owning
any, so please keep that in mind while providing an answer.

Thanks.

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Mikey - 26 Jun 2005 17:34 GMT

> Hi
>
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
> virus problem is pretty liberal), and does she face the miserable existence
> of a windoze luser ?

Her experience with viruses will be nil. There have been a couple of
'viruses' for
OS X, all of which amounted to either apps which you needed the admin
password to
install (d'oh!), or examples of potential exploits that could in theory
be used to send
code thru things like MP3 tags. So far nobody has gone into _this_
exciting field.
The kind of things that show up on Secunia, et al, are all potential
buffer underrun
things in string-handling APIs. Really who-cares type of stuff.

Since the OS uses regular Unix perms, and root is disabled by default,
and all the
ports are disable by default, you can pretty much put a Mac on a permanent line
right out of the box, and not worry. The different versions have
different things
turn on and off, or use a different method, but that's just nitpicking.

> Somewhat related question - does Mac support pf (OpenBSD) style
> firewalls
> or iptables (Linux) style, or does it have its own proprietary solution ?

Mainly it's a mix of essentially standard stuff with a nice interface
for the user,
The prefs panes set the config files so that the user doesn't have to mess with
that kind of stuff. The user doesn't have to understand the u/g/o r/w/e
concepts
to serve up pages or share files.

If you want, or if you need, you can dig in and mess with that stuff
yourself, but
it's not often necessary. For example I run Apache & cgis without a
clue as to what to do
with my httpd.conf, really.

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Jeremy - 28 Jun 2005 07:24 GMT

> Hi
>
> I am not a Mac user (have used Linux for a very long time and am not
> looking to switch). However, a member of my family was recently in the
> market for a laptop. Her choices were between the numerous wintel laptops,
> HP's Linux laptop and due to my prodding, a Mac ibook G4.

I'm a system administrator in my 'corporate boy' life who needed a
solid machine that ran
UNIX to do my work on. After a lot of looking, reading, and comparing I
chose a PowerBook G4. I've fooled with x86 Solaris, Linux, and FreeBSD
on a number of laptops and could never quite get any of them to 'just
work'; so for my part the G4 was the best choice.

> She chose the ibook, because I did not want her to go through
> the needless
> and completely avoidable headaches associated with owning a windows
> machine, and did not have the opportunity of configuring a linux laptop for
> her due to geographical separation.

Think UNIX, with a little nicer GUI than CDE and the ability to run
some very nice commercial apps, like Photoshop.

> I know that Apple's OS is based on BSD, so I have no serious worries
> regarding any stability issues. However, I am wondering if the operating
> system as a whole has a problem with viruses ? If so, what kind of issues
> can she expect to face (being spoilt in this respect, my definition of a
> virus problem is pretty liberal), and does she face the miserable existence
> of a windoze luser ?

In truth, I worry a lot more about my Linux and Sun boxes getting
h4x0r'd than my PowerBook. I know it sounds funny (until you've used
one) but the security out of the box is so much tighter than it is on
your typical Unix install. A lot of Mac folks I've talked to are
baffled by that because to them UNIX = Secure. Whoooweee, if they only
knew how many hours of my life I have spent pouring over BugTraq and
scrambling to patch systems. :)

Somewhat related question - does Mac support pf (OpenBSD) style
firewalls

> or iptables (Linux) style, or does it have its own proprietary solution ?

It's actually FreeBSD's ipfw, which is very configurable. The best part
is the all the user has to do is go to 'System Preferences' ->
'Sharing' -> 'Firewall', and click start. Pretty funny when I think
about how much more effort is required to run the same firewall package
on my FreeBSD workstation. :)

> I have very little experience in using Macs and no experience in owning
> any, so please keep that in mind while providing an answer.
>
> Thanks.

I'm sure she'll be fine, and quite happy. Simply following the standard
do's and don'ts of good internet use are quite enough to keep a Mac
healthy.

-- Jeremy

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Mac Forum / General / Portable Macs / June 2005

Need some advice regarding viruses (if any)