(September 23, 2012 at 9:14 pm)RaphielDrake Wrote: Also anti-virus in regard to Mac needs work. It used to be that it wasn't needed because hackers and viruses didn't bother with Mac but thats changing rapidly.On the contrary, there are plenty of Anti-Virus products for Mac, and there always have been. It's untrue that hackers and viruses haven't bothered with Mac in the past; they have...they just haven't been successful. This is mainly due to the way the core OS is designed. Even without the huge market share making it more of a target, Windows has massive security flaws that simply aren't present in Mac OS X and Linux (and others). The main one being that the Administrator account is authenticated on boot, and doesn't need to be authenticated again in order to run or install stuff. That means viruses (and hackers) can easily run things as the Administrator account without much effort at all. On OS X / Linux, in order to access the Administrator account, you have to enter the Administrator password every time.
Don't get me wrong; OS X and Linux are not perfect systems; they have exploits and they can be exploited if not set up correctly. However, getting access to a user account on OS X or Linux is not the end of the road for a hacker...they need to get access to the Administrator account in order to do some real damage. The same cannot be said for a user account on Windows. Passwords are stored in main memory, and it's very easy to extract them and use them.
Virus wise, it should be pointed out that the latest virus scare for Mac users was not the fault of the OS, but rather the fault of Adobe and Oracle (the malware installed itself by exploiting Flash Player and Java updates).
Source: I hack stuff for a living.
