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Apple introduces Boot Camp: run Windows on a intel Mac

post #1 of 43
4/5/06 at 10:20am
Thread Starter 
Apple today introduced Boot Camp, public beta software that enables Intel-based Macs to run Windows XP. Available as a download beginning today, Boot Camp allows users with a Microsoft Windows XP installation disc to install Windows XP on an Intel-based Mac, and once installation is complete, users can restart their computer to run either Mac OS X or Windows XP. Boot Camp will be a feature in “Leopard,” Apple’s next major release of Mac OS X, that will be previewed at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in August.

Quote:
Apple has no desire or plan to sell or support Windows, but many customers have expressed their interest to run Windows on Apple’s superior hardware now that we use Intel processors,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, in the press release. “We think Boot Camp makes the Mac even more appealing to Windows users considering making the switch.”

Boot Camp simplifies Windows installation on an Intel-based Mac by providing a simple graphical step-by-step assistant application to dynamically create a second partition on the hard drive for Windows, to burn a CD with all the necessary Windows drivers, and to install Windows from a Windows XP installation CD. After installation is complete, users can choose to run either Mac OS X or Windows when they restart their computer.

The public beta of Boot Camp is available immediately as a download, and is preview software licensed for use on a trial basis for a limited time. The final version of Boot Camp will be available as a feature in the upcoming Mac OS X version 10.5 “Leopard.” Apple does not provide support for installing or running Boot Camp and does not sell or support Microsoft Windows software. Apple welcomes user feedback on Boot Camp at: bootcamp@apple.com

Boot Camp requires an Intel-based Mac with a USB keyboard and mouse, or a built-in keyboard and TrackPad; Mac OS X version 10.4.6 or later; the latest firmware update; at least 10GB of free space on the startup disk; a blank recordable CD or DVD; and single-disc version of Windows XP Home Edition or Professional with Service Pack 2 or later.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/publicbeta.html
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post #2 of 43
4/5/06 at 10:44am
Thread Starter 
More info:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303572

My question is will Windows virii transfer to the OSX partition?
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post #3 of 43
4/5/06 at 10:45am
This has been the point of debate since the Intel based Mac was announced. There's a faction that thinks Apple will abandon OS X for Windows, but apparently they aren't aware of the fanatacism of the Jobs crowd. This seemed the more likely route.
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post #4 of 43
4/5/06 at 10:49am
Apple will not drop OSX for Windows. They'd be crazy to do that. They'd lose a large portion of their base if that happened.
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post #5 of 43
4/5/06 at 10:54am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason P. Thompson
Apple will not drop OSX for Windows. They'd be crazy to do that. They'd lose a large portion of their base if that happened.
That's like abandoning a Porsche for Ford Escort.
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post #6 of 43
4/5/06 at 12:49pm
This is merely an attempt at winning over a few heavy Windows users to Mac hardware. If anything, they're hoping that this wins a few more converts to OS X.
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post #7 of 43
4/5/06 at 1:10pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pop Zeus
This is merely an attempt at winning over a few heavy Windows users to Mac hardware. If anything, they're hoping that this wins a few more converts to OS X.

Because pretty soon you won't be able to buy bare-bone kits if Mafiasoft has their way.
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post #8 of 43
4/5/06 at 2:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nelson
My question is will Windows virii transfer to the OSX partition?
If the Windows installation has access to the OSX partition, a virus could read/write/delete anything on that partition. Theoretically, that also means that the virus could quietly install a program on the OSX partition that would run the next time you booted into the Mac OS.

This assumes, though, that the Windows install does have access to the OSX partition, that this partition isn't encrypted, that Windows is capable of chmodding the executable, etc. Personally, I'd keep it sandboxed; OSX could read from the Windows partition, but not vice-versa. That was always how I ran my Windows/Linux boxes, but I don't know if its an option under Boot Camp.
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post #9 of 43
4/5/06 at 2:28pm
Apple is going to sell a lot more hardware, if nothing else, because their systems are so pretty.

I'm not sure what that will mean for OS X. Will there be any third party developers left in a few years time?
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post #10 of 43
4/5/06 at 2:33pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nelson
Because pretty soon you won't be able to buy bare-bone kits if Mafiasoft has their way.
I'm not sure what this has to do with OS X and Boot Camp. Its not like OS X can run on a PC.
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post #11 of 43
4/5/06 at 2:51pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by thomas.galvin
If the Windows installation has access to the OSX partition, a virus could read/write/delete anything on that partition. Theoretically, that also means that the virus could quietly install a program on the OSX partition that would run the next time you booted into the Mac OS.

This assumes, though, that the Windows install does have access to the OSX partition, that this partition isn't encrypted, that Windows is capable of chmodding the executable, etc. Personally, I'd keep it sandboxed; OSX could read from the Windows partition, but not vice-versa. That was always how I ran my Windows/Linux boxes, but I don't know if its an option under Boot Camp.
Uhm...just read this:

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Also, there’s the thorny issue of file sharing. If you format the Windows partition using the FAT32 format — which can’t support files larger than 4 GB — your Mac can see the drive and even copy files to it. But if your Windows partition uses the NTFS format, which allows larger partition sizes, the Mac can see files, but can’t write to the drive. What’s worse, Windows XP can’t read from or write to a Mac partition without the use of special software such as Mediafour’s MacDrive.
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macw...camp/index.php
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post #12 of 43
4/5/06 at 4:36pm
A shrewd move on the part of Apple, but it definitely doesn't make any difference to me personally. One of the major reasons I converted to a Mac in the first place was to get away from the Windows nightmare.

I wonder, though, if Windows runs more smoothly and reliably on a Mac than on a PC...
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post #13 of 43
4/5/06 at 5:38pm
Hey, maybe now I'll be able to play Civ4 which just came out as I no longer have a Windows machine. This above all other things makes me happy
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post #14 of 43
4/5/06 at 5:52pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe LeFors
A shrewd move on the part of Apple, but it definitely doesn't make any difference to me personally. One of the major reasons I converted to a Mac in the first place was to get away from the Windows nightmare.
True. I doubted Apple will sell A LOT MORE Macs becasue of this. I 've come to the realization that most of the most of the people buy the $299 eMachines sold at Walmart have them because of several reasons:

a.) dirt cheap price
b .) they don't know any other alternative and/or have misconceptions about OSX.

The first reason is because Apple will never be able to compete at the low end market if they want to keep that profit margins that enjoy. It will never happen. When your margins go doen so does your stock price (On a side note: Apple could make a dent in the enterprise sector, but then again, a lot of the CTOs are much different that the people who buy the Walmart eMachines. And Apple doesn't seem too ethusiastic about the enterprsie sector either. Honestly, I think they should, but that would involve more upfront cost on their behalf (support staff, technicians, etc)).

The other reason is Apple's horrible marketing campaign. It's the one thing I detest from Apple. Fuck Apple when it comes to marketing. A 5-year old could figure how runnter a more effective and superior ad campaign than Apple and their ad agency are doing now.

It's nice to have those iPods ads, but that will only do so much for so long. People don't associate the iPod with the Apple brand as I heard someone telling another person that they can buy an iPod at Dell.com or people telling me "let's go to the iPod store."

They ought to start advertising OSX. Period. Here we have Mafiasoft advertising their platform/OS as the greatest invention since sliced bread, while Apple sits on the sidelines like the Democratic party. Somehow Apple refuses to go for the jugular considering the current state of Windows and it's failure to deliver Vista are something people are getting fed up with. It's time to start a campaign, but they seem more interested in selling iPods.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe LeFors
I wonder, though, if Windows runs more smoothly and reliably on a Mac than on a PC...
I've read some blogs of people that have installed it and say the 1.8GHZ dual-core processors runs Windows faster than a 3GHz P4.
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post #15 of 43
4/6/06 at 11:04am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nelson
I've read some blogs of people that have installed it and say the 1.8GHZ dual-core processors runs Windows faster than a 3GHz P4.
I don't buy that for a second. How much RAM are we talkling about here?
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post #16 of 43
4/6/06 at 11:12am
We're talking about a UNIX based system here.
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post #17 of 43
4/6/06 at 11:39am
What this means is that gaming on an Apple won't suck anymore; it's like having the best of both worlds. Use OSX for any media related work, and switch over to XP for some Oblivion fun.
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post #18 of 43
4/6/06 at 3:57pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by PatrickBateman
I don't buy that for a second. How much RAM are we talkling about here?
The quick and dirty verdict on performance? Most impressive. Doom 3 and Far Cry both ran smoothly with high-end graphics options turned on," Dahl reports. "So far, working in Windows on the Intel-based iMac has come off without a hitch: If not for the slicker-looking hardware, I'd think I was working on a standard Windows PC with a wide-screen monitor. And that's exactly what you'd want from a usable dual-boot system. Firefox downloaded and installed flawlessly, and iTunes streamed songs easily from other PCs on the network. Both wired and wireless networking seemed fine. Little things, like the eject key on the Mac's keyboard worked without a hiccup. Even automatic driver updates downloaded and installed easily. All in all, Boot Camp looks like an impressive effort from Apple."

2GB btw.
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post #19 of 43
4/6/06 at 3:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by PatrickBateman
I don't buy that for a second. How much RAM are we talkling about here?


Link to site with info on the test. They were "racing" notebooks with Photoshop CS2.
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post #20 of 43
4/6/06 at 4:09pm
Thread Starter 
Half Life 2 on a MacBook Pro: l i n k.
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post #21 of 43
4/6/06 at 4:40pm
This does sound ideal for someone like me, who'd like a Mac for graphics work, and a Windows PC for gaming. Definitely sounds like it might make a good compromise for the moderately tech-savvy individual.
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post #22 of 43
4/6/06 at 4:52pm
Yeah its a cool thing that you can finally boot Windows on a Mac. But the flipside has negative consequences....

What incentive do third party developers have for porting their software into Mac OS X natively? Doesn't this essentially put a freeze (or at least a chill) on Mac OS X updates of major releases like Photoshop, Pro Tools and Maya? That is, unless the cost/benefit ratio still works out in favor of producing a native Mac version of your flagship apps.
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post #23 of 43
4/7/06 at 1:58am
.. unless Apple's marketshare increases and customers start asking for OS X versions of everything. And why wouldn't they? Its better for almost everything except games.

I can't wait to see what Intel does for Apple's pro desktop line. Eventually. The G5 is fast but the clock rate ain't going anywhere.
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post #24 of 43
4/7/06 at 8:37am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pop Zeus
Yeah its a cool thing that you can finally boot Windows on a Mac. But the flipside has negative consequences....

What incentive do third party developers have for porting their software into Mac OS X natively? Doesn't this essentially put a freeze (or at least a chill) on Mac OS X updates of major releases like Photoshop, Pro Tools and Maya? That is, unless the cost/benefit ratio still works out in favor of producing a native Mac version of your flagship apps.
And there you have the insidiousness of MickeySoft's marketing and technology groups. You don't usually get to offer a product that runs windows without some sort of pre-aproved licensing deal with M$ (Lindows, anyone?). With this, you get people buying copies of windows to run on macs (untapped revenue) , and developers see it as an out to cut costs on cross-OS development. The number of OSX apps start to fall even more than they already are, and the final consensus that the M$ boys are hoping for is for Apple to quit OS X development.

The Same situation happened with OS/2 - A light years ahead of MS Windows product, that made the fatal error of also running Windows applications.
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post #25 of 43
4/7/06 at 11:13am
I was always under the impression that Apple is a software company pretending to be a hardware company.
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post #26 of 43
4/7/06 at 11:19am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pop Zeus
.. unless Apple's marketshare increases and customers start asking for OS X versions of everything. And why wouldn't they? Its better for almost everything except games.
Why should they? Microsoft finally got their act together and released a stable OS with XP. Unless there's a royal disaster on the horizon, Vista will be as stable and hopefully more secure.

OS X is far prettier -and let's not kid ourselves that's what turns a lot of people to Apple- but MS is pimping the hell out of Vista's eye candy. OS X is also more user-friendly than XP but that's because it's one year old, while XP are five years old. Vista will also change that.
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post #27 of 43
4/7/06 at 12:05pm
Thread Starter 
BTW, OS X came out in late 2001 IIRC.

Well, it was good while it lasted:

First Blue Screen of Death on a Mac.
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post #28 of 43
4/7/06 at 12:07pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mastronikolas
Why should they? Microsoft finally got their act together and released a stable OS with XP. Unless there's a royal disaster on the horizon, Vista will be as stable and hopefully more secure.

OS X is far prettier -and let's not kid ourselves that's what turns a lot of people to Apple- but MS is pimping the hell out of Vista's eye candy. OS X is also more user-friendly than XP but that's because it's one year old, while XP are five years old. Vista will also change that.
Well, the problem facing MS with their OS is that they make legacy software. They will never be able to start fresh from scratch as long as they have to make everything backward compatible. Apple faced that same problem, as started fresh with building on Unix, and manage to build Mac OS X.
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post #29 of 43
4/7/06 at 12:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nelson
BTW, OS X came out in late 2001 IIRC.

Well, it was good while it lasted:

First Blue Screen of Death on a Mac.
I think that's a fake. The Blue-Screen (for the majority) was replaced with the windows Error reporting system. The current Blue Screen that can still appear has way less informational text.
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post #30 of 43
4/7/06 at 12:21pm
It's a fake. I've never gotten a blue screen in five years of XP use.

OS X Tiger, which has all those great new features, like instant search and Konfabulator, is a year old.
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post #31 of 43
4/7/06 at 12:25pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mastronikolas
It's a fake. I've never gotten a blue screen in five years of XP use.
I have, they still happen. This is what it looks like;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Windows_XP_BSOD.png
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post #32 of 43
4/7/06 at 12:27pm
Well, I haven't. And I used to get them all the time with the bane that was Windows Me. From my expereince, it's a very rare occurence nowadays.
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post #33 of 43
4/7/06 at 1:46pm
So, correct me if I'm wrong, but this sounds a lot like a glorified version of how early OSX systems had Classic (OS9) available for dual-booting--it was meant to lure long time Mac users into the new world of OSX, so they could eventually port their way into using OSX exclusivly.

I think, intention-wise, Apple's putting this out there so they can wean people off of XP and into the glorious world of Macs. [/devout follower]

Quote:
Its better for almost everything except games.
And it'd be even better for games if the gaming community were so violently allergic to putting out games written for Macs. Seriously, the performance of games like Halo and World of Warcraft on my Mac have convinced me that if the developers would just give it a try, they'd find Macs every bit as capable a gaming system as shit like AlienWare.
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post #34 of 43
4/7/06 at 2:13pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mastronikolas
I was always under the impression that Apple is a software company pretending to be a hardware company.
No, they're a hardware company first. That's why the Mac OS liscensing program that gave birth to all the Mac clones was such a colossal failure for Apple.
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post #35 of 43
4/7/06 at 2:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mastronikolas
Why should they? Microsoft finally got their act together and released a stable OS with XP. Unless there's a royal disaster on the horizon, Vista will be as stable and hopefully more secure.

OS X is far prettier -and let's not kid ourselves that's what turns a lot of people to Apple- but MS is pimping the hell out of Vista's eye candy. OS X is also more user-friendly than XP but that's because it's one year old, while XP are five years old. Vista will also change that.
I don't think Windows will ever be as secure as OS X, but I could be wrong. It is Unix. Although XP is certainly a step in the right direction. My limited time with it has been positive. And the eye candy factor is huge, but there are a lot of reasons why OS X is better than Windows. Could go into further detail about it, but why bore everyone with that?
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post #36 of 43
4/7/06 at 2:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pop Zeus
I don't think Windows will ever be as secure as OS X, but I could be wrong. It is Unix. Although XP is certainly a step in the right direction. My limited time with it has been positive. And the eye candy factor is huge, but there are a lot of reasons why OS X is better than Windows. Could go into further detail about it, but why bore everyone with that?
The only reason why OS X, and Linux for that matter, are more secure than Windows XP is because hackers aren't investing time and energy on it. The bigger bang for the buck is the market share that Windows has. That's not discounting M$ completly ignored the subject of security (they were late to the internet bandwagon), but Apple users seem to have an over-inflated sense of OS X security that the hacker community would crush if it was worth their while.
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post #37 of 43
4/7/06 at 2:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Death Surge
The only reason why OS X, and Linux for that matter, are more secure than Windows XP is because hackers aren't investing time and energy on it. The bigger bang for the buck is the market share that Windows has. That's not discounting M$ completly ignored the subject of security (they were late to the internet bandwagon), but Apple users seem to have an over-inflated sense of OS X security that the hacker community would crush if it was worth their while.
What you're saying is true to a large extent. I could be wrong (since I don't that much about OS subsystems) but I'm fairly sure that Unix is, at its core, a more secure OS than Windows.
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post #38 of 43
4/7/06 at 3:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pop Zeus
What you're saying is true to a large extent. I could be wrong (since I don't that much about OS subsystems) but I'm fairly sure that Unix is, at its core, a more secure OS than Windows.
It is now, based on the particular flavor of Unix. Most Unix systems felt the same pressure Windows did for quite some time during the pre-home internet boom. It also took some heavy hits in the early internet boom years, as the hackers were targetting business servers, which are primarily Sun Sparc/HP/RS6000 work stations all running their own flavors of Unix. Linux has the open source community to point out most of it's flaws, which works heavily to it's advantage. Apple has never really been a target, so OS X hasn't had the oppurtunity to find and correct the security holes the other systems have.
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post #39 of 43
4/8/06 at 12:55pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Death Surge
It is now, based on the particular flavor of Unix. Most Unix systems felt the same pressure Windows did for quite some time during the pre-home internet boom. It also took some heavy hits in the early internet boom years, as the hackers were targetting business servers, which are primarily Sun Sparc/HP/RS6000 work stations all running their own flavors of Unix. Linux has the open source community to point out most of it's flaws, which works heavily to it's advantage. Apple has never really been a target, so OS X hasn't had the oppurtunity to find and correct the security holes the other systems have.
Acutally the University of Wisconsin (IT Dept) had a contest in which the challenge was to hack on a Mac that was working as a web server. There was no monetary prize, but there were bragging rights and academic distinction.

No one managed to crack or hack it.

The contest was done in response to the woefully misleading ZDnet article, Mac OS X hacked under 30 minutes, by Munir Kotadia.

The academic Mac OS X Security Challenge was launched Monday morning by The University of Wisconsin's Dave Schroeder. The ZDNet FUD piece failed to mention that local access was granted to the Mac OS X system and left some readers with the false impression that any Mac OS X machine connected to the Internet can be taken over in just 30 minutes. As Schroeder notes, the Mac OS X "machine was not hacked from the outside just by being on the Internet. It was hacked from within, by someone who was allowed to have a local account on the box. That is a huge distinction."

So, with a real Mac OS X challenge sitting online, 30 minutes came and went. The Mac OS X remained "unhacked" for the entire 38-hour testing period.

Schroeder's notes:

• The response has been very strong, and the test has illustrated its point.
• Traffic to the host spiked at over 30 Mbps.
• Most of the traffic, aside from casual web visitors, was web exploit scripts, ssh dictionary attacks, and scanning tools such as Nessus.
• The machine was under intermittent DoS attack. During the two brief periods of denial of service, the host remained up.
• The test machine was a Mac mini (PowerPC) running Mac OS X 10.4.5 with Security Update 2006-001, had two local accounts, and had ssh and http open with their default configurations.
• There were no successful access attempts during the 38 hour duration of the test period.
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post #40 of 43
4/8/06 at 3:33pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nelson
Acutally the University of Wisconsin (IT Dept) had a contest in which the challenge was to hack on a Mac that was working as a web server. There was no monetary prize, but there were bragging rights and academic distinction.

No one managed to crack or hack it.

The contest was done in response to the woefully misleading ZDnet article, Mac OS X hacked under 30 minutes, by Munir Kotadia.

The academic Mac OS X Security Challenge was launched Monday morning by The University of Wisconsin's Dave Schroeder. The ZDNet FUD piece failed to mention that local access was granted to the Mac OS X system and left some readers with the false impression that any Mac OS X machine connected to the Internet can be taken over in just 30 minutes. As Schroeder notes, the Mac OS X "machine was not hacked from the outside just by being on the Internet. It was hacked from within, by someone who was allowed to have a local account on the box. That is a huge distinction."

So, with a real Mac OS X challenge sitting online, 30 minutes came and went. The Mac OS X remained "unhacked" for the entire 38-hour testing period.

Schroeder's notes:

• The response has been very strong, and the test has illustrated its point.
• Traffic to the host spiked at over 30 Mbps.
• Most of the traffic, aside from casual web visitors, was web exploit scripts, ssh dictionary attacks, and scanning tools such as Nessus.
• The machine was under intermittent DoS attack. During the two brief periods of denial of service, the host remained up.
• The test machine was a Mac mini (PowerPC) running Mac OS X 10.4.5 with Security Update 2006-001, had two local accounts, and had ssh and http open with their default configurations.
• There were no successful access attempts during the 38 hour duration of the test period.

With all due to respect to the academic community at UofW, The best black hats I know don't work for "bragging rights", nor has any one of them bothered to learn any of the intricacies of OS X, which is key to successful exploits. Again, It's not profitable, so it's not targetted.

Quote:
Most of the traffic, aside from casual web visitors, was web exploit scripts, ssh dictionary attacks, and scanning tools such as Nessus.
That right there shows just the light weight Script-Kiddies were involved. The big boys play with other toys.
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post #41 of 43
5/1/06 at 2:03pm
And Apple's OSX takes its first major security hit.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology...l?tw=rss.index

Quote:


Benjamin Daines was browsing the web when he clicked on a series of links that promised pictures of an unreleased update to his computer's operating system.

Instead, a window opened on the screen and strange commands ran as if the machine was under the control of someone — or something — else.

Daines was the victim of a computer virus.

Such headaches are hardly unusual on PCs running Microsoft's Windows operating system. Daines, however, was using a Mac, which is often touted as being immune to such risks.

He and at least one other person who clicked on the links were infected by what security experts call the first-ever virus for Mac OS X, the operating system that has shipped with every Mac sold since 2001 and has survived virtually unscathed from the onslaught of malware unleashed on the internet in recent years.

"It just shows people that no matter what kind of computer you use you are still open to some level of attack," said Daines, a 29-year-old British chemical engineer who once considered Macs invulnerable to such attacks.

Apple's iconic status, growing market share and adoption of same microprocessors used in machines running Windows are making Macs a bigger target, some experts warn.

Apple's most recent wake-up call came last week, as a Southern California researcher reported seven new vulnerabilities. Tom Ferris said malicious websites can exploit the holes without a user's knowledge, potentially allowing a criminal to execute code remotely and gain access to passwords and other sensitive information.

Ferris said he warned Apple of the vulnerabilities in January and February and that the company has yet to patch the holes, prompting him to compare the Cupertino-based computer maker to Microsoft three years ago, when the world's largest software company was criticized for being slow to respond to weaknesses in its products.

"They didn't know how to deal with security, and I think Apple is in the same situation now," said Ferris, himself a Mac user.

Apple officials point to the company's virtually unvarnished security track record and disputed claims that Mac OS X is more susceptible to attack now than in the past.

Apple plans to patch the holes reported by Ferris in the next automatic update of Mac OS X, and there have been no reports of them being exploited, spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said. She disagreed that the vulnerabilities make it possible for a criminal to run code on a targeted machine.

In Daines' infection, a bug in the virus' code prevented it from doing much damage. Still, several of his operating system files were deleted, several new files were created and several applications, including a program for recording audio, were crippled.

Behind the scenes, the virus also managed to hijack his instant messaging program so the rogue file was blasted to 10 people on his buddy list.

"A lot of Mac users are in denial and have blinders on that say, 'Nothing is ever going to get to us,'" said Neil Fryer, a computer security consultant who works for an international financial institution in Britain. "I can't say I agree with them."

Fryer, also a Mac user, said he has begun taking additional precautions over the past year to make sure he doesn't fall victim to an attack. He spends more time than in the past scrutinizing his security logs for signs of intruders, and he uses a firewall and additional security applications, just as he would with a Windows-based machine.

Among the other signs Macs are a growing target:

* The SANS Institute, a computer-security organization in Bethesda, Maryland, added Mac OS X to its 2005 list of the top-20 internet vulnerabilities. It was the first time the Mac has been included since the experts started compiling the list in 2000.

* This week, SANS updated the list to warn against flaws in Safari, the Mac web browser, which the group said criminals were able to attack before Apple could fix it.

* The number of discovered Mac vulnerabilities has soared in recent years, with 81 found last year, up from 46 in 2004 and 27 in 2003, according to the Open Source Vulnerability Database, which is maintained by a nonprofit group that tracks security vulnerabilities on many different hardware and software platforms.

* Less than a week after Daines was attacked in mid-February, a 25-year-old computer security researcher released three benign Mac-based worms to prove a serious vulnerability in Mac OS X could be exploited. Apple asked the man, Kevin Finisterre, to hold off publishing the code until it could patch the flaw.

The Mac's vulnerability could also increase as Apple transitions to a product line that uses microprocessors made by Intel, security experts said.

With new Macs running the same processor that powers Windows-based machines, far more people will know how to exploit weaknesses in Apple machines than in the past, when they ran on the PowerPC chips made by IBM and Motorola spinoff, Freescale Semiconductor.

"They have eliminated their genetic diversity," said independent security consultant Rodney Thayer. "The fear is that we're going to run into a new class of attacks."

Bud Tribble, Apple's senior vice president of software technology, disagreed.

"All the things we've been doing to make Mac OS X secure continue to be relevant on Intel," he said. Mac OS X, he said, is designed to be internet safe out of the box, without the need for firewalls or additional security software. He praised Mac OS X for making it easy for users to automatically install security patches.

He noted that the operating system was derived from FreeBSD, open source software that was built from the ground up to provide security for computers networked together. Since its origins in the early 1990s, the Unix-based FreeBSD has continually been battle-tested by college students and computer security specialists.

"The bottom line is we still feel more comfortable using a Mac than a (Windows) PC," said Alan Paller, director of research for SANS.

But as Daines can attest, there are no guarantees.

"We're all sort of waiting with bated breath to see if any problem will happen and the jury is still out," said Thayer, the independent security consultant. "I don't think you'll find a consensus."
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post #42 of 43
5/3/06 at 11:07am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Death Surge
And Apple's OSX takes its first major security hit.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology...l?tw=rss.index
BS & FUD:

http://daringfireball.net/2006/05/good_journalism

http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/4136/937/


It's just mind-boggling the tought that a computer is susceptible to Virii or adware BECASUE OF IT'S PROCESSOR. Window users continue to be in denial with their OS.
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post #43 of 43
5/4/06 at 4:51pm
I can just envision all of the systems failures now... :/
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