Apple OSX Mac in ROOT security Ping!
Discuss technical issues, software, and hardware.
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PLEASE IGNORE THEM!!!
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is Santa taking a dump down a chimney ? I almost died laughing when a friend showed me that ,he was running Win2000
Clue as to which OS is best? They all have weaknesses and the foremost one is the user.
Jeez, and here i am thinking that Macs.Just.Work.
At least that’s what the apple zealots tell me.
Buy a PC.
Unless you have the mentality of a 10 year old you should have no problem.
I.haven’t.since.1992
To the best of my knowledge there is no trojan/virus that self installs on osx without an admin password and no hack that doesn’t require LAN access. The current one (flashback) is a piece of , what I call trickware, that makes the user think they are installing Adobe Flash. We get to clicking pretty fast sometimes and don’t ponder what we are actually installing due to the comfort level we have had over the years with the mac. Times have changed, need to pay attention. Keep system up to date. Clam AV is ok but it needs to be kept updated as well. I run on static IP’s so no NAT to protect some of my machines so good firewall SW is necessary. I use Virus Barrier among others which has a customizable rule driven firewall and excellent virus /trojan protection. I keep a log open on all activity on the firewall and you would be amazed at how ofter you get probed by china, mexico, Middle east countries, SEA countries, Russia and hords of domestic sources. Other than tightly managed ports (default closed) I actively block over 2,500 IP’s adding new ones daily.
Nothing is bullet proof. My advise.. keep current os sys SW, a good AV and firewall scheme and close attention to what your clicking as a practice will keep you running clean and worry free... common sense for either a mac or PC
My point several years ago was that a serious hacker would not spend time to infect 25 or 30 computers.
...now, the number of mac's have become respectable, the low level hackers have attacked them...and when the "big boys" take aim, they will take out all macs.....
...if an OS can be built, it can be hacked.....and the more of them in use, the bigger target they make....
Occasionally files that are in memory become corrupted and can act up or make things appear to go haywire.
Solution: reboot.
That corrects many issues.
If the situation appears more suspicious, run your virus check.
Sophos has a free virus checker for OS X. Works very well, is lightweight, and provides me with peace of mind.
All bets are off in OSX when you are playing around with ROOT access. OSX is NOT designed for someone who has activated ROOT. OSX is designed for users working two levels below superuser level of ROOT and the protections are set up for that.
What were you doing playing a game with ROOT activated?
I believe, to get back to a truly clean Mac OSX install, you are going to have to low level format your drive and do your install. Sorry, but once you have allowed something other than the install disk to have ROOT access, your machine is compromised. There is no telling what was installed outside of the system files that may be affecting the install. Reformat.
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Texas,
My suggestion is that if you want to play around with LINUX on your Mac get VMWare and install one of the good LINUX installs, UBUNTU or another good one, in a virtual machine, and play to your heart’s content, without compromising the UNIX install of the system. If it gets compromised, kick it to the curb and reinstall a new version. Boom, you are back in business in minutes. You can do the same with multiple versions of Windows. All you need is sufficient hard drive space, which is cheap enough these days.
Every time someone starts a thread like this, I see adolescent flame wars coming. I have a Mac, my wife a PC w/7. We’re both happy. I dislike Windows, but realize that it is a viable and competent system (I run XP on a VMWare pseudo-box). Clearly, it is more virus prone. That is changing. Clearly Macs had superior hardware in the earlier years. That may be changing too. Why don’t we all put our soapboxes away and discuss something more important?
Ever notice how platform zealots behave like liberal democrats? That’s a thread WORTHY of discussion here. Anyone care to try?