Ms MacFee,

Why do you feel it neccessary to rewrite Kelly's article to prove a point? The article itself is ridiculous zealoutry, and as we see from your post, Kelly is truely preaching to the choir.

Quote: "Why, then, are there no viruses for OS X?"

Reality: Mac OS X has Unix shell scripting support. Max OS X also supports several Microsoft applications, suffering from the same Macro vulnerabilities as on Windows systems. If there are no viruses for OS X, then please explain what Renepo[1] is, or does it not meet your newly written standards for what constitutes malware for Mac?

http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;1771656169;fp;2;fpid;1


[27/10/2004] "The worm, called SH/Renepo-A by Sophos, MacOS.Renepo.B by Symantec and Unix/Opener.Worm by McAfee, was discovered on Friday and anti-virus vendors rolled out protection over the weekend. It arrives in the form of a Bash shell script and replicates itself over local networks. However, its ability to spread is limited, as it does not use email or file-sharing programs to distribute copies of itself, researchers said. The worm also requires a high level of access to infect a PC, making it more likely to be executed on a system that has already been compromised in some other way, Sophos said.

Given these limitations, the worm is still particularly destructive, and because it turns off logging, anti-virus and security software, it is difficult to tell whether an affected system has been hit by additional problems, researchers said. The worm collects sensitive data such as passwords, and then reports infected systems to a remote server."

If OS X is so indestructable, how come security updates are released at all? How could Malware such as Spector infect OS X?

You can keep waiting for the perfect answer to your loaded question. You can also keep reading articles like Kelly's, contributing to your insecure complacency. But back in reality, the rest of us security minded people will operate with caution, regardless of our OS of choice.

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Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/columns/319/31483#31483