Message
[Jeremy's
take on Frank's take on Mac vulnerabilities...]
OK, sort
of...
There have
been plenty of security vulnerabilities exposed in UNIX, which is what is behind
OS X. Just not widely publicized.
Both unix and
linux have a "file" command, which can (usually) identify a file type,
regardless of its extension. It's virtually certain that this command is on OS
X. You can get to a shell prompt and type 'man file' and you should get the
manual page for the command.
Personally, I
like file extensions. They allow you to see at a glance what type of file you're
dealing with, without costing anything but a few keystrokes. But then again,
I've been doing this stuff since long before there was such a thing as a
mouse.
My pet theory
is that the reason you don't see many mac or unix related viruses is, indeed
because of market share. However, this (in my theory) is because the viruses are
being written and distributed by (or for the benefit of) the anti virus software
merchants. I understand that there are vandals, but look at who is profiting
from all this. Not Microsoft, not Apple, not you, not me, not the guy who wrote
the virus (if my theory is incorrect), but the anti virus companies are making a
fortune. For one of those companies to produce a new virus and distribute
it widely would be easy, and tantamount to printing their own
money.
Call me
crazy, but that's what I think.
Remember to
make lots of backups,
P.
