Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
During the course of his article, Alex somehow made the jump from an
iPod being used as a Windows virus vector to the insinuation that this
was a warning that Mac computers could be targeted and infected by
viruses at some stage. That's quite a leap to make without supporting
evidence.
It has been a known fact for some time that
Macs, like the iPod, can be used as Windows virus carriers without
being infected themselves. As security vendors (and one reader) pointed
out, some Mac users actually use anti-virus software from companies
like McAfee and Symantec just to protect Windows users from getting
infected.
Upon close examination of the article, there are two main areas where Alex seems to have got it wrong.
One is the implication that Apple is somehow asleep at the wheel with
respect to security. Nothing could be further from the truth. When
professional Apple Mac security researcher, Tom Ferris, detailed seven
security flaws in Mac OSX on his website in April this year, Apple
moved quickly to apply fixes.
Apple produces a widely used operating system based on Unix, which was
designed from the ground up with security in mind. It is naive to think
that Apple would not be thinking of security issues at all times.
The second area where Alex appears to have gone astray is his
implication that virus writers have only just recently focussed their
attention on the Mac platform. While there is no hard evidence to
support it, it is hard to believe that virus writers have not been
trying target Macs for years. To successfully hack a Mac and infect it
with a virus would gain a virus writer an unmatched level of notoriety
that many of them crave.
The fact is, however, that there has been no virus outbreak on the Mac
OS X platform, despite the fact that many if not most users don't
bother to use anti-virus software.
Is it possible that a major virus Mac attack is on the way? Of course.
Southern California could also break off and slip into the ocean but
hopefully not while I'm at MacWorld Expo in San Francisco this coming
January.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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