General HotHardware Tech News

Re: Nasty Mac OS Trojan Making The Rounds

adamplays — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 07:33:59 GMT

really? because macs are safer? and PCs are only good for spreadsheets?

you're right. it seems like any media program doesn't function on vista for me...because its so true...

Re: Nasty Mac OS Trojan Making The Rounds

digitaldd — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:00:54 GMT

ice91785:

digitaldd:
The exploit which utilizes the ARDAgent [Apple Remote Desktop Agent] is really bad because it allows stuff like shell commands to run without notifying the user as it utilizes the setuid bit which is owned by root and allows all its child processes to run as root.

Pfft...any idiot knows that Haha, digital you sound like you may be a Unix/Linux buff hm?

Sort of. Been working in tech support for a long time and have to support a lot of different OSes many of them unix based.

RE: Nasty Mac OS Trojan Making The Rounds

Dave_HH — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:42:00 GMT

Heya FlyinB, I personally think Macs make for pretty solid products right now. Not that I'm going to run out and buy one tomorrow but these days they offer some pretty solid product. And again, not that I agree with everything that's said in these commmercials, not by a long shot, but they're good commercials and the PC ecosystem should be thinking of ways to reach out to the mainstream crowd like Mac is as well.

Re: RE: Nasty Mac OS Trojan Making The Rounds

stratusfear — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 05:13:47 GMT

FlyinBrian:
I cant stand the mac comercials Im suprised you do Davo. Not that they are not funny but what I cant stand is knowing people will believe that BS.

The thing with commercials and any advertising is that when you're not the market leader you typically target whoever is the market leader and (attempt to) make well played exaggerations. Most "underdog" companies with a good advertising firm will do this (in turn, the market leader always ignores competitors in advertising, but that's besides the point).

The Mac commercials are obviously an exaggeration. Taking them at face value doesn't work. The face value of them really is BS (I'm a Mac user and I think so too). At the same time, though, you get through the marketing and you see they are typically built on top of some real underlying truths or experiences, especially such that they appeal to the iPod-carrying J6P who HAS had issues with Windows, and maybe its entire platform. Put simply, PC fans calling BS on the commercials are missing the bigger picture. For example, from one of the commercials last year, they quoted Windows as having over 114,000 viruses. We all know this is misleading crap because it's basically counting everything written since the beginning of time, which means we can exclude anything you're not going to find in the wild now. Not to mention multiple variants in one family of viruses which you can also exclude. However, the underlying point is that, as it is today, Windows still DOES have more viruses than Mac OS X does. "114,000 viruses" is just a buzz phrase to catch attention -- to say anything else would be worthless and go unnoticed because it wouldn't attract attention. Not attracting attention is bad advertising. But anyway, I really doubt that most people believe the literal message of these commercials. At least anyone who isn't retarded should know better cause this is how advertising works.

On topic, I do find it funny how people get all "Take that, Apple!" on news reports like these, because this happens so infrequently on Apple's platform and isn't really a big deal, but on the Windows side of things this wouldn't be a big announcement and would just be business as usual since it's not uncommon here. Oh well, similar stuff happens on Mac news sites too It's surprising how similar the two fanbases really can be. Plus what's up with trojans? That's all we get on this side of the fence. A social engineering experiment -- not anything that exploits a hole in the OS, just a hole in the user's head.

Re: Nasty Mac OS Trojan Making The Rounds

ice91785 — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 15:41:43 GMT

digitaldd:
The exploit which utilizes the ARDAgent [Apple Remote Desktop Agent] is really bad because it allows stuff like shell commands to run without notifying the user as it utilizes the setuid bit which is owned by root and allows all its child processes to run as root.

Pfft...any idiot knows that Haha, digital you sound like you may be a Unix/Linux buff hm?

Re: Nasty Mac OS Trojan Making The Rounds

nelsoncp21 — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:16:14 GMT

I agree that they are humerous. Anything to get MS fired up imo is a good thing!

Re: Nasty Mac OS Trojan Making The Rounds

Crisis Causer — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 04:35:52 GMT

I like the Apple commercials that make fun of Windows Vista. Because it's so true.

Re: RE: Nasty Mac OS Trojan Making The Rounds

SqUiD267 — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:12:19 GMT

Take that trojan and eat it Mac. I'd agree with with the 2nd poster i wanna see a reverse Mac vs Pc commercial.

RE: Nasty Mac OS Trojan Making The Rounds

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:57:09 GMT

I cant stand the mac comercials Im suprised you do Davo. Not that they are not funny but what I cant stand is knowing people will believe that BS.

Re: Nasty Mac OS Trojan Making The Rounds

digitaldd — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:30:18 GMT

The exploit which utilizes the ARDAgent [Apple Remote Desktop Agent] is really bad because it allows stuff like shell commands to run without notifying the user as it utilizes the setuid bit which is owned by root and allows all its child processes to run as root.

Re: RE: Nasty Mac OS Trojan Making The Rounds

Super Dave — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 01:56:52 GMT

Lev_Astov:
I'd really love to see MS do a reverse Mac vs. PC commercial right now.

"Hi, I'm a Mac, and I just found this LOVELY WOODEN HORSE outside my front door! I think I'll bring it inside before someone steals it!"

Yeah, something like that! lol. Mac payback.<-Billy G.

RE: Nasty Mac OS Trojan Making The Rounds

ice91785 — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 01:45:05 GMT

10.5 was released around the same time as Vista roughly and is currently the de facto OS of MAC

Re: RE: Nasty Mac OS Trojan Making The Rounds

nelsoncp21 — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:26:36 GMT

I have never used a mac so I have to ask. How old is the 10.4 and 10.5 OS for the Macs? If it's an older version hady anyone uses anymore then there is nothing to really brag about. Of course if it's a newer version then I guess there is

Re: RE: Nasty Mac OS Trojan Making The Rounds

jakekub — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:26:09 GMT

Hey this is one of a very few Mac bugs. I have been using Mac and Windows for some time and Apple, hands down, is much more reliable than MS. OS X is certainly not perfect but I have to say from 9 years experience with OS X and over 15 years with Windows and Mac OS 9, OS X is a far superior OS, easily. But the downside with becoming more popular is you get more attention... sometimes negative attention.

RE: Nasty Mac OS Trojan Making The Rounds

kid007 — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:34:04 GMT

it was not me! that all i have to say :). ok now seriously is about darn time some show mr. jobs that his OS IS NOT PERFECT!! i will love to see him explain that...