Ex_PC_Puke said:
As Macs increase in popularity (with x86 chips and Boot Camp etc.) its likley that viruses or worms will be developed to attack OS X.
This may be somewhat true, but still... not very likely.
This is because Mac OS X doesn't allow users to use the root account unless they first enable the option. This lessens the likelihood of email-driven viruses and worms, as most users would not even know how to enable the root account or rarely even need to. Even runing as Admin, you still don't have root enabled. In order for a virus to attack your system it must be given root user priviliges, otherwise it will not be allowed to run. Due to the strong separation between normal users, even Admins and the privileged root user, a Mac OS X user would have to be running as root to really do any damage to the system. Also, there are also no self-executing programs or files in Mac OS X. So a user would have to read the email, save the attachment, give the attachment executable permissions, and then run the executable. The user could damage his /user/home directory, but that's about it. For it to infect the entire system the steps would have to become the following: read, save, become root, give executable permissions, run. The more steps, the less likely users will bother with it, the less likely a virus infection becomes, the less likely a person is inclined to develop a virus...and certainly the less likely a catastrophically spreading virus becomes.
at least that is my .02
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