Ugh, now this guy has written an uneducated and naïve column.  To his credit, he brings up some arguments against his position, but then instantly dismisses them as trash (without any evidence to support the dismissal).  You can read it for yourself here: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/02/04/notes020405.DTL

The guy basically says that “Windows sucks”, that it can be hacked by anybody within 4 minutes of being put on the internet and that Macintosh is virtually “immune” to all security threats.  What a load of crap!

Now this post is not about defending Microsoft Windows or about saying that Macintosh sucks, it is about stopping a naïve columnist that obviously didn’t do his research.  The fact is that all systems are vulnerable to attack and that through defensive coding and defensive (common-sense) usage most problems can be avoided.

I think I will approach this by simply list some of his arguments as to why the Macintosh is virtually “immune” to all security threats and then provide evidence to the contrary.

“It's very simple. The Mac really has few, if any, known viruses or major debilitating anything, no spyware and no Trojans and no worms, and sure I've been affected by a couple email bugs over the years, but those were mostly related to my mail server and ISP. For the most part and for all intents and purposes, Macs are immune. Period.”

Fact:  The Macintosh has had over the years 100’s of security bugs in it that Apple has found, acknowledge and fixed.  Some of them VERY serious (like the ability to remote control the system via Terminal Services).  You can read up on all these bugs here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300667 and here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25631

Fact:  The Macintosh has many more security bugs in it then have been discovered and patched (so does Windows, so does Linux).

Fact:  The Macintosh DOES have Viruses!  (You can read about a number of them here: http://www.icsalabs.com/html/communities/antivirus/macintosh/archives/macvirus/reference/viruses.html)  The funny thing is that the Macintosh used to spread viruses faster than any PC ever could.  This was due to the way the Macintosh would read a “resource” file off of every disk (floppy or CD) that was inserted into the system.  The PC waited (and still does with floppies) for users to interact with a disk before reading it, the Macintosh read it as soon as it was inserted and hence was able to spread viruses such as MDEF and CDEF very quickly.

Fact:  The Macintosh DOES have Trojans.  You can read about them here: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/computer-virus/macintosh-faq/

“I know Macs are not perfect, that there have been a handful of serious Apple security fixes over the years, and even a few rumored viruses and spyware apps (though rarely any reports of major server attacks or system shutdowns). I know Apple releases regular security updates of its own. The Mac is not flawless. But it's damn close.”

Here the author lists counter arguments to his opinion and then dismisses them as not being of value.

Fact:  The Mac is not “damn close” to being flawless.  Besides, the 100’s of security fixes that Apple has released… it has released 1000’s of other general bug fixes.  You can find them on www.apple.com!

“And I know, finally, the argument that says that if the world was using Macs instead of PCs, the hackers would be attacking the Macs. It's a game of numbers, after all. Anti-Mac pundits always mutter the same thing as they install yet another PC bug fix: there just aren't enough Macs out there to warrant a hacker's attention.

Which is, of course, mostly bull. I'm no programmer, but I know what I read, and I know my experience: the Mac OS architecture is much more robust, much more solid, much more difficult to hack into.”

Here again the author lists counter arguments to his opinion and then dismisses it as not being of value.

Fact:  There are less hackers attempting to attack the Macintosh.  It is a numbers game, facts are facts.

Fact:  The Mac (to it’s credit) had the luxury of scraping its platform!  It could do this because its user base was relatively small.  There is no doubt in my mind that OSX is very robust and wonderful platform.  I don’t think ANYBODY can say the same of System 7 and earlier.  Back in the System 7 days, the Macintosh was notoriously unstable.   Microsoft has tried to do the same thing (moving from the Windows 9x code base to the NT platform) and has only just been able to do so with Windows XP.