Hi I am totally confident in the general security of apple computers, however as a small possibility exists for a virus which affects windows systems to be passed on via an unaffected mac to a windows user I made sure that I installed an anti virus application and on the first deep scan was surprised to find that I had one infected file. virus barrier offered to repair the file and made it safe for me. If you want to be a responsible computer user, no matter what system you use, you should take all reasonable steps to make sure your machine is not a vector for malware. Regards G From glorious Devon, England. On 1 Feb 2011, at 10:27, Tristram Llewellyn wrote: > Macs have nothing like the number traditional viruses or Trojans, those that > are known are relatively few in numbers. Meanwhile Apple very quietly patch > security holes often without telling the community what it is they have just > fixed. That Apple are patching the operating system is great however the > reluctance to let us all know what they have done is not and contributes to a > general level of ignorance for all. Comparably in the PC industry even if > Microsoft doesn't bark (which mostly they do these days because they have so > badly embarrassed in the past) there are hundreds of security researchers all > working away to find the next exploit being used by hackers and a ton of > academic researchers too. So although it looks really had in Windows (and > sometimes it really is) we at least know somewhat the state of play because > it is in everybody's interest to know and nobody is (or should be) fooled. > > An example of how this might change is the episode with Facebook and other > social networking site security resulting in the Firesheep extension for > Firefox that allowed people on open wireless networks to take control of > other user's pages. This security whole is just as wide on the Mac as it is > on Windows and has the same consequences. It is not a Mac or Windows > specific problem but both systems are affected equally. > > Browsers whether on Mac or PC are all almost universally vulnerable to > malformed input into them (a technique known as fuzzing) and can be made to > crash which means there is an exploit in there. Likewise JAVAscript is > something even Mac owners have to run on their computers in order for pages > to work yet its power is considerable and if wielded maliciously will cause a > problem on any platform. Safari along with most other browsers currently > available are not fully sandboxed and have considerable scope to manipulate a > target system bypassing most traditional anti-virus systems. Viruses and > Trojans are relatively complex forms of attack that take time to develop but > with the power of the tools available today you don't necessarily need to > create a virus or Trojan to cause trouble but at the moment it is easier and > Windows is the low hanging fruit. > > Regards. > > Tristram Llewellyn > Sight a ** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe] ** If this link doesn't work then send a message to: ** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ** and in the Subject line type ** unsubscribe ** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the ** immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq] ** or send a message, to ** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq