The impossible has happened: MacOS X worm/malware spreads via iChat

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Asher
That's the fault of the individual programs, not Windows.

I dunno. Maybe these programs should not have the "Work with Microsoft Windows XP" logo (or whatever they have these days) until they work in a limited account.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I dunno. Maybe these programs should not have the "Work with Microsoft Windows XP" logo (or whatever they have these days) until they work in a limited account.

Why would that be the case? It's a "Works with Windows XP" logo, not "Works with Limited Account" logo...

[Asher]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
It's like asking which machine got infected by the "I Love You" virus/worm/whatever still has it today.

Once again, you prove my point. You can't name one, can you? So why did you bring it up?

SP2 is not a "major OS upgrade" either.

SP2 contains a rewritten networking stack and memory management, I consider that a major OS upgrade. Certainly a more substantive technical update than OS X 10.2 to 10.3, for instance.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
If your dad do not backup his own data regularly, nothing can save him.

Losing a weeks or a months worth of data is more aggravating than having to spend the 45 minutes reinstalling Windows or using "System Restore" to roll back system changes in 15 minutes.

You are still stuck in the single-user mindset just like Microsoft.

I much rather have a user borks his own account instead of every single account on a computer.

This is perspective.

The perspective I'm asking you to gain is this: 99% of users on PCs only have the one account.

Yes, it is nice to run in limited mode by default (Vista will), but you seem to act like this is a huge thing that will prevent worms. I'm asking you to keep the perspective of "It's the data, stupid."

The most valuable part of a PC is the data, which is in the user account. A worm or virus or other malware can trash all of the user's data, limited account or no. That is perspective -- the persuit of the "holy grail" of the limited account is a bit deceiving.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger

I much rather have a user borks his own account instead of every single account on a computer.

And I'd rather that I only screw up my own stuff than everyone else's.

I dunno. Maybe these programs should not have the "Work with Microsoft Windows XP" logo (or whatever they have these days) until they work in a limited account.

You mean there are programs that won't work in regular accounts?

You're ****tin me right?

No?

[Agathon]

God, Windows sucks donkey balls.

I remember when I had to fix my mother's Win 98 system. I had to call their ISP and get walked through half a dozen control panels to configure the modem to get online.

I had a borrowed iBook at the time. I'd been using To configure the modem for the same ISP you had enter data into a grand total of two fields: phone number and the password.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Asher
Why would that be the case? It's a "Works with Windows XP" logo, not "Works with Limited Account" logo...

"Works with Windows XP" should mean it works in any sort of accounts, not just ones with administrator rights. Otherwise it is only a half-truth.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Asher
Once again, you prove my point. You can't name one, can you? So why did you bring it up?

Given sufficient time, any broken program can be re-written. It's like given sufficient time, any OS vulnerability can be patched.

So what's your point again?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
"Works with Windows XP" should mean it works in any sort of accounts, not just ones with administrator rights. Otherwise it is only a half-truth.

To me, "Works with Windows XP" should mean it works with Windows XP. I don't see any implications of all of the user account types.

Given sufficient time, any broken program can be re-written. It's like given sufficient time, any OS vulnerability can be patched.

So what's your point again?

My point was only programs that didn't follow the guidelines were affected. They were utilizing quirks of the network and memory management code that were simply not there once those were rewritten.

My point was it's stupid to bring up this topic in the thread, particularly when it wasn't a big deal at all. And given the substantial changes in SP2, I think it came off pretty well that 99.9% of programs still worked as before.

My point was iTunes had a minor security and bugfix patch, and the "patch" is a massive re-download and re-install of a 30MB+ app bundle.

[Fake Boris]

Wow, all Panther programs still work in Tiger. Incred1ble!!11!

[Asher]

And equally poignant point, on par with UR's.

Slightly ironic though, because Apple did make some changes in the API between 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4 before officially "freezing" it in 10.4...meaning it did break programs.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I wonder if anyone actually read nostromo's post:

Except user accounts are barely functional and are a major pain in the ass in XP. When I try user accounts, certain programs (some games, Winamp) simply don't work, Windows then asks me if I want to install these programs. Of course, since I'm not in the admin account, I can't... That's why I'm always in the Admin account, and also why most users are also in the Admin account most of the time.

What that says is that when you are in a user account, certain programs don't work because you can't install them unless you are in an admin account. Isn't that what Aggie was bragging about with user accounts on Apple?

I use a User account at work and everything that the administrator installed works perfectly for me. I just can't install anything else.

[Nostromo]

Nobody reads my posts, not even you My point was that since user accounts were a pain in the ass to use, me and a lot of other people didn't use them: we always use the admin account. So whether or not limited user accounts give some amount of protection or not is also beside the point, since 90% of Windows users (my estimate) don't use them.

An example: Europa Universalis 2, IRC, doesn't work in limited user accounts.

Another problem: a very useful french/english dictionary I have simply doesn't work in limited accounts, probably because its a 1996 program, from a time before Windows had user accounts.

When I installed Windows XP Pro, I planned to use limited user accounts, but after a while, I said "**** it, its not worth the trouble". An I'm a bit more knowledgable about these matters than most people.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Asher
And equally poignant point, on par with UR's.

Slightly ironic though, because Apple did make some changes in the API between 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4 before officially "freezing" it in 10.4...meaning it did break programs.

I know dude, but it didn't affect most software. I'm sure you could find a few programs that got broken because of SP2.

[Fve Crathva]

Originally posted by Agathon


But last time I looked you can happily rape the entire system, which you cannot do on OS X.

I remember one of the last labs in my Security Engineering class was on hacking Windows. The first thing we experimented with was a teardrop attack, which was pretty spectacular (instant, unrecoverable BSOD). We rebooted and did some other stuff. For the last half hour or so, the TA told us just to break Windows from a non-Admin account so it couldn't boot. We tried hacking the registry, deleting system files, formatting the hard drive, and so on, and the worst we managed was to break a control panel app. Unfortunately, we couldn't remember the DLL and function to call to reboot, so we couldn't insert that into the startup routine. Finally, we just started deleting everything we could, starting at c:\, from a DOS shell (we forgot to try fdisk, and sadly it was deleted during this process). We didn't manage to keep the system from booting, but it pretty much disabled any useful functionality left in the OS.

Anyway, that was on a Windows NT 4 box, with no service packs installed. I haven't tried to destroy XP from a user account, but I suspect that it's more difficult these days. I'd be curious to find out.

It's also worth reiterating that the Windows access control list system is more flexible and powerful than UNIX permissions. The problem stems primarily from the Windows default user account, like OS X's, having administrator privileges.

SP