Is malware in the form of "drive by downloads" usually for Windows, so if one is on a Mac (or Linux), it's unlikely to get malware automatically just by visiting a crapsite?
Is malware in the form of "drive by downloads" usually for Windows, so if one is on a Mac (or Linux), it's unlikely to get malware automatically just by visiting a crapsite?
The biggest issue was things like ActiveX and auto-run that would automatically execute any downloaded code, even if the user did not request the download. Generally it's a bit better now for all OSs
After having spent a few months with it, I have no regrets getting a MacBook Air. Even as a long-time Linux enjoyer forced to use Windows 11 for my job, macOS is smooth sailing and "just works" for the dead-simple media consumption I use it for. Sometime soon-ish, the 32 gigs of RAM will be set on fire if and when I manage to get dangerous enough with Blender. Oh, and I could fuckin write a love letter about the trackpad; it feels REALLY nice to use and the dictionary thesaurus on long click has utterly spoiled me.
I mean it really depends on what specifically one is talking about. It's not like websites/ads that try to trick people into clicking something to download a file, which they can hopefully be tricked into installing, have gone away... but 'drive by download and straight up install' attacks were pretty much always a Microsoft/Internet Explorer thing.
Assuming that you're too young to remember Internet Explorer in its 'prime', back when JavaScript was quite rightly not treated as if it was a real programming language, people extended their websites using various plugins, Macromedia/Adobe Shockwave/Flash, Sun Java, Microsoft Silverlight..
The sensible way for these to be installed was for a user to be told to download a installer for a plugin, and for them to actively choose to do that, and for them to then run the file to install it when it finished downloading, which most computer users back then could just about manage. That was how civilized web browsers did it. Microsoft, rather than do that, added the ability for websites to pop up a dialogue box to install an 'ActiveX control', which was just a slightly unusual Windows executable, similar to already existing OLE controls that could be used to say, let a user embed a copy of a non-Office app into a Word or Excel document. Now, by default, you still had to say yes for it to run, but you know what 95% of computer users are like, even if they know they're meant to say no and manage to say 'no' once, just pop something up ten more times (and that was easy to do back then, ActiveX was added in IE 3 and MS didn't even add a basic popup blocker until IE 6), they would eventually fuck up.
And ActiveX had literally no sandboxing at all, so once a malicious ActiveX control had installed, it could do anything it wanted to, generally things with advertising to make money, onto your computer. And they were mostly made by people who hated ActiveX and didn't want to or try to understand it, either, so not deliberately malicious but badly coded ActiveX controls could be exploited by malicious actors to use them to install their own stuff.
Flash and, early on, Java never had perfect sandboxing, either, but there wasn't that much profit in wasting time exploiting them when it was so easy to rape people with ActiveX, and even less profit in exploiting them on anything but Windows. Non x86 versions of Windows for the DEC Alpha and the Itanium would also have been accidentally 'safe' despite technically supporting ActiveX, because the controls were native applications rather than being portable between architectures, and nobody would have made enough money installing a toolbar to display porno ads in your Internet Explorer window on either of those variants to justify the cost of buying an Alpha or Itanium workstation to compile the control to do that.
Eventually Microsoft started tweaking their default settings so that it was harder to fuck up and run an ActiveX control without realizing, and a few years back FireFox and WebKit/Chrome based browsers like Konqueror or Edge dropped support for plugins like Flash or Java, so regardless of operating system you now need some pretty serious exploits in core web technologies like JavaScript to fully break out of the sandbox and start raping someone's computer, which is a much higher bar than "trick your grandmother into clicking 'yes' to a popup once".
Of course ActiveX isn't completely gone, it still lives on as part of the Windows ecosystem and is used to do cool and fun stuff to this day- just with more steps than "open up sex.com and click 'Yes'".
After having spent a few months with it, I have no regrets getting a MacBook Air. Even as a long-time Linux enjoyer forced to use Windows 11 for my job, macOS is smooth sailing and "just works" for the dead-simple media consumption I use it for. Sometime soon-ish, the 32 gigs of RAM will be set on fire if and when I manage to get dangerous enough with Blender. Oh, and I could fuckin write a love letter about the trackpad; it feels REALLY nice to use and the dictionary thesaurus on long click has utterly spoiled me.
wait until you press the space key on a file and discover the power of Preview. Ctrl+a and Ctrl+e also work in every app that supports text, that was the lightbulb moment for me. Mac's have so many little touches like the pdf option in print, that are tiny by themselves, but make a great overall experience.
wait until you press the space key on a file and discover the power of Preview. Ctrl+a and Ctrl+e also work in every app that supports text, that was the lightbulb moment for me. Mac's have so many little touches like the pdf option in print, that are tiny by themselves, but make a great overall experience.
I always found it amazing that on the Intel architecture the MacOS systems always had better battery performance than a similarly configured MS Windows system. And it was like this for decades.
Then on top of that they went with Rosetta 2 and all but abandoned Intel in what appears to be the most prescient and profitable CPU migrations in history.
You might think the new page lacks personality, but I for one do not think those screenshots do it justice.
The new logo transforms into five different types of niggers (and no other race, just niggers) - the exact type of people who typically use this service, as Apple helpfully captions in their alt text for the blind!
0:11
Inb4: CHUD SNOWFLAKES ARE TRIGGERED BY BLACK PEOPLE I CAN'T EVEN!!!!
Is malware in the form of "drive by downloads" usually for Windows, so if one is on a Mac (or Linux), it's unlikely to get malware automatically just by visiting a crapsite?
Well macOS gets those websites telling people to copy a curl command into terminal. It's more likely you get malware on macOS visiting a crapsite because it's really the only way how. It's more manual to install compared to windows.
Well macOS gets those websites telling people to copy a curl command into terminal. It's more likely you get malware on macOS visiting a crapsite because it's really the only way how. It's more manual to install compared to windows.
I have been all Mac at home for over 20 years, never used any antivirus except when I did BYOD in my last job, and never got any sort of malware while doing whatever the fuck I wanted to.
I have been all Mac at home for over 20 years, never used any antivirus except when I did BYOD in my last job, and never got any sort of malware while doing whatever the fuck I wanted to.
Pretty much it's an info stealer it also seems to target people with bitcoin such as installing a fake ledger wallet app. It's possible and I have no clue if apple will do more handholding so people don't just enter anything they see into a terminal. It's very interesting though.
