Posted by Todd (64.34.202.197) on March 20, 2001 at 20:44:56:
In Reply to: With all this Virus and Worm talk going on lately... posted by pinksharkmark on March 20, 2001 at 18:34:30:
But Mac's and Linux machines are far from immune to virus's.
It's true that most virus's are targetted at Windows machines, and often at Outlook. This is because Windows has the lion's share of the world computer market and Outlook is one of the largest email proggies. The self-gratifying idiot's who create virus's are looking to make as big an impact as they can. But virus's have been created to attack Mac's and, to a lesser extent, Linux boxes. There have even been a few that can infect both PC's and MAC's, taking advantage of the capabilities newer Mac's have to read PC files.
The flip side is that the vast majority of the anti-virus community is also Windows oriented. Most new virus's have a fix within a day of the time they are discovered. Should someone decide to make a concerted virus attack on Mac's the chances are it would take considerably longer before an innoculation would be created.
Play it smart - get an anti-virus program. Remember - coders smart enough to create virus's are often only knowledgeable about one platform - be it PC, Mac or Linux. It's crazy to believe there are no Mac programmers with a virus-bent mentality. These guys can't write PC virus's - they don't know the code. So they write them for Mac's.