Intel Macs More Vulnerable to Attack?
There's been more and more talk lately about how Mac OS X is just as vulnerable as Windows to attack. Some people go too far and actually claim that the move to Intel chips is going to make it easier for OS X to get infected by viruses.
How does that work exactly? A virus is simply a program. For a program to run and do its job on Windows, it must be written as a windows application that uses certain APIs etc... Unless the application is making direct calls to the hardware (why would a virus do this?) it merely needs to run on the OS, not the chip. That's what operating systems are for.
If I write a Windows application (a virus, let's say) and try to execute it on Mac running OS X, it will have no idea what to do with it. Try it. Copy and legitimate .exe file from a Windows machine to a Mac and double-click it. Nothing. So how is it people are drawing this conclusion that just because OS X now runs on Intel chips that viruses are more likely to infect it?
Trust me, you won't be at any higher risk of getting a virus on the Intel Macs than you were with the PowerPC Macs.
How does that work exactly? A virus is simply a program. For a program to run and do its job on Windows, it must be written as a windows application that uses certain APIs etc... Unless the application is making direct calls to the hardware (why would a virus do this?) it merely needs to run on the OS, not the chip. That's what operating systems are for.
If I write a Windows application (a virus, let's say) and try to execute it on Mac running OS X, it will have no idea what to do with it. Try it. Copy and legitimate .exe file from a Windows machine to a Mac and double-click it. Nothing. So how is it people are drawing this conclusion that just because OS X now runs on Intel chips that viruses are more likely to infect it?
Trust me, you won't be at any higher risk of getting a virus on the Intel Macs than you were with the PowerPC Macs.
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