Mossberger says the MSFT side of mac CAN get viruses

[Seacrest]

Mike Johnson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> What worries me is that Windows exploits on a mac
> could be crafted to crack an OS X partition wide
> open. I know people want to have both OSes running
> side by side but I don't think I'd do that until
> it's proven reasonably secure.
>

If that were possible, it would already be a threat if you have a Mac and Windows on the same network (Like that big ol' interNET). The Mac OS still has all the Unix security provisions of privilege separation, so just because there's a Windows virtual machine running in the same enclosure doesn't make the Mac any more or less secure.

[MacGurl]

I think we all knew that already Sam. ;-)
It's no secret or revelation.

Kathy

[macphanatic]

If the virus attacks the boot sector of the drive, I would think that the Mac OS side might not boot. As my knowledge about the boot sector or how Boot Camp works, I may be way off base on this guess.

[Chupa Chupa]

Oh, and he prefers to be called Mossberg. ;-)

[Mike Johnson]

Seacrest, I know it could be made reasonably secure. I also know it might not be.

Having one machine with one hard drive and one bank of RAM and one USB thumb drive attached and one optical drive and one firewire drive and one SD card reader and one NIC and two different OSes running simultaneously is not the same as two machines sitting on a LAN.

If Windows and OS X never run simultaneously, that'd be safer. But still, am I supposed to believe that partitioning the hard drive will prevent something on the Windows side from ever peeking at the Mac side? There are some pretty powerful disk utilities out there for Windows.

What's more, users will come up with some way to transfer files between partitions: email, or a network drive, or what have you, and that could be predicted and exploited.

In that dumb Attack This Mac contest, mac users were annoyed at the publicity because the hackers were all given user accounts on the machine. It wasn't like some stranger taking over your mac just because it sits on the internet. But the point was, a non-admin user could escalate privileges to admin. Not controlling who gets a user account makes a chink in the armor, and I'll have to be convinced that sharing my computer with an XP install won't do the same.