Wild PC-Mac foursomes with
vibrating iPhones may lead to an overdue comeuppance for all of us.
For years Mac users have
remained smug and secure in the knowledge that Windows users were suckers.
To date Mac users have
been largely immune from such attacks. But are Macs safer from computer viruses
because of better design or simply because, until recently, so few people
actually owned them that hackers didn’t bother?
With
over 90% of global market share, Windows has long been the target of
choice for would-be hackers looking to wreak havoc or profit with
viruses and spyware. Now, with
Apple sales taking off, hackers are starting to target Apple
products, software, and that most ubiquitous of all hipster shoulder
bag stuffers, the iPhone.
"There are more eyes
looking over Apple products for vulnerabilities," Hotchkies told
AFP at a notorious annual DefCon gathering of hackers in Las
Vegas.
"It has slowly been
growing as a target people are more and more interested in."
"There are a lot
more people getting into it and really getting their hands dirty,"
said Hotchkies, who noted an obvious spike this year in the number of
DefCon attendees toting Macintosh laptops.
"I've been seeing a
lot of reverse engineering on the Apple platform."
Ironically
enough, part of this new fangled infection risk began when Apple
started whoring itself out to run Windows.
"Windows
developers
take their code and make it work on Apple," Hotchkies said.
"They could take potential vulnerabilities with them or possibly
create new ones because they are working on an entirely different
platform."
Something to think about the next time you download that a season
of The Wire from Piratebay.
Via Breitbart.
-written by our fill-in blogger, Byron Dafoe
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