Right, the move of games (and software, music and movies) from ownership on purchase to license bothers me. If I pay for it I expect to own it. Next move, I fear, will be similar to Business level software – monthly license fee or lose access.
That’s the problem though, we don’t really know how well MS is to work with. Sure, Sophos will say that MS is, but they are an MS partner too. MS may very well NOT respond well to anyone that isn’t a “partner” reporting bugs.
In case you haven’t heard, many companies are going the route of “Keep the vulnerabilities quiet or we will sue”. Hell, there was a case in Canada where a student was writing an app for a project at the college and he found a serious vulnerability in the University’s system that allowed anyone to, with the correct code, steal all the information about each student there. He reported it to the school and vendor, the vendor said they’d fix it, he checked in a few days later and the school kicked him out for “hacking” and marked him in such a negative way that he can never go to college again. Great way to thank someone for telling them about a major issue.
That’s what he is trying to say, though. By default in Mac and Linux Desktops (and Servers) if you went to your ISPs website and it tried to execute something in the background a Admin Dialog will pop up. No Matter how you setup an Ubuntu/Fedora/LinuxMint/etc Desktop you ALWAYS have to use the root/admin password to install ANYTHING. Prevents unauthorized programs from running.
Right, but explain to me, then, how the Network Security Professional I know, when training for his certification, was given a disc to toy with that contained over 50,000 Mac Specific Malware on it. (that’s not counting the high Windows count that was on the disc as well)
There’s a hole in that thinking. The goal of Malware (viruses, rootkits, trojans, etc) today is NOT to yell, scream, and ruin you computer. The goal is to now hide in the background and steal information, hijack your computer for a botnet, keylog your passwords so they can access your work account, etc.
Malware nowadays doesn’t want you to know its there, so if you have a virus, you probably don’t even know it.
I think it’s more along the lines that no one in Google is approved for a Windows Laptop unless their work absolutely needs it – if you don’t need Windows, you have to stick with Mac, Linux or Chromebook. Makes sense, probably cuts down on cost a bit (unless, of course, everyone is getting a Mac). This is mainly because Google Backend Infrastructure relies almost entirely on Linux based systems or Google Systems for the corporate work.
