No, it isn't. As I said, and phatch reiterated, there's nothing to be gained in writing hack programs for a OS that has less than 8% of the total market share. Apple does recommend running security on its OS.
My conclusions come from results of hacking competitions such as "Pwn to own" and the like, where Windows machines are inevitably the first ones to fall.
By tapping the talent of white-hat hackers on the spot, rather than in the market, this variable can be largely controlled for.
Where, pray tell, does your evidence come from? Because at best, what you have is a conjecture resulting from a thought experiment, yet you choose to treat it as gospel. If you prefer, we can agree to disagree, as long as we both acknowledge that in an open system, it is mathematically impossible to either prove or disprove your claim factually.
I never said they did. What I said is they will have a patch within 3 hours of being notified of the issue. Not one other security provider makes this promise.
It may be an impressive number, but if you consider that during the hacking competitions, the participants customarily all use "zero-day" bugs, it's clear that the antivirus manufacturers will ALWAYS be behind the more determined criminals.
Not true. Trojans aren't limited to email attachments.
They can be present in most files. However, Unix-based systems do not allow execution of code by files that are not trusted, without explicit permission of the administrator... a policy that is further reinforced by the introduction of the AppArmor suite, which confines even trusted executables to a subset of possible actions. That being said, the majority of Trojans that are not acquired as a "drive-by" (by visiting a compromised web site) are acquired either by downloading and executing them willingly (under the guise of a key generator, or a pirated piece of software) or by executing them after opening an email attachment.
You can set your system up anyway you wish. I know what has worked for me. Bug free for over 5 years.
Being an avid (less so nowadays) gamer, I have used a Windows desktop for an excess of 10 years now, from Windows 3.11 all the way to 64-bit Vista SP1, without a single infection. But just like your story, my own experience is totally irrelevant to the question at hand.
Again, do I want to spend my time cracking code for 100 million operating systems, or 8 million operating systems? Where can I do the most damage?
Most "bot-nets" use Windows98-XP machines because they are relatively easy to infect due to large-scale oversights in the design of the OS (defaults to admin rights) and the browser (ActiveX in IE allows execution of arbitrary code). Vista machines are substantially more difficult to compromise in this manner.
Until Unix-based systems approach 50% of the total market share, what's the purpose in wasting time breaking it?
Actually, considering that most of the servers that supply the Internet to the rest of us, are running some form of Unix, I would say that they are by far the more attractive target.
But never got a malware problem. Go on with confidence!
