WinXP won't expose Macs to viruses
updated 11:05 am EDT, Thu April 13, 2006
WinXP, Macs, viruses
Analyst firm Gartner has said that any talk of Apple's Boot Camp software exposing Mac OS X to security risks is hype, and should be ignored. "All users should ignore any hype about the possibility of exposing the Mac OS to more viruses or worms. The Mac software will be located on another partition within a different file system; thus, running Windows on a Mac will not expose the Mac software to more malware," said research VP Michael Silver. The analyst noted, however, that any additional marketshare Apple stands to gain by introducing Boot Camp may attract the attention of malicious users, according to Silicon.com. "If Mac sales and Apple's market share increase, the Mac OS could potentially become a more attractive target for malware," Silver said. Earlier this week, a marketing director for the McAfee anti-virus firm said that Macs could pose network security risks by incubating viruses, which could then be passed on to vulnerable Windows systems.
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Joined: Aug 2001
Guys an idiot
What does it matter that the mac partition is on a different partition. You don't think windows viruses are sophisticated enough to be able to s**** around with the hard drive partitions?
Also, there is software for windows (called MacDrive?) that allows you to read/write HFS+ formatted drives. If you have that installed, your disk is certainly exposed (not to mention that, without a doubt, the file permissions will be completely ignored and, thus, malicious software could decide to replace/add kexts, kernels, apps, or anything else they want).