Space cowboy's Journal: Think different...

So, I was reading that Sony had installed DRM onto Macs as well as onto Windows machines, and I was curious to see how they got around the system protections to prevent software like this from doing exactly this...

They didn't.

Contrast the experience of a windows user: Consumer puts a cd into their computer with the intention of playing the cd. The cd takes advantage of a feature in Windows and installs software in the background without consumer's knowledge. Consumer is owned.

To the experience of the Mac user: Consumer puts a cd into their computer with the intention of playing the CD. Up comes a dialogue box asking for Admin privileges. Consumer gets to deny the 'owning'...

Now it's possible that 'consumer' would just click ok, type in their username/password, and allow Sony to do their dirty deeds, but since they've almost certainly put a CD into their computer before and it didn't do that, I doubt it. I'm pretty convinced my mother wouldn't type in a password - she'd probably call me to ask why it was doing that...

In any event, I prefer the Mac method - you at least get a chance to deny the installation of the rogue software, and even if you screw up and it installs, the contents are a simple "ls -lrt /System/Library/Extensions" away, to see what's been installed...

Simon

You give the user too much credit

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

You have obviously not worked in IT before. You give the user way too much credit. The first thing you learn in IT is that users will do anything they can to destroy your system.

Disable write permissions so they can't install Gator? They demand that you install Gator for them.

Block .exe attachments? Scan .zip files? The users will open a password-protected .zip archive (using the random PW in the email), then execute the executable inside.

Disable saving on the HDD so the users have to use the (regularly bac

Re:You give the user too much credit

[Space cowboy]

You're far too nice to your users.

They demand you install gator ??? Tie them, bundle in the boot of your car, take them to the nearest zoo, and introduce them first hand to a 'gator... Problem solved.

Fortunately, the second of these doesn't really apply to the Mac.

I've always found laughter to be the best solution to the third...

I used to work as a sysadmin on a college network. I never had the troubles you seem to be having. I was always a last-resort for any of my users, and if they were cute I was someti

Something to learn here

[WalterSobchak]

We have to realize that some Mac Users have a false sense of security.

And they must know that whenever an app demands an admin password, that means that app can do ANYTHING on their system, at install time or in the future.

This is not so much a problem for companies (or households) where regular users do not have admin rights. But a lot of a Macs are "single", so they user is automatically the admin.

I hope this rootkit news will make people aware again to ask "why?" when a request for admin privs pops up

Ale

Re:Something to learn here

[djh101010]

And undoubtedly, some windows proponent will say "See? there are Mac OSX viruses!", when in fact this is nothing more than an application. Granted, it's a bad application, but it's just an app like any other as far as the system is concerned. If it starts putting CDs in my drive for me, and typing the admin password by itself, _then_ I'll think about maybe getting concerned.

Man, I don't miss Windows.