this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
397 points (96.5% liked)
Technology
59300 readers
4765 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Also keep in mind that the main reason Windows is targeted for so many exploits is because of the consumer market share. If Linux consumer market share goes up, so will general malware targeting it. We already saw it happen when OSX share increased and Apple had to abandon the whole "Macs don't get viruses" schtick.
It's kinda crazy that Apple got away with spinning "Our products don't sell well enough for this to be a problem" into a marketing point for as long as they did.
I assume they said it was due to other reasons than obscurity, although we know better.
It was due to other reasons, too.
One of the main malware vectors back then was Internet Explorer (and specifically ActiveX), Outlook Express, and MS Office macros. That's not just a matter of obscurity; it's because Microsoft specifically wrote very shitty software with no regard for security. Netscape was not nearly as exploited as IE even when it was the leading browser.
Apple always does that. After iAds failed, they pivoted into advertising a privacy focused ad campaign to counter Google. Had iAds succeeded, they'd be perfectly fine into getting into that business.
How did it take 6 yrs to fail tho
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd
Linux has had a long history of worms and viruses, fortunately (sorta) thanks to its server legacy. Dumb and lazy server admins have given it pretty good 'secure by default' behaviours and cultures.
Desktop users though: whole different set of challenges.