Along the lines of what Paul is talking about, it's obvious that the target of many disgruntled (or wannabe) hackers is the OS of the Pacific Northwest - which came about from a marketing angle (mostly fueled by the "new end user" market structure).
Marketing Angle includes the entire story - from the IBM proposal, to the IT Media craze.
(this would make a nice threaded story, very interresting events involved in those early days - including Xerox PARC, Apple II, and the cloning of the ROM BIOS!).

I have yet to hear of hard core WORMS and Trojan Horses that affect machines running Linux, but maybe the info is kept quiet? <enter X-Files mode>

Very seldomly is anything heard which targets the Mac OS.

The last few (and very crippling) WORMS were hacked to target and abuse the holes in the "Not-Mentioned" OS's Security, and work via backdoor.

This really sucks, because it takes advantage of innocent unsuspecting end users- the ones which are not responsible for whatever anger is being vented; and they end up either being totally screwed over with rampant Viral scripts, unwillingly adding to the problem via E-Mail or being the infected host on a LAN (which screws up the whole LAN), along with requiring the services of Technical Personnel to fix everything!

It also makes everything for us power users very difficult! WORMS clogging up the already thin pipelines connecting E-Mail Robots; all the trouble from Harvesters, Spambots; and on and on!

Even worse is the trendy Virus Scanning Software, and the needs of Firewalls! Everyone is getting rich from clowns sending out annoying applets, however it's us who suffer!

Sent a .zip file to work (work uses AOL), and when I went to download it, the default Virus Scanning Applet killed my zip attachment!
All that was left were parameters in the zip file!
Extremely irritating! Also a major PITA since I needed the files that day early AM, and had to get them during Lunch!
It's easy to get the attachment without the Virus check, but I wanted to see what would happen.

This experiment answered a ton of "Whaddaheck???" questions I had, from similar situations of E-Mailed attached zip files to co-workers (and others using AOL). Still cannot get most of them to bypass the Virus Alert - no matter how much security I include!
(security being file size(s), name, sig files, indicating text, and "pre" messages which described following message with attachment).
They will not bypass the virus scan because they are afraid to "catch a virus".

Oh well, that's what "Sneakernet" is for, huh? [Linked Image]

Said it once, and will say it again:
If I had the talent and scripting skills of the "pro" hackers, I would write so many kick butt apps for daily use!
Not one of them would be malicious at all!

Scott35

Scott " 35 " Thompson
Just Say NO To Green Eggs And Ham!