Many Mac users think they are not in danger when using their computer, as Mac OS X is thought to be quite secure. But this isn’t true anymore, as we have seen in recent news with the apparition of two viruses which exploit some vulnerabilities in the operating system. Although these viruses have not been seen in the wild, because they were intentionally crippled, the damage is already done as some simple modifications would allow them to expand.
But these viruses are not the only threats to Mac OS X as the owner of rm my Mac discovered a few days ago. Trusting his operating system, he invited hackers to try to delete (rm is the unix instruction for deleting files) all the files in the disk of his mac mini, which was connected to Internet.
Six hours later, he discovered that it had been hacked, but the attacker didn’t remove his files, although he could have done it. According to the hacker, the machine was attacked with some unpublished exploits for Mac OS X which have not been been made public yet neither have been patched.
So, if you own a Mac you should better be aware of this and try to protect it. A firewall and deactivating all not needed services is the least you can do. I don’t currently own a Mac, so I don’t know if the default configuration already does this (should do it), but better check it before it’s too late.
From | ZDNet
As far as I know, the default configuration for Mac OS X does not enable the firewall. Also, the user created during the installation is given administrative privileges.
The first things a savvy Mac OS X user has to do is:
1. Enable the firewall: System Preferences -> Sharing -> Firewall tab -> Start
2. Create another, special user, give it administrative privileges and remove any administrative privileges from any other user.