Bitcoin Forum

i have a mac.  is there anyone out there that uses linux on your mac instead of os x?  i want my computer to be as secure as possible, and i am willing to spend the time to learn.  can someone point me in the right direction please? 

I use a mac and love it, why you want to switch to linux? Mac is pretty secure, and get true crypt and learn to love it!

It's definitely doable. Check out https://help.ubuntu.com/community/How%20to%20install%20Ubuntu%20on%20MacBook%20using%20USB%20Stick

I use OSX, and I feel it's pretty secure.  I backup my wallets in a strong TruCrypt container, and make sure not to leave them lying around when I'm not using them.

I've also used OSX to mine (natively), and I never ran into any security issues.  The only access that I allow in is through SSH, and that is protected using keys.

I suppose if you were really paranoid, you could run Linux within a Virtual Image (in like parallels), then keep  the image in an encrypted container.  It'd probably be pretty tedious getting access if you wanted to spend any coins though.

Disable Java. Use a secure browser. Disable pdf extensions/addons in your browser. Get an extension/addon such as FlashBlock (Available for both Firefox and Chrome) which automatically blocks flash on websites until you approve them.

Actually java isn't an issue on mac, it has already been patched, remember any java less than 1.7 or java 7 is under apple's control so apple pushes the fixes and they do it very fast.

Not an issue? 600,000 computers were infected through a java exploit. There's always the chance of new exploits in the versions Apple manages. Also, some people chose to install java 7.

How many computers infected were mac? NONE! And the latest OS, mountain lion comes with java 6 so the exploit had nothing to do with those. So you clearly have no idea what your talking about.

100%. All 600,000 were macs because it was a mac trojan that used a java exploit (It first was disguised as a flash update).


And about mountian lion, I said some people chose to upgrade to java 7.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/04/mac-trojan-exploits-unpatched-java-vulnerability-no-password-needed/
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/04/flashback-infections-not-waning-after-all-650000-macs-still-hijacked/

First off that was in april, second the one that was just running around had nothing to do with macs, it was all windows, and people that use java 7 i hope understand the risk but apple doesn't package java 7 they package java 6 which is pretty secure, so again you know nothing, do you even own a mac, probably not since you have no clue.

Do you have short term memory loss? I stated twice so far that there are people on who chose to install java 7 (Oracle's build) so those mac users are then vulnerable. I understand that the trojan was in April, I'm pointing out that Java is a security issue against your bold and clueless claim "java isn't an issue on mac". That's what someone like you would say when they patched the java exploit that existed before the flashback trojan one. Java, Flash, PDFs are extremely common attack vectors. Disable autoloading those things to be secure. Even if you are running the latest patched version

Hardly anyone installs java 7 look at the numbers, only if you have to, I have java 7 installed on my computer and never had an attack, there are security measures people can take, to prevent these things, but usually if your not doing shady stuff java isn't really insecure and people like you, say that is very insecure and have no idea about java. So get your facts straight and that April trojan was pretty much stop in the coming days. Any I am not arguing with someone who doesn't even have a mac or know anything about java but how to google "java trojan"

lol wow. Just wow. You may be suffering from brain damage.

Are you a troll?

no brain damage here and nope cause when it is fact you can't be a troll ;)

I am so sick and tired of all this Mac security BS. Apparently, no one has heard of security though obscurity.

thanks for all the response.  you guys are much nicer than the Lending folks.

don't get me wrong i must say i'm happy with osx.  just the fact that i've never tried it made me think i could be missing out on some unknown advantage, by only living in my osx world 100%.  

as far as security/encryption practices:  i use filevault, which i know only encrypts the home directory (i'm on 10.6.8 so i don't have the option for full disk encryption).  have been meaning to learn how to use TrueCrypt so I'll make that my next task.  i use a VPN always, Firefox, java disabled, noscript, ghostery.  

i generated my paper wallet after booting into the ubuntu liveOS.  i plan on holding the majority of my bitcoins there, with only a small portion in my hot wallet.  i'm trying to come up with a really strong yet memorable passphrase to create a brainwallet with as well.  

Everybody stop for a moment.

OSX is BSD.  You do know that right?

JAVA Vulnerabilities were cross-platformed....

Stop the Insanity.

Yes, run Ubuntu/Windows/OSX using Bootcamp all together...  The only security factor is the guy typing on it.

/sigh

FreeBSD to be exact


Nope since Apple does do security patches on their own, and has nothing to do with oracle so that is incorrect.

Its shades of gray... its like saying "This virus won't affect your Windows 98 machine..."

Duh, of course it wont... so Apple is a version behind with JRE Rollouts... "They appear to be smarter"

more like you have windows 98 and google is pushing out patches

I installed BeOS once... it was ... cute.

if i may refocus the thread here - what would be the best programming language to learn first, something that would apply well to osx and bitcoin ideally?

Learn java, to get the concepts, then you probably want to learn objective-c after that. Objective-C is hard to start off out of the gate with. It is what native mac apps are written in. Also their are object-c libraries to do JSON-RPC calls so it isn't that hard to tie to bitcoind or bitcoin-qt.

thanks gweedo, stan - very helpful.  i think i will start with this MIT ocw course i found here: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00sc-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-spring-2011/

i don't really know what i want to do with the knowledge, but i have the interest and enough free time at the moment to put the effort in. 

Java and C# are verbose,easy, and safe. You could check out lua or even javascript if you wanna use something like Unity to make a game. Python is nice and usable but some things can be too cryptic for beginners.