I also attempted to remove Norton from a friend's computer a few years ago. I failed and later discovered that was actually unable to be uninstalled. Norton published some instructions to let you remove parts to the point you could ignore it at least.
I swore to never to touch anything from Norton/Symantec ever again. I bought ESET/nod for a few machines but now I rely entirely on Windows Defender for the few Windows machines I own.
Norton, OTOH, would happily delete nmap.exe and cain.exe then beg for praise after the fact, a kitten with her first kill.
Still a very common misconception, however it's fair to say that macOS is still much "less likely" to be infected because of quantity.
Yes, there are now drive-by packs, crypters and RAT's that include OSX as a target. But the ratio for infections would be vastly lower.
If you live in a bad neighbourhood, you're more likely to get shot. If you live in a nice neighbourhood, you might get shot, but it's much less likely.
The ability for someone to shoot you in each neighbourhood is irrelevant when talking about likelihood of being shot.
If people decide to run as root that's their problem.
Also you don't need root to exploit UNIX users, getting hold of their $HOME is way more valuable than getting hold of the OS.
man 5 acl
Same on windows.
Note the implement parts of, that is not something UNIX has in any portable way.
>Same on Windows
Windows 8 Metro/Modern/UWP apps do not have access to your home directory.
What is being done to improve the situation on the Linux side of things?
To get a macro running in office the user has to explicitly ignore security warnings to do it, this would be the same in linux or MacOS where code execution capabilities were present.
> To get a macro running in office the user has to explicitly ignore security warnings to do it, this would be the same in linux or MacOS where code execution capabilities were present.
Sure, but it's pretty easy to ignore those warnings when you see something like [1] or [2].
[1]: https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ginpmnFHC_E/V3J3kFADrxI/AAAAAAAAo...
I'd suggest that the reason that there are fewer attacks of that nature on those platforms isn't down to superior OS security but less profit available to attackers, due to smaller market share and perhaps lack of a ubiquitous target app. like office.
I’m especially baffled that font processing is in the kernel. Allegedly, Windows 10 now moves non-system fonts into a restricted user-mode process, so exploits are a lot harder. But it still acts like the kernel is doing the processing, for backwards compatibility.
When things work correctly, NT has historically had a more robust and accessible set of controls, although I think modern UNIX closed that gap. But things often don't work correctly, and the complexity of the ecosystem makes it pretty trivial to exploit.
Also NT always focused on the user productivity first and as server afterwards.
Whereas UNIX always focused on the server first and user productivity afterwards.
It is always a mix and match between security and productivity.
outside of rarely used acl systems basic unix/linux permissions are far less granular than the windows equivalents.
For desktops modern windows handles things very similarly to modern linux, which is to say that you don't run as "root" or "administrator" by default and programs request escalated privileges via sudo on linux and UAC on windows.
As to privesc vulns, most desktop linux distros have limited protections there. One kernel bug can see someone escalate from user to root fairly easily.
With modern Windows apps there is at least a sandbox in play, so that a sandbox escape is required in addition to the kernel bug.
Both Operating systems can be configured to be more secure of course...