Ok, i realize there is a dedicated board for Macs, but i am just wondering what Network (in)Security thinks of Macs.

Hardware wise i realize they are the same, well other than the TPM chip.

So as an OS what is your opinion of it?

OS X is shit and shouldn't be trusted. Recently they replaced the random number generator /dev/random with an insecure pseudo-random-number-generator. They recommend seeding it every 160 days to get real entropy.

This, coupled with the implementation of a backdoored prng in Vista, makes me think that the Illuminati really doesn't want me to have good entropy. So I'm building a hardware RNG.

Aside from that, SUS3 is a joke, and most of their stuff is a direct ripoff of Free software.

Just use FreeBSD.

Im actually thinking of putting FreeBSD on my pc. Im going to give it a shot tomorrow, for now im on OSx, and i just lost the illusion of security.

This is very interesting, I had heard about the backdoored prng in Vista, but this does this pseudo-entropy mean that if they really wanted to, they could determine the outcome of any supposed random variable, because the entropy along a long enough time scale drops to zero? Does encryption technology use whatever entropy is provided by the operating system or something? (<-- possibly a very ignorant question)

[blind]

IMO macs are overrated and overpriced, their just not worth it.

Ignorance is the only universal human default.

It means that if you generated say a PGP key, if they could find out what seeded the random number generator, they could find out what your private key was (if they've cracked yarrow, I don't really know that much about encryption). That's for OS X. On vista, the PRNG is backdoored and it's possible that the NSA knows every bit coming out of it.

Typically, on UNIX-based systems, the RNG is at /dev/random, which harvests REAL entropy from hardware events. Hardware is physical and decays, so things like keyboard interrupts and disk reads happen with an element of "randomness". You can also harvest entropy from your speaker static, surrounding sound, or webcam reads, if you install other programs and have the right hardware. What Apple did was they removed this RNG and replaced it with another copy of /dev/urandom, which is a cryptographically secure psuedo-RNG. On Gnu/Linux, /dev/urandom is just a never-ending source of randomness, because it takes /dev/random as a "seed" and then uses a cryptographically strong algorithm to produce more "random" bytes.

The best thing to do is to buy or build a real hardware RNG. This is what I've decided on.

Also, you should only install FreeBSD if you're willing to learn a lot very fast. FreeBSD is a great OS made by great people, but it isn't for newbies. The reason I said "just install FreeBSD" is because in true Apple tradition, OS X is a ripoff of FreeBSD.

i realize that FreeBSD is going to be a bit to learn, but im up for a challenge.

The following MAY make me sound like an idiot:

I know some unix commands from Mac ans Ubuntu, as well as a few other distros i've messed around with.

Well, it's fairly similar on FreeBSD, so if you know basic unix shell stuff, you'll be fine. FreeBSD's default shell is the Bourne shell, not the Gnu Bourne-Again shell, so some things will be different.

I still haven't done it.... Been what two-three days, this is pretty much the only time im on my Comp. Work.... well its Sunday tomorrow... fun with unix.

The default root shell is tcsh, unless it changed in 7.0.
The default accounts created by the root is sh.
tcsh has been the default for years...

Edit: If I recall correctly tcsh is also the default in OS 10.
And, of course bash is available in the ports collection and on the install cd.