EvilZone
General Tech => Operating System => : mithindrail January 06, 2013, 05:03:44 AM
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Hi All,
I am curious if OS X would be a good platform for hacking. I have noticed Security Tube's Vivek Ramachandran uses the Macintosh platform for his infosec needs. I also find reference to it being quite useful in PTES (http://www.pentest-standard.org/index.php/PTES_Technical_Guidelines#MacOS_X (http://www.pentest-standard.org/index.php/PTES_Technical_Guidelines#MacOS_X)). What are your thoughts?
It seems to be a good idea (obviously huge debate about overpriced hardware with walled garden mentality) but I personally prefer Arch Linux or Debian (still learning though). If you port over Homebrew it will give you all the tools you need (http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/ (http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/)). My goal are to learn some ideas on the "near-perfect" setup/platform for hacking. Thanks again everyone.
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OS X is essentially another proprietary *nix OS. Any POSIX-compliant operating system could be a decent hacking box, but Linux is by far the best due to its free and open source nature, among the fact that it has many flavors and can be customized into just about anything.
Still, getting to know the ins and outs of OS X is another added skill, so why not. Go for it.
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You can do hacking with any platform, be it windows, linux, freebsd or mac os x. But then the term hacking is not really defined.
Though I personally always choose linux over anything else as far as tech stuff that I personally am into goes.
Why? because there is a much bigger tech community for linux then for mac, meaning that I can solve my problems quicker and get info and help for linux easier. Also most of the information available online about most tech subjects such as networking or security usually uses covers linux.For example, in our ebook sectiion you will find hundreds of linux tech books, but probably 0 of mac tech books.
So decide by yourself.
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It depends on what you want to hack. If you are interested in Windows malware research, kernel hacking, obviously, it would be better to do it on a target platform (of course, you can use virtualization, but there are cases when running real system is vital).
In general, though, you can use any OS you are comfortable with. Personally, I use OS X because I'm happy to have all that great unix stuff: shell, command line utils, etc along with very user friendly interface. I like the fact, that I can do real work without being bothered with tuning look-and-feel features, wasting time in efforts to find good program for editing documents/playing moveis and so on. But Apple computers cost a lot. For this money you, definitely, can buy more powerful hardware.
So, I recommend you not to begin holy-wars, just give a try to different platforms and chose one that fits you better :) Good luck!
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All posts explaining this is great. But I say not, stick with a full blown open-source *nix distro.
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Alright, I am sticking with Arch Linux but I was just curious on the idea. Thanks all!
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All posts explaining this is great. But I say not, stick with a full blown open-source *nix distro.
Plus, even if OS X were a good OS for hacking, I still wouldn't use it because I think Apple is a terrible and greedy company and I'll never support them by using their products
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Plus, even if OS X were a good OS for hacking, I still wouldn't use it because I think Apple is a terrible and greedy company and I'll never support them by using their products
Ya took the words right out of my mouth.
APPLE is f**king expensive. And now taking over the market just becaus they made a big name in the past. Even ADOBE is obsesed with this shit. Dont know wher they would be now if it wasnt for creative people like Steave Jobs .