See, that’s the kind of denial I think could become a problem for OS X. *Every* web browser has vulnerabilities in this way, and this particular one is largely due to an over-permissive default file download setting. There has only been a couple of Virus’s/Trojans, software exploits are inevitable, again, depends on the fix time.Įven if you wanted to go that direction, you’d still have to say that the problem was in Safari, not OSX. The recent articles saying Leap.A is a virus/Trojan is false, normal people would recognize it as Malware. The is a huge difference between bug fixes and exploits compared to Virus’s/Trojans/Malware. I’m surprised that this Mac site has taken the bait. The media, as usual, because of the lack of knowledge will get and run stories with complete fud in them, you have to wonder who their ‘sponsors’ or owners are to get these articles on front pages etc. So instead of having an average patch time of 130 days (Like Microsoft) for a serious flaw, Macs have that turned around in weeks. No OS is completely secure, but what matters, is how quick it takes for the company to respond to the exploit/vulnerbility. SSH has the ‘potential’ to be exploited, but is it turned on by default? No. Sure, so Apache might have an exploit, which is fixed pretty quick, but is it turned on by default? No. These entire articles are beyond a joke, the amount of user interaction needed to exploit these services and the fact that the rest the service is actually disabled by default. My mom’s new iMac has been purring along without a single hitch for almost two months That’s way longer than her XP machine ever went without a problem. I can’t *stand* Windows update, which requires far more clicking than OS X’s software update (both, of course, pale in comparison to apt-get, but I digress…) I can’t deal with the fact that every time I log in to a machine in our computer lab, I have to wait a minute for the virus scanner and spyware scanner. I can’t deal with the fact that VirusScan always seems to want to eat CPU for lunch when I’m trying to do a Matlab simulation. But frankly, I don’t have the patience for that crap. You run Windows Update and a virus checker and a spyware scanner, etc, and you’ll probably be fine. I’ve had my XP machined owned by blaster after just 2 hours connected to the internet. No viruses, spyware, not even an errent popup. I’ve had my Mac hooked up directly to the internet for months. The same doesn’t appear to be true for Windows. A (admittedly very) quick look through their top 20 list suggests that Windows has still had more critical vulnerabilities found, and it looks like all of the critical vulnerabilities affecting OS X on that list have already been patched. It’s also worth noting that the article doesn’t give much mention to the severity of the vulnerabilities they list. I’m just thinking that it might be wise to wait for Vista to come out before making too many comparisons of the number of vulnerabilities found on the two platforms. I’m not listing this to make excuses a vulnerability is a bad thing no matter how it got there. Similarly, Safari has been changing rapidly while Internet Explorer has been coasting for ages. Meanwhile, aside from some security updates and the like, Microsoft has been selling pretty much the same OS for 4 or 5 years. In January 2006, OS X became multi-platform. 10.5 included a dissying pile of updates, both in view and behind the scenes, including stuff like heavy modification to the kernel and support for 64-bit. They NEED OS X to have holes so they have something to write about, because they’re bored with writing about how secure it is. He takes ridiculous shots in the dark, and if he attracts an audience then the tech writers know what to write about next. I suppose that’s where Dvorak really fits in. The main thing here is not even about OS X, but how these trends get started in tech writing and then everybody gets onboard if they sense they have an audience. And it seems like since then, it’s just been snowballing, different writers/security sites trying to outdo each other to bring the startling revelation that OS X has security holes. Then eventually, there was an article saying maybe OS X did have vulnerabilities possibly because of its BSD layer. There was a time a short while back when a whole slew of people were writing articles about the security of OS X, and how hard it would be to write malware for it. I’m no Mac user, but to me it just looks like people are jumping on the bandwagon.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |