Posted on 07/22/2010 7:40:23 AM PDT by for-q-clinton
Here's another blow to those insist that Apple products are rock solid and unhackable: The security company Secunia reports that Apple products have more vulnerabilities than those of any other company. Oracle came in second place, with Microsoft in third.
Secunia just issued a report that covers vulnerabilities for the first half of 2010, and it's not good news for Apple. The report (which you can download here) shows that Apple last had the most vulnerabilities of all vendors in 2005, before Oracle took over the top spot. And now Apple is on top again. You can see the chart, below.
The chart shows that Apple products consistently have more vulnerabilities than do Microsoft ones.
...
However, there will certainly be one surprise for those who believe that Microsoft products are particularly vulnerable --- Secunia reports that they're not. The primary vulnerabilities on PCs are not due to Microsoft programs, but rather third-party programs, it says:
...
The report then concludes:
Users and businesses must change their perception that Microsoft products pose the largest threat in order to allocate security resources effectively. General awareness on the risk of 3rd party programs must be established.
(Excerpt) Read more at pcworld.com ...
I’m not lumping out a few hundred bucks for MS on the mac for my office tools (we have an older version of it on the mac, but it does not work well with our network, nor can our other computers read the docs created with it). As it is, we can’t even get our mac to run properly on our wireless network with the Win 7 machines, and resetting the printer function and screwing around with that every time the kids need to print a paper is not worth it. We just have them do it on our PC’s.
Our Mac is 5 - 7 years old, and it is just used as a flow-over for the kids to get on the internet.
You are welcome to buy it if you like, if Apple has that much value to you. Our system similarly sells on ebay for around 300 bucks, offer me that amount, pay for shipping and its yours.
I am sorry that us not using our Mac offends you in some way. I guess I could package it up and send it to Africa or make a planter out of it and sing to Gaia, would that make you feel better?
It is absolutely amazing the depths you will go in your anti-Apple fanaticism. Your equivalence of Google's in-house ability to control the searches of George Bush to searches of Apple virus attacks is really up there in the stratosphere.
Please demonstrate that Apple and the hordes of "MacBots" have the power and ability to consistently "game" Google and Yahoo! searches to hide all the exploits of Mac viruses over the past ten years. You are delusional if you think that is happening.
friends=threads
Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe !!
Do you even know HOW those two key words were used and that it has NOTHING to do with Google or Politics?
You can take ANY TWO segmented and usually unrelated words, or a phrase, ANY...
And then you create web pages with those words in that order on them, and begin to LINK to other pages with those same word combinations.
You get your friends to do it, blogs to do it, you make a game out of it.
YOU! Not Google. Not some conspiracy. Just a few hundred kids on a web forum can and DO do this all the time.
Google’s spiders and bots use a formula based on linked referrals for ranking searches. No one knows the exact weight, but ALL search engines do this the same way.
Thus, 1000 web sites or more all with that ODD combination of words or that phrase will ALL pull each other up to the top search rankings in what seems like no time at all.
But it is a GAME. It is NOTHING like the tin foil hat nonsense you posted.
OK?
Pardon me? I fail to see the difference. Secunia sells anti-virus software as well... for the corporate level... very expensive. They have a vested interest in keeping the Mac out.
Secunia has been spreading anti-Mac FUD for years... and has been caught manufacturing it. Some of the Proof-of-Concept OSX viruses were ONLY seen in Secunia's labs... but were reported as being seen in the wild... by Secunia. It was only later that Secunia admitted they had not been found in the wild, but had only been submitted to them by their authors.
I can’t tell you exactly, I’d have to think about it, I think we got it when my son was 6, and he’s 13 now.
I’m not saying apple is bad, I think you are going on the defensive about them, and I can see why, folks get heated about the debate.
For me, it just doesn’t fit. I have to look at several factors.
1) I like to customize our computers, upgrade them whenever this or that component is on sale from NewEgg or wherever. I like doing that with cars too. Its something I enjoy. I find it much easier to do on a PC because its what I’m used to.
2) Cost, because we build our own machines (my son and I actually enjoy the family time it gives us together) we can build very powerful gaming machines (which he really digs) for a pretty frugal price (much cheaper than say a Dell, much much cheaper than an Alienware Dell, and more performance). Apple is priced out of our budget for what we desire in performance.
3) Software and accepted compatability. Fine, I can get an office suite for the mac, but none of my proprietary software runs very well on our mac. It never has, even with trying to run them in the windows background. I use several engineering aps and cad programs that were designed to run on windows. These were designed by companies like Trane, Carrier, and my duct calc CADS and blueprint CADS are also proprietary to a windows environment. If they were based on Mac, I would have to switch.
4) Forms. My forms for state and city bids are submitted in the latest excel or docs format. They are unreadable with our old OS and I’m not updating that OS for the Mac when I can just do it on a PC.
5) Networking problems. We have 4 other PC’s in the house (one for each kid, one for business and an old mac). The PC’s have no problem in our HomeGroup. The old mac cannot function well. I have had a buddy tell me the new macs are also problematic in that regard (sharing Microsoft networks) unless you are willing to learn about Macs. I am not. My PC’s fit my needs, as mentioned above.
6) I worked for years in the graphics arts field (a previous life) and Mac was the way to go. All graphic files were done in Mac. In that regard, I would say they excelled. I have no need for that.
7) As previously mentioned, Games. My kids love games. They don’t want to be stuck with 3 games. They like to spend their allowance and buy PC games, not wait 5 years for it to come out on Mac. To kids this is important. Computer Games to kids is what baseball used to be to my generation. It is how they social network (well that and scouting for our kids). They don’t want to be stuck playing “dig dug” while their friends are blasting through outer space or slaying dragons.
I hope your not going to flame me, from your posting history you have a habit of doing so to those who don’t think Apple is the “Bees Knees”. Just stating my needs. I don’t buy from an emotional point of view, I buy out of necessity and Apple does not fit that bill.
BTW, my wife has an iPhone and she likes it, she thinks its cool. She doesn’t want another brand PDA, because she wants an iPhone, and she’s my wife, so she gets what makes her happy. I don’t care if she bought it because it matches her purse. It doesnt’ matter to me, it fits her needs and desires. I have a cheap Verizon phone, not a PDA and it works for what I need.
I will probably buy a HP Slate when I decide to step up and retire my Lenova Laptop (yes, thats another computer we have) for the road (and I love it because of the little red point button on the keypad, it fits my NEEDS).
Again, not saying one is better than the other for anyone else but me and the needs of our family, so please don’t think I’m attacking you or your choice. You buy whatever you want, it doesn’t matter to me. Purchase what fits you.
Sorry for the long post. Flame away.
Naaaah.
The most retarded comment is the one you just made.
So google which OWNS the search engine business and is DEADLY combat with Apple vs Android, has gamed their own search engine to show thousands of problem apps and viruses effecting Android and None effecting Apple? “
Nope.
Applebots can and DO game search engine results though, just like Google was gamed by Bush haters to display, George Bush's name whenever a search was made for “miserable failure”:
"Google Kills Bush’s Miserable Failure Search & Other Google Bombs
Jan 25, 2007 at 11:00pm ET by Danny Sullivan
After just over two years, Google has finally defused the “Google Bomb” that has returned US President George W. Bush at the top of its results in a search on miserable failure."
http://searchengineland.com/google-kills-bushs-miserable-failure-search-other-google-bombs-10363
Search results are gamed all the time, and not necessarily by the search engine owners. The search engine owners can change their algorithms to get around the "bomb" though if they want. Only thing is, Google is very happy to promote the "Window is not secure" meme, so they will not necessarily be in any hurry to defuse such a search "bomb".
In fact, Google has been throwing FUD at Windrows for as long as I can remember.
No more Windows at Google: Just FUD?
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/no-more-windows-at-google-just-fud/2157
# 1. Search results are very easy to manipulate. It's been done lots of times.
# 2. Applebots hatred of Microsoft has been proven over and over again, and is on the same kind of level as as the hatred that the left wing crazies had for Bush. If the crazies manipulated Google to show certain results when certain nasty words are used, it's not out of possibility that the Applebots did the same on Windows.
# 3. The mere showing up more results for Microsoft than for apple when a search on security is done, does now in the least prove that Windows 7 is less secure than Snow leopard like poster “kevkrom” was implying.
# 4. If despite test after test showing that Windows 7 is more secure than OSX, some search result just keeps showing the exact opposite of that, it's perfectly reasonable to put it down to that search engine being “gamed”. It's been done by people who are even less fanatical than the Applebots.
Insane. Certifiable! That only works for the first hits. Now find the REST of the hits. It DOESN'T WORK to hide hits as you were claiming. Where are the years of "hidden" reports of all the Mac viruses "gamed" away by Apple and the "Macbots" you were claiming?
I didn't make the claim. You did.
The absence of such site doesn't mean it can't happen. But I guarantee you with only 5% of the market share that website will be a lot harder to find than the windows one. So I'll let you go first.
Ahh, I see you backing down now. I am glad that you can see when you have been caught lying.
It must be that those 5% Mac users are just so more advanced than the 95% PC users. I bet that’s how we are able to hide the truth on the net.
Or maybe the 5% just work harder? Yeah, the 95% try and bring the truth to the top of the searches, but they only have PC Magazine, Consumer Reports, Microsoft, and CNN to help them... who are those losers compared to the vast Apple drones and our virtual army of zombies!!
Do I need a Sarc tag?
LOL
This IS one of the funniest I have ever heard. Windows being more secure is only second to Apple hiding the truth from search engines.
Where is our #1 Troll this week? At least he pretended to make sense, this Joe fella is coo coo for coco puffs crazy.
Okay, How does Borders in Provo sound? We can have a race to see who can take over the others computer.
Some of us mactards might surprise you : )
Tomorrow at 10 AM? If you insist on Starbucks I can do that too, but I want to pick up a book.
When you don't show I will assume you are a reprobate too : )
I may not be able to take over your Mac (I don't know any of the arbitrary code execution holes being used right now), but it's trivially easy to get your personal information without you knowing. And it's from Safari, specifically the Apple-created (not Webkit) part of the browser.
How do you know your personal information has not been leaked already? You don't. Safari gladly gives away that information without and user interaction, just by visiting a web page.
You might have posted a link to the original study, instead of the laughable conclusion drawn by PC World.
Here, I’ll save you the effort:
http://secunia.com/gfx/pdf/Secunia_Half_Year_Report_2010.pdf
As you see by reading the report, no, Windows isn’t secure. Far from it.
The author at PC World, however, either can’t spot the Secunia error in methodology for creating that goofy little graph, or is depending upon the reader not spotting it.
If you’d use the CVE database, or the CERT database, you’d see just how silly the above nonsense is. This is an article written by an author who has a pecuniary interest in promoting Windows, published in a periodical that likewise favors Windows, from a company that sells Windows security products. Yet, reading into the guts of the cited report doesn’t paint such a nice picture for Windows, nor does it spend any time discussing the numbers displayed in the graph for Oracle or Apple.
As for “inherently secure:” No modern OS is “inherently secure.” If you want my recommendation on the “most secure OS available?” my response would be that OpenBSD is perhaps the most secure OS easily available.
The only OS that came close to being “inherently secure” was Multics on Honeywell hardware:
http://www.acsac.org/2002/papers/classic-multics.pdf
Sadly, Honeywell mainframes were always fighting an uphill fight against the S/370, and they eventually (Like all of the seven dwarves) were out of the computer business.
That said, in the last year, I’ve spent over 40 hours of my time helping people fix their Windows systems that were loaded up with malware - and EVERY single one of those systems was running an anti-virus/security package. Most of the security s/w was some version of McAffee - and the malware zipped right by it. Variants of Windows were Win2K, WinXP, Vista and 98.
I don’t run any anti-virus or security s/w on either of my Macs. Haven’t spent one minute on security issues in going on three years.
This latest security hole in Safari really isn't an issue since the number of users affected is rapidly diminishing as people drop Safari, even in preference for Chrome, Firefox, or IE.
Perhaps Apple is just relying upon a dying user base to make the impetus to solve this problem moot?
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