Posted on 01/16/2005 12:04:57 PM PST by Bush2000
I read it the first time it was posted - seven months ago.
It's even less relevant today.
Bush2000 felt it necessary to REPOST this June 2004 article slamming OSX security by Secunia - - PING!
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Oh maybe bush2000 was bored today and needed some excitement. All that football yesterday is a let down!
Not true. Mac's do a regular check automatically for updates and announces their availability on your desk top. It's so easy and transparent that most Mac users are up-to-date.
Yawn...
WAAAAY Wrong!
Apple provides security upgrades regularly, and they are almost automatic. They aren't completely automatic because no executable software can be installed or patched on a Mac without a specific, password protected, permission.
As I said then (and I was the original poster of the article), the 19 "critical" security issues identified by Secunia were far from "critical". The only one that I considered critical was the last one that allowed a dick image to be automatically downloarded, mounted, and execute a script that could do damage to the user's home directory without user intervention. THAT was fixed quite rapidly.
Of the "36 advisories published (by Secunia) in 2003-2004, 90% of them REQUIRED that to be effective, the system under attack had to be booted into a "Root" account... which is turned off by default in OSX (and requires a seperate password to be activated) to avoid such exploits! Many of them required that the exploiter HAD TO BE OPERATING AT THE KEYBOARD OF THE COMPUTER HE WAS ATTEMPTING TO HACK... with Root activated! IF the hacker had this kind of access to the physical computer, he ALREADY owned it.
Secunia chose to ignore this "root" requirement for their "exploits" to be of any danger thus ignoring one of the primary security measures available to Mac users. 99% of Mac users will never have to operate in Root... but 99% of Windows users operate as an "Administrator", the Windows equivalent to root by default!
Bushie, you keep claiming that we cannot know that NO ONE was hit by any of these security issues... and you are right... but NO ONE HAS REPORTED ANY! NO ONE HAS DEMONSTRATED A SUCCESSFUL BREECH OF OSX WITH ITS NATIVE SECURITY ACTIVATED EXCEPT FOR A COUPLE OF PROOFS OF CONCEPT THAT WERE RAPIDLY FIXED! NO ONE HAS DEMONSTRATED A VIRUS IN THE WILD!
You want to prove that Macs are just as insecure as Windows? There is an easy way to do that: FIND or CREATE a virus or spyware/adware that will self propagate, auto-install, and spread to Mac OSX computers. This challenge has been out there for FOUR YEARS and no one has risen (or descended into the gutter) to it.
IT should also be noted that Secunia was pushing a new "Mac Security" package that they wanted to sell... they were unsuccessful.
So, you are also right that this article, which was thouroughly debunked and laughed about seven months ago, IS as relevant today as then... none what-so-ever. It was so relevant then that it only generated about 20 responses.
Go back to the original posting and refresh your memory. I invite other readers to do the same.
Dang! That exploit COULD have "downloarded" an image of a male sexual organ, but that is not what I intended to type before my tired fingers made two typos within six words of each other...
"dick image = disk image
downloarded = downloaded
Try to run windows on a g4..
OSX: Currently, 0 out of 41 Secunia advisories, is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database.
WIN XPCurrently, 17 out of 73 Secunia advisories, is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database.
So I can have OS with no currently known vulnerabilities os Windows which according to your own source with all vendor patches installed and all vendor workarounds applied, is currently affected by one or more Secunia advisories rated Highly critical
Oh yea, thats a hard choice...
You obviously did not look at unpatched errors, OSx has Zero and XP has in the area of 20..
True. But, the fact remains Max OSX is not so immune as the adherents of the Apple religion would like people to believe.
What you will find is Mac users saying their system is better architecture and given the fact mac has fewer discovered vulnerabilities, fewer unpatched vulnerabilities, and the nature of the vulnerabilities found thats not a bad foot to be standing on.
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