[Swordmaker]

Infoworld article on why OS X is more secure than Windows... with Chapter and Verse... PING!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

[Echo Talon]

3 things we can count on paying taxes and Swordmaker posting trash about windows and great articles about Apple.

[rlmorel]

Regardless of whether the author is biased or not, I base my estimation of whether Windows is inherently more or less secure than a UNIX box on empirical observations:

1.) Proportionally, how many spyware/malware/antivirus packages exist and are used for UNIX boxes vs. Windows boxes?

2.) In my institution, I am allowed to place a UNIX box on the network with no virus protection. I am not allowed, under any circumstances to do so with a Windows box.

While a UNIX box's security seems nearly completely dependent on how it it configured, the same is not true for Windows. A UNIX box can be configured out of the box to be tighter than a gnat's ass, but a Windows box, even perfectlly configured, is vulnerable without various 3rd Party programs, and even then, only up the latest deviant creation by some malicious person out there gets around it. Then the 3rd party protective program must be fixed.

OSX and other UNIX variants seem to be vulnerable to human engineering exploits, that is something that tricks you into entering your password thinking it is an appropriate thing to do.

[ShadowAce]

[TechJunkYard]

.. Microsoft's untenable policy of maintaining gaps in Windows security to avoid competing with 3rd party vendors and certified partners..

I had always wondered about that.

So Microsoft intentionally maintains poor security for economic reasons, or just doesn't know any better?

I think it's a bit of both.

[Uri’el-2012]

Is Windows inherently more vulnerable to malware attacks than OS X?

Microsoft Windows(dos) was designed for one person.
Hence there was never any understanding of a hostile intent to crack the system.

BSD Unix on the other hand was written under contract
from DoD with a mission to defend against hostile attacks in a multi-user environment

Mac OSX was built on a variant of BSD with an additional twenty plus years of understanding of hostile intent.

When I worked at Bell Labs twenty plus years ago there were posters on the walls of cubicles stating :

4.3 > V

Among the world's best Unix programmers, BSD was always considered better than Unix

[Senator Bedfellow]

Most of these bullet points are simply wrong. Oh, well.