Nobody said that it is totally immune to hacking.
While it is true that the shell was accessed, the access is only for THAT account. Not the whole machine. And, if you read the article, definitely not as root. So, if you use Safari and you have a ‘regular’ user account that does not have ‘administrator rights’, the damage will be kept to that account and not compromise the entire OS.
In the contest - there are 2 macs up for grabs. The second is still not hacked. Which, if these were windows machines, the machines would have been compromised long ago.
The security updates the article talks about have nothing (unfortunately) to do with Safari. Well, directly anyway.
The article also mentions that while the macs were on the LAN only - they couldn’t be hacked. They had to allow the macs to the internet and then to a specifically crafted website. They don’t specify if popups were being blocked etc.
To conclude - I do think this is an issue. But to compare it to the security of windows - PLEASE...
So, don’t enable root - most folks don’t
Don’t use an ‘admin enabled’ account and do backups.
Don’t use Safari! LOL
Configure and use those three things - the average Mac user is still much more secure than Vista/XP. My two cents anyway.
How do you know a fully patched Windows box would have been compromised quicker? Windows Vista so far has a very impressive record when it comes to vulnerabilities, especially when compared to the first 90 days of other operating systems including OSX.