Another chart shows claims that 19% of OS X advisories are "extremely critical" yet all Windows combined have ZERO (0%) extremely critical advisories! Unbelievable.
Posted on 06/25/2004 2:13:36 AM PDT by Swordmaker
Windows is more secure than you think, and Mac OS X is worse than you ever imagined. That is according to statistics published for the first time this week by Danish security firm Secunia.
The stats, based on a database of security advisories for more than 3,500 products during 2003 and 2004 sheds light on the real security of enterprise applications and operating systems, according to the firm. Each product is broken down into pie charts demonstrating how many, what type and how significant security holes have been in each.
One thing the hard figures have shown is that OS X's reputation as a relatively secure operating system is unwarranted, Secunia said. This year and last year Secunia tallied 36 advisories on security issues with the software, many of them allowing attackers to remotely take over the system - comparable to figures on operating systems such as Windows XP Professional and Red Hat Enterprise Server.
"Secunia is now displaying security statistics that will open many eyes, and for some it might be very disturbing news," said Secunia chief executive Niels Henrik Rasmussen. "The myth that Mac OS X is secure, for example, has been exposed."
Its new service, easily acessible on its website, allows enterprises to gather exact information on specific products, by collating advisories from a large number of third-party security firms. A few other organisations maintain comparable lists, including the Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) and the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database, which provides common names for publicly known vulnerabilities.
Secunia said the new service could help companies keep an eye on the overall security of particular software - something that is often lost in the flood of advisories and the attendant hype. "Seen over a long period of time,the statistics may indicate whether a vendor has improved the quality of their products," said Secunia CTO Thomas Kristensen. He said the data could help IT managers get an idea of what kind of vulnerabilities are being found in their products, and prioritise what they respond to.
For example, Windows security holes generally receive a lot of press because of the software's popularity, but the statistics show that Windows isn't the subject of significantly more advisories than other operating systems. Windows XP Professional saw 46 advisories in 2003-2004, with 48 percent of vulnerabilities allowing remote attacks and 46 percent enabling system access, Secunia said.
Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 8 had 48 advisories in the same period, with 58 percent of the holes exploitable remotely and 37 percent enabling system access. Red Hat's Advanced Server 3 had 50 advisories in the same period - despite the fact that counting only began in November of last year. Sixty-six percent of the vulnerabilities were remotely exploitable, with 25 granting system access.
Mac OS X doesn't stand out as particularly more secure than the competition, according to Secunia. Of the 36 advisories issued in 2003-2004, 61 percent could be exploited across the Internet and 32 percent enabled attackers to take over the system. The proportion of critical bugs was also comparable with other software: 33 percent of the OS X vulnerabilities were "highly" or "extremely" critical by Secunia's reckoning, compared with 30 percent for XP Professional and 27 percent for SLES 8 and just 12 percent for Advanced Server 3. OS X had the highest proportion of "extremely critical" bugs at 19 percent.
As for the old guard, Sun's Solaris 9 saw its share of problems, with 60 advisories in 2003-2004, 20 percent of which were "highly" or "extremely" critical, Secunia said.
Comparing product security is notoriously difficult, and has become a contentious issue recently with vendors using security as a selling point. A recent Forrester study comparing Windows and Linux vendor response times on security flaws was heavily criticised for its conclusion that Linux vendors took longer to release patches. Linux vendors attach more weight to more critical flaws, leaving unimportant bugs for later patching, something the study failed to factor in, according to Linux companies. Vendors also took issue with the study's method of ranking "critical" security bugs, which didn't agree with the vendors' own criteria.
Secunia agreed that straightforward comparisons aren't possible, partly because some products receive more scrutiny than others. Microsoft products are researched more because of their wide use, while open-source products are easier to analyse because researchers have general access to the source code, Kristensen said.
"A third factor is that Linux / Unix people are very concerned about privilege escalation vulnerabilities, while Windows people in general are not, especially because of the shatter-like attacks which have been known for six years or more," he said. "A product is not necessarily more secure because fewer vulnerabilities are discovered."
If you want to be included on the Mac Ping list, please Freepmail me. If you want off, although I can't think of why you would, you can do the same
These "extremely critical bugs" were only critical in Secunia's opinion. Most were Non-exploited and patched fairly quickly.
I would consider only the latest of the 36 "advisory security concerns" as "extremely critical." That advisory demonstrated a proof of concept where a hostile website could actually install an executable on a Mac OS X computer AND execute it through the .dsk URI protocol handler. That door has been closed by Apple without a known exploit.
Yes, there were some security issues.
They were never exploited, before being patched.
Compare the exploits. Compare the damage done. Compare the hassle.
Needless to say, this is a Mac Ping.
If you want to be included or deleted from the Mac Ping List, please freepmail me.
Secunia declares Mac OS X not that secure and Windows XP more secure.
Secunia Highlights Internet Explorer Local Resource Access and Cross-Zone Scripting Vulnerabilities - Extremely critical - 2004-06-08 Two vulnerabilities have been reported in Internet Explorer, which in combination with other known issues can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system. IBM Access Support ActiveX Controls Various Insecure Methods - Highly critical - 2004-06-16 eEye Digital Security has reported some vulnerabilities in two IBM Access Support ActiveX controls, which potentially can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system.No mention of OS X...
No OS X there, either.
Red Hat is not going to look good on this kind of testing. They tend to ship with all the services turned on and wide open. They leave is up to a savy admin to button things down.
A few reports like this and they may change their packaging policy.
Another chart shows claims that 19% of OS X advisories are "extremely critical" yet all Windows combined have ZERO (0%) extremely critical advisories! Unbelievable.
2004-06-25 - giFT-FastTrack Unspecified Denial of Service Vulnerability - Sun Solaris Kerberos Client Clear Text Password Logging - Fedora update for kernel 2004-06-24 - Red Hat Linux Broadcom 5820 Cryptonet Driver Integer Overflow - Sun StorEdge ESM Unspecified Privilege Escalation Vulnerability - 3Com SuperStack Switches HTTP Request Denial of Service - Fedora update for dhcp - Mandrake update for kernel - Linux Kernel IEEE 1394 Driver Integer Overflow Vulnerabilities - php-exec-dir Command Execution Bypass Vulnerability - Lotus Domino/Notes Cross-Site Scripting and Arbitrary Code Execution 2004-06-23 - Sun Solaris Basic Security Module Denial of Service Vulnerability - SuSE update for dhcp/dhcp-server - Mandrake update for dhcp - rssh File Existence Information Disclosure WeaknessNo OS X there...
Beware the pox, beware the ides, beware the man with the colored slides...
Also notice that they publish A VULNERABILITY IN PANDA's ANTIVIRUS SCAN.
Yeah, I'm inclined to think well of these people...
Search Advisory, Vulnerability, and Virus Database Search: [Advanced Search] All Content Secunia Advisories Virus Information Did you search for information regarding a specific product? - Apple Macintosh OS X - Panicware Pop-Up Zapper for Mac OS X 2.x - Admin Access With Levels 1.x (osCommerce plugin) - Adobe Photoshop 5.x - Adobe Photoshop 6.x - Adobe Photoshop 7.x - Aestiva HTML/OS 2.x - APC AOS 1.x - APC AOS 2.x - APC AOS 3.x - ArGoSoft FTP Server 1.4.x Found: 0 Secunia Security Advisories, displaying 1-0 Sort by: Match, Title, Date Title Date Found: 0 Viruses, displaying 1-0 Found: 0 Vendors Vendor Name Found: 2 Products Product Name Apple Macintosh OS X Panicware Pop-Up Zapper for Mac OS X 2.x Found: 1 Secunia Webpage Page Title PressIt found ZERO security advisories, and ZERO viruses.
I can't even find the report that Techworld cites...
Well, duh.
Windows runs at root level all the time, anyway. There is no "escalation" possible, because YOU'RE ALREADY AT HIGHEST PRIVILEGE LEVEL out of the box.
Unix (and OS X) run at user level, therefore escalation is possible, since you are NOT at highest privilege level, most of the time.
... other that the proof-of-concept exploits, which WERE real. Even so, all they could do was destroy the user's home directory, not trash the system. (Still scary enough).
...Really what's at the heart of all these virus/worm problems... XP 'Home' is really a travesty from a user privilege standpoint.
Good scoop, Techworld UK. A security firm announces that all operating systems are insecure. Can we get an article about more dangerous viruses from an anti-virus company study too?
You know it's getting bad in Windows world when lots of people are complaining that when they do a fresh install of XP they get owned before they can finish downloading all the security updates.
Wake me up when it gets that bad in the Linux/Apple world.
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