Mac OS X security myth exposed

Techworld UK ^ | 6/24/2004 | By Matthew Broersma, Techworld

[Swordmaker]

Mac, Linux, OS Wars ping. Secunia judges Mac OS X not very secure... and Windows XP better than thought.

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

[Swordmaker]

OS X had the highest proportion of "extremely critical" bugs at 19 percent.<

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.

[Izzy Dunne]

Is this a Microosft-funded "study"? Sounds just like the study where Windows TCO was lower than Linux (funded by MS).

Yes, there were some security issues.

They were never exploited, before being patched.

Compare the exploits. Compare the damage done. Compare the hassle.

[Swordmaker]

Whow! Something happened to Freerepublic that resulted in my ping post being posted without the pasted in Ping List! FR was off line for about 5 minutes.

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.

[Izzy Dunne]

From the SECUNIA home page:

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...

[Izzy Dunne]

Take a look at their last 10 virus alerts.

No OS X there, either.

[the_Watchman]

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.

[Swordmaker]

It is interesting to compare Secunia's charts and graphs... All the Windows' graphs report ZERO (0%) exploits that can result in hijacking... but somehow Mac OS X has a 2% impact due to hijacks... other impacts are similarly absurd. Example charts:

Another chart shows claims that 19% of OS X advisories are "extremely critical" yet all Windows combined have ZERO (0%) extremely critical advisories! Unbelievable.

[Izzy Dunne]

Take a look at their Security Advisories:

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 Weakness

No OS X there...

[Woahhs]

Each product is broken down into pie charts demonstrating how many, what type and how significant security holes have been in each.

Beware the pox, beware the ides, beware the man with the colored slides...

[Izzy Dunne]

Click on their Online Antivirus Scan and all I get is a PAGE NOT FOUND error.

Also notice that they publish A VULNERABILITY IN PANDA's ANTIVIRUS SCAN.

Yeah, I'm inclined to think well of these people...

[Izzy Dunne]

Hell, do a SEARCH for "OS X" on Secunia's site:

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
 
Press

It found ZERO security advisories, and ZERO viruses.

I can't even find the report that Techworld cites...

[Izzy Dunne]

From the TECHWORLD article:
A third factor is that Linux / Unix people are very concerned about privilege escalation vulnerabilities, while Windows people in general are not

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.

[Izzy Dunne]

That door has been closed by Apple without a known exploit.

... 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).

[hedgie]

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.

...Really what's at the heart of all these virus/worm problems... XP 'Home' is really a travesty from a user privilege standpoint.

[anonymous_user]

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?

[antiRepublicrat]

From a manager perspective, I'd just ask "Which one of these is less likely to cause me problems?" Windows is obviously not the answer.

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.

[John Robinson]

My first problem with this article, RedHat ships an incredible amount of software with their enterprise product, much of which is not installed by default. The RedHat advisories cover a spectrum of software packages. A more accurate report would not compare this to "Windows XP Professional" but rather to Microsoft's entire product line. And even then, Microsoft does not offer some of RedHat's capabilities, for which a Windows user will require third-party software.

[Bush2000]

What's so difficult to understand?

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.

Your disbelief is a symptom of your zealotry. This isn't any kind of surprise. Every OS has these flaws.