Apple plugs 'critical' holes in OS X

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Well...

"...Well, I can say the same for my computer "

We are going in circles here. My point was that I do not have security issues on Windows, because I *DO* follow all the basic security steps (and it's really easy, since it's all automated). For some reason there is this myth, especially coming from the Mac crowd, that if you run Windows, you WILL have spyware/viruses/trojans. My point was that, seeing that I do not have had any of those issues in years, what is better security-wise by using OS X instead? Seeing that Apple seems to be fixing more holes these days than MS (but most people seem to miss this little gem), Why should I feel safer with OS X? Then again, until they do hit critical mass to actually have enough systems spread throughout the internet to sustain any sort of spread capability, I guess you can have a false sense of security...

Looking at how FireFox is starting to fall apart, I'd say that point where the hackers start taking notice is around 10% or so. That's when any false sense of security goes out the window.

"So, essentially most are proof of concept holes that haven't been "in the wild." In some cases it is a problem with Apple's code but they do fix it. "

If you are trying to imply that Apple-good, MS-bad because Apple patches holes quickly, then I disagree. For one thing, we do not know how long those holes existed. I find it highly unlikely that in a patch containing 44 fixes, that all 44 of those only became known to Apple a few days before they released the patch. How long have they been piling up? Just a small amount of Googling using the "CAN" IDs show that some of them have been known for months.

The second flaw with your MS-patches-too-late assertion is that just about all every single recent exploits for Windows only hit the web AFTER MS already made a patch available for those holes. It seems now that the hackers reverse-engineer the patches themselves to see what the flaw was. They know that with the huge installed Windows base, that there will be a LONG period of time after the patch was released until there are not enough unpatched systems anymore to spread a virus. Apple does not have this problem because they don't even have enough critical mass out there to sustain a spread even of zero of the systems are patched. And that is the only reason why Apple's systems are not hacked.

Looking at the huge lists of critical holes they seems to be patching on a monthly basis, I don't buy for one second that they are more secure. Less hacked, absolutely.

And it doesn't help that Apple likes to be so secretive about everything, including security.

Posted by: Qbt   Posted on: 09/24/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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