Mac hacked through QuickTime flaw

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Apple a small enough target?

By reading tech sites such as this, one might be led to the conclusion that Macs constitute somewhere between 25% to 40% of the market.

Malicious hacks are about (1) fame and notoriety and (2) (illegal) financial reward.

Until Mac's market share rises at least into the double digits, it just won't be a large enough target to get the attention of the most devout hackers. After all, most hacks are about the numbers: If you can find and exploit a hack that affects 1% of the PC market, you are messing with a lot of computers. On the other hand, the same 1% success rate against Macs may not affect enough machines to rise above the general "flotsam and other debris" that tends to accumulate when surfing the web.

This is not to say that Macintosh's operating system (as well as various Linux/Opera/Netscape/BeOs/etc.) machines may be much safer than the Windows machines--it is just to say this doesn't constitute reliable evidence.

The "throw the gauntlet down" public "double-dog-dare-you" hype was enough to attract the attention of hackers who wouldn't usually even invest any time in Macs. After all, there are relatively few big businesses out there with all-Mac networkds, and the tight control over new application/new hardware development by third parties means that Macs are less likely to see the sorts of vulnerabilities that arise as a result of specific combinations of hardware and software.

If the PC market suddenly dropped into the single digits and all "compatible" hardware and software had to be approved by Microsoft, Intel and the other companies who are authorized users, it would soon be the case that the huge variety of programs would diminish to a trickle and many protection-oriented sites would disappear--or convert their efforts into taking shots at huge corporate and governmental systems.

It might just be that MacIntosh computers are safer--but that cannot be determined, either positively or negatively by the information gained from this media event. After all, being the hackers who met the public challenge laid out by Apple offered *more* fame than yet another (mostly anonymous and completely boring) hack against some Windows combination.

Posted by: rgathercoal@...   Posted on: 05/04/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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