Security Expert: Microsoft Puts Mac Users at Risk

Image credit: Mike Seigafuse. Used with permission.

Microsoft was slammed this week by PC industry security experts for releasing security patches to fix vulnerabilities in Windows versions of PowerPoint, while announcing that Mac users would remain at risk until patches for OS X are completed in June.

“Microsoft is the one big company screaming loudest over ‘responsible disclosure,’” said Swa Frantzen, a security analyst at SANS Institute’s Internet Storm Center (ISC) in a post to the ISC blog late Tuesday, adding, “[But the] policy cuts both ways: You need to obey the rules yourself just as well as demand it from all others involved.”

The Windows manufacturer, claimed Frantzen, ignored its well-known best practices for responsible disclosure Wednesday by revealing that Office for Mac 2004 and Office for Mac 2008 contain three unpatched vulnerabilities, and by releasing information about the same bugs in Windows. The combination, he said, could be used by hackers to craft exploits targeting Macs.

Analysts from Gartner and nCircle took varying poistions on the debate, according to an article in Computerworld, and Microsoft itself had no comment further than the statement the company released along with the Windows patch.

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Lonnie Lazar is a writer-musician-web designer-attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.

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skucera
Frankly, PowerPoint is so widespread because it comes free with Word and Excel. I don’t think it’s superior to Keynote (quite the opposite, in fact), but I don’t have $80 to drop on a presentation program. If Apple wanted to sell it stand-alone for, let’s say, $30, I’d have been using it since it hit version 2.
thanx_al
First, Microsoft puts anyone who uses their crap at risk…of going postal. As a recent switcher, I can’t count the number of times I have thought “why didn’t I switch before?” as I find yet another advantage to Macs and/or their software. Pertinent example: I use two projectors at work to project two different presentations at the same time, one screen left and one screen right. To get this to work on Powerpuke you need a Ouija board and a mountain of patience. Once it works if, god forbid, you have to leave Powerpuke you get to do the dance all over again (the dance involves going into the “slide show” menu and clicking on the presentation and then going to a drop down menu and selecting ‘display on monitor 1′, going back to the second presentation clicking on it and back to the drop down menu and ‘display on monitor 2′. The fun part is that you MUST then immediately click “view slideshow” or you get to do the dance all over again). The problem? You can’t open two separate Powerpuke windows and simply “drag” them to the correct screen. Word and Excel allow multiple windows of the program, but Powerpuke doesn’t. I installed Office 2008:Mac on my Macbook and am seriously considering removing it. I didn’t like it on a PC and seriously don’t like it now that I am used to Pages and Keynote.
http://docteur-chris.org Docteur Christophe
Powerpoint is the worse of Microsoft production. I don’t know Keynotes but OpenOffice presentation is sufficient and share the very same file format between Mac OS and other platforms. I don’t need more and the price is OK: Free!
ItsGene
1: Apple promotes the lack of Mac viruses in their ads.
2: Microsoft creates and then publicizes security flaws in their Mac software.
3: Someone writes a virus that exploits these Microsoft flaws.
4: Microsoft runs ad claiming that Macs are not secure against viruses.
Scott
the lower price, combined with the free trial and this stunt by Microsoft might be just the thing to convert more of those consumer mac users over to iwork. course I just bought a new Mac and they gave me iwork for $49 instead of $79 so that was even better.
I’m a PC
The real question is why would someone waste their time writing an exploit for an OS/software combination that represent a small % of another small % of computer users worldwide.
You guys will get through this for the same reason you get through the rest of it, you’re not that attractive of a target yet.
http://www.samanjj.com samanjj
To ‘I’m a PC’, OSX is UNIX based and very secure already. It has little to do with size of the user base and more to do with the security of the OS. The fact is hackers write viruses for fun but no one has been able to successfully make one that spreads on the Mac. There are a lot of Mac haters that don’t believe that Macs are just safer but none of them has been able to demonstrate a virus on the Mac.