Security Expert: “Mac OS X Is Safer, But Less Secure”

Giles Turnbull ()

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Tech site H-Online has an interesting story today, quoting security expert Charlie Miller about his forthcoming talk at the CanSecWest conference next week.

He says OS X is full of security holes. There are lots more than in Windows, he claims.

And yet: OS X is a safer system to use. Why? Because, in the words of The Inquirer, its users are “so far from the action.”

H-Online quotes Miller saying:

“Mac OS X is like living in a farmhouse in the country with no locks, and Windows is living in a house with bars on the windows in the bad part of town.”

At the conference next week, Miller will reveal how he found the holes – but won’t tell anyone exactly what they are.

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Hmm. So this place we’re in right now: this is just a rural idyll? Is Miller right with his summary of the state of OS X security, or is he trying to drum up a little additional buzz about his security consulting business?

14 comments »

About the author

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Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. He has a website you can ignore and a Twitter account you needn't follow.

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  • Ace

    Seriously, he should be a little bit more descriptive. At least tell us if he means with physical or remote access to the computer. Physical access: nothing is secure, so I presume remote. But if that’s the case… then are we talking about if all services are turned off? And if not, then is he talking about installing some numb-nuts software on the computer like Antivirus 2010?

  • caustic

    No, I don’t think that’s the answer. I use Windows, OS X, and Ubuntu and I don’t run a virus scanner on Windows.

    It’s the design of OS X & Ubuntu that make them less prone to compromise than Windows. The way you use Windows and the way it was designed make it prone to attack. The way OS X & Ubuntu are used make them less prone, albeit not invulnerable, to attack.

  • thanx_Al

    FUD

  • http://www.toxicspark.com Andrew Macdonald

    He’s talking Bull.

  • http://www.imetstuart.com Stuart Gibson

    I always come back to this “OSX is only secure because no-one is targeting it”. Sure, the malware/spyware people who are doing it for financial gain aren’t going to target OSX because it wouldn’t be cost effective for the small market share, but I don’t believe that all the real crackers, the ones who are doing it because they love to mess with technology, are ignoring it to put out *another* Windows trojan/virus/malware. The amount of geek kudos they would receive for actually getting a legitimate, in the wild, OSX compromise would be huge and exactly the sort of thing that pushes their buttons.

  • http://web.me.com/giosaccone GioSaccone

    I started with Windows… Now I use Mac OS X… And I DON’T WANT to back..!!

  • goosesensor

    It seems that at every major hacker conference an Apple machine is always the first to go down… is this simply to try to make a statement, or is it representative of the state of OS X security?

  • http://boo RobB

    When your only a single piece of sand on an entire beach, what’s is the odds a hacker would want to find you. Not worth it. IT’s a simple as that. – Right on when the country / city analogy

  • http://ObamaPacman.com ObamaPacman

    First, you have to use and know the system to determine the security, so these hackers / security people confirm that they are Mac users.

    Second, a lot of hackers use a Mac. For example, Kevin Mitnick:
    http://obamapacman.com/2009/09/kevin-mitnick-former-hacker-most-wanted-computer-criminal-turned-security-consultant-is-mac-user/

    Hackers don’t want to poison their own water.

  • Dr.Evil

    This doesn’t make sense. Before OSX Mac OS 9 had tons of viruses. I actually had a version of Norton antivirus for it. After OS X, no viruses and no Norton anti virus. And now, there are ten times as many Macs than there were running OS 9.

  • http://ObamaPacman.com ObamaPacman

    @Dr.Evil,

    Exactly.

    Even iPhone (with third party software modifications, not the Apple default settings) had its first worm, and the software modified iPhones are a relative small number.

  • Freddie

    Windows is like living the ghetto part of town, and your windows are covered with iron bars, but the black street thugs will still manage to break into your home twice a year anyways. That’s life in the Windows world.

  • ronw

    Living proof that living in a Sandbox is the way to go. Linux and OSX don’t open up the entire system with commands that go directly to the core of the system. Javascript is a complete nightmare. Even I almost wiped out my entire drive with one command. And it came from a book where I was learning Javascript commands.

    Sandbox is the answer. Zonealarm on the Windows side seems to understand that.

  • http://www.car-equalizers.net Zak Fisher

    i am only using free virus scanners like avast and avira but they seem to be great tools though~`,