Monday, March 30, 2009
More Safe or More Secure ( Mac Vs PC )
After our dear Mac been p0wned and Charlie gave a long interview to Tom's Hardware we came with this:
"PC is more secure ( technology wise) and Mac are more safe ( real world wise ) "
So, it is your choice: you can get a house in a really bad area with gun shots and police and FBI running around AND inside your house ( allow or deny ?) that will have a submarine style double steel doors and STILL have malware and spyware breaking in with or without your assistance : hackers are not sleeping. Or ... you can get Mac. It does not have all security gadgets build in Vista like memory randomization and you may not even find a Antivirus for OS X ( that will actually hunt some OS X germs - not much to hunt for and such products normally filter out windows viruses) but it will be like ... having a house in a nice place. I would not say : house without doors ( or walls - that is "Windowz(TM") ): OS X is based on secure multiuser core of UNIX, but it streamlined nature does not do much by itself to prevent turning bugs in to software exploits. Apple and other vendors keep fixing bugs and it is not that much different from other OS in this respect.
Per Charlie Miller, that trend may still continue for a while ( at least 2-3 years) and Mac and OS X may still remain "more safe", after all, not much changed after he broke into Safari a year ago and do not forget that all computers ( even Latest Windowz) was p0wned :-) So it is not like Windows security prevents hackers from breaking in ( sucks )
Also main attack vector is Browser+plugins and venerable JavaScript ( and it bugs)
So, it is up to you, dude, what to choose: more Safe or more Secure. :-)
We will see what Snow Leopard will add to security ( it is all about speed, stability and security ), but in the mean while, try to be smart: run as less privileged users, keep updating s/w, do not go to "bad sites", do not open attachments or run unknown s/w and if you extra paranoid you can disable Java Script and plugins ( but that will be hard to tolerate ) or try Opera for your browser.
... and of course, hope for the best and be "more safe":-)
"PC is more secure ( technology wise) and Mac are more safe ( real world wise ) "
So, it is your choice: you can get a house in a really bad area with gun shots and police and FBI running around AND inside your house ( allow or deny ?) that will have a submarine style double steel doors and STILL have malware and spyware breaking in with or without your assistance : hackers are not sleeping. Or ... you can get Mac. It does not have all security gadgets build in Vista like memory randomization and you may not even find a Antivirus for OS X ( that will actually hunt some OS X germs - not much to hunt for and such products normally filter out windows viruses) but it will be like ... having a house in a nice place. I would not say : house without doors ( or walls - that is "Windowz(TM") ): OS X is based on secure multiuser core of UNIX, but it streamlined nature does not do much by itself to prevent turning bugs in to software exploits. Apple and other vendors keep fixing bugs and it is not that much different from other OS in this respect.
Per Charlie Miller, that trend may still continue for a while ( at least 2-3 years) and Mac and OS X may still remain "more safe", after all, not much changed after he broke into Safari a year ago and do not forget that all computers ( even Latest Windowz) was p0wned :-) So it is not like Windows security prevents hackers from breaking in ( sucks )
Also main attack vector is Browser+plugins and venerable JavaScript ( and it bugs)
So, it is up to you, dude, what to choose: more Safe or more Secure. :-)
We will see what Snow Leopard will add to security ( it is all about speed, stability and security ), but in the mean while, try to be smart: run as less privileged users, keep updating s/w, do not go to "bad sites", do not open attachments or run unknown s/w and if you extra paranoid you can disable Java Script and plugins ( but that will be hard to tolerate ) or try Opera for your browser.
... and of course, hope for the best and be "more safe":-)
Labels: OS X security vs Windows
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