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Study Recommends Mac OS X as Safest OS

Posted by michael on from the safety-first dept.

rocketjam writes "The British security firm mi2g has concluded a comprehensive 12-month study to identify the safest 24/7 computing environment. In the end, the open source BSD and Mac OS X came out on top with the fewest security breaches against permanently connected machines worldwide in homes, small businesses, large enterprises and governments. The study found Linux to be the most breached environment 'in terms of manual hacker attacks overall and accounts for 65.64% of all breaches recorded'. Windows was the most breached environment in government computing and led Linux, BSD and Mac OS X by far in economic damage caused by breaches." We mentioned their previous study too. As before, the study ignores the thousands of automatically-spreading viruses for Windows.

6 of 370 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah until... by slowtonejoe75 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    everybody starts to use OS X... Then the all the exploits will be aimed at that platform... Then it won't be the most secure!!!

    DUH...

    My sig smells bad, here take a wiff...

    slowness

    1. Re:Yeah until... by Southpaw018 · · Score: -1, Redundant

      Right. OS X appears more secure right now because Macs make up a tiny percentage of the market. If you were a hacker trying to steal credit card info, what are you going to go for, 85%+ of all the computers as possible targets or 5%? I'd take the higher number. Thus, it appears sometimes that Windows is less secure than Mac OS X, Linux, and the others, but the key word is "appear". The others don't face near as much scrutiny and far less of their vulnerabilities are discovered.

      --
      ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
  2. Primary reason being not many use it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant

    Especially hackers?

  3. Annoying.... by Kazrath · · Score: -1, Redundant

    This is not a MAC bashing. It's just frustrating when people try to use polls to state an opinion other than a fact. Words like "More" Windows computer have been hacked. Well of course they constitute 90% of the computers (declining now). MAC's are solid computers. But my first "Hacked" computer I've ever known was a MAC. I hit a Javascript website that ran a Applescript on me and caused my font to change to something like 500. Since all I could see was one portion of the "Apple logo" boarder I ended up having to reinstall everything. The point is. If people attempt to crack a system or perform a malicious attack. They will succeed. The less popular/less mainstream environments will be "Safer"

    1. Re:Annoying.... by ThJ · · Score: 0, Redundant

      MAC? As in Media Access Control? I thought this was about Macs! :O

      Seriously, though. I don't know if it's the case, but it looks like you're confused. "Mac" is not an acronym. It should not be in uppercase.

      (Boy, does it annoy me when I see people do this.)

  4. Re:Before people go nuts... by Nevermore-Spoon · · Score: -1, Redundant

    We can discuss statistic and scientific method till the cows come home... the study is clear on one point Linux didn't top the list...in fact quite the opposite, no amount to stats manipulation can explain that away. BSD didn't suffer, OSX didn't suffer. Don't take the victory away from the victors because of your anti MS bias....the world isn't all about Linux vs MS

    --
    I have great faith in fools; My friends call it self-confidence. Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1845