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Study Recommends Mac OS X as Safest OS
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.
insert windows jab from overzealous mac user here
I understand what you are saying, and you would be right, if your facts were correct.
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They are not. In fact, IIS6 has had *way* less security exploits avalible than Apache. Check this out:
http://blogs.msdn.com/michael_howard/archive/20
Mac OS X server is not ready for prime time IMHO.
/etc/resolv.conf? Think again. You think you can just vipw, vi /etc/passwd or adduser? Think again. Why they couldn't provide wrapper scripts for commonly used unix commands I'll never know.
First of all just about every security patch requires a reboot. Also if the security patch upgrades quicktime you need to actually interact with the gui or the install won't go.
No real port system means you have to manually install everything or depend on somebody else to put together an install and hope it covers your needs. The alternative is to rely on a third party ports such as darwinports (buggy), fink (not a lot of software) and pkgsrc (small and not that well supported on OSX).
Why Apple has not embraced one of these ports sytems and worked out the kinks I'll never know. If you are planning on running a server today you are much better off getting an intel box and installing freebsd.
Finally just about none of the unix admin commands work. They have their own command for everything which you have to look up. You think all you need to do is to change
evil is as evil does
Quick, be sure to get all of the various ways this study could be wrong posted before any Windows users say, "See I told you so!". Be sure to slander the company, cite bizarre statistical reasons, etc. This is the appropriate reaction for all Slashdot users any time an article mentioning ANY Linux flaws comes up. (Note: Any study that points out Windows problems, even if the study was conducted by a 12 year old and his friends should be affirmed immediately.)
I don't respond to AC's.
> However, hacker culture is based on egos, correct? Imagine the fame one could gain by creating a virus that infects Macs too
I agree that Mac are more secure but I disagree with your logic: don't forget that a huge parts of malware are created for monetary purpose nowadays so it means less crackers trying to break into Macs: they care about the number of zombies they can have, not about their type.
> I'm sure a Mac virus for OS X has at the very least been attempted. Why hasn't it succeeded at spreading all around?
Because the number of Mac is so small than it hasn't been able to successfully reproduce itself?
I'm not joking or trolling: think about an exploit trying to crack into Macs, scanning random ip addresses for spreading, given the small number of Macs there is, it has only a small chance to be able to reproduce itself before the owner discover something is wrong and reinstall the Mac..
Ok, this is a little bit of a stretch, but low numbers definitely helps, if Macs or Linux had 98% marketshare there would be plenty of viruses or exploits, why?
They are more secure yes, but they still need to be patched regularly against remote vulnerability and non-technical users don't patch their OS --> exploits.
Wait, are YOU trying to suggest that there is no /. overmind, and that two people who post here might have different opinions?
No, you're not, so you're silly.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!