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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.
...this study is talking about manual exploits, and says as much:
The study also reveals that Linux has become the most breached 24/7 online computing environment in terms of manual hacker attacks overall and accounts for 65.64% of all breaches recorded, with 154,846 successfully compromised Linux 24/7 online computers of all flavours.
This is likely because of the great number of Linux servers, and the wide variety of network services and ports open to the world on such servers.
And it does, in fact, make distinct reference to Windows malware (self-propagating worms, viruses, etc.):
Malware proliferation
The recent global malware epidemics have primarily targeted the Windows computing environment and have not caused any significant economic damage to environments running Open Source including Linux, BSD and Mac OS X. When taking the economic damage from malware into account over the last twelve months, including the impact of MyDoom, NetSky, SoBig, Klez and Sasser, Windows has become the most breached computing environment in the world accounting for most of the productivity losses associated with malware - virus, worm and trojan - proliferation. This is directly the result of very insignificant quantities of highly damaging mass-spreading malware being written for other computing environments like Linux, BSD and Mac OS X.
Also interesting:
For the record, neither mi2g Ltd nor the mi2g Intelligence Unit have a business relationship with Apple Computers and we do not own any shares in that corporation. Previously, the mi2g data for one month was considered to be too small a sample and not representative of the global environment within which different types of entities - micro, small, medium and large - exist. We have addressed those concerns in the new study. The critics were against the previous study which also came out in favour of Apple and BSD, because the entrenched supporters of Linux and Windows felt that mi2g was guilty of 'computing blasphemy'. In subsequent months, mi2g's reputation was damaged on search engines and bulletin boards. We would urge caution when reading negative commentary against mi2g, which may have been clandestinely funded, aided or abetted by a vendor or a special interest group.
There are a wide variety of reasons to expect that Mac OS X is a significantly more secure computing platform than Windows in a non-server/desktop setting; this study only further confirms that.
It's ranked as safest, too.
The study doesn't specify which BSD distribution they used, besides OS X (Darwin). I guess you could say "all of them" but c'mon, you just can't leave out details like that.
That's a software issue. Most people manually breaching systems are nmapping, finding services that are vulnerable, and exploiting them.
Furthermore, unlike worms, crackers might not know what operating system the site is running until they attempt to infiltrate it. It's not like people go looking for Linux boxes randomly.
I think that the argument that Linux is installed on more target machines than the other operating systems is acceptible here, even though it is somewhat fallacious when it is used to defend Windows security against automated attacks like viruses and worms.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
-flamebait-
security through obscurity. Fewer AmigaOS exploits these days too.
-/flamebait-
(i'm joking.. just couldn't resist.)
Does this article take into account the market share of all of these platforms? I browsed TFA and it didn't look like it did. Ofcourse if few people use osx as a server, it would result in few hacked boxes.
This study is pretty much useless. Essentially what they're reporting is that of all manual hacker attacks that are successful, most of them happen on Linux, and Mac OS has the least of them. This does not mean that Mac OS is more secure. It may simply mean that Mac OS is less often attacked, or the MAc OS is less often used in 24/7 environments.
Show us a report studying attempts/successful attempts ratio, and it might actually mean something.
It is the most secure because:
- It is build around a capability system
- It has no applications
- The scripty kiddies don't know it is there
I haven't heard of any break-ins in EROS!:-) = I am happy
:^) = I am happy with my big nose
C:\> = I am happy with my OS
Wouldn't it be more useful to provide statistics on the percentage of *each environment* that suffered breaches -- e.g., 17% of Linux machines suffered breaches, 28% of Windows machines, 19% of OS X machines?
Unless I've misread the article (which is possible), the numbers they provide don't seem to take into account the *prevalence* of each environment.
Just like the millions of clueless Windows users.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Yes, you are wrong to think this.
First, the study shows linux subject to the most manual attacks. That doesn't jive with your logic.
Also, see the oft repeated marketshare of webservers. Apache is by far the most used, but subject to far less attacks than IIS.
I know you're just joking, but for others who actually believe this, it bears repeating:
If that were true, then apache would have the most exploits of any web server, since it has the greatest market share. However, that is not the case: Microsoft IIS is by far the most exploited web server, with only around 20% marketshare.
Additionally, lesser marketshare does not automatically imply anything with regard to security. Sure, it's *targeted* less, and people might spend less time attacking it, but that does not mean it is less secure. In fact, there are numerous technical, design, and architectural reasons that, e.g., Mac OS X is more secure than Windows. A few examples would be: no ports or services open by default, services that are used are likely to be open source services like apache and OpenSSH which receive in intense scrutiny so that theoretical holes are closed before they become practical ones, there are more layers of abstraction between an email attachment and it actually becoming a meaningful exploit, prompting and notification for administrative-level or elevated privileges, less likelihood of standardization on a single email client reducing the exposure of a single point of attack, etc.
And sure, marketshare helps too, in terms of things like the statistical likelihood of the next host encountered/scanned by a piece of Mac OS X malware also being Mac OS X. But that's no where near the whole story.
Windows and Unix come from completely different histories and completly different design philosophies with different views on multiuser systems, networking, etc..
I don't think it's possibe to really say that Unx (or Linux or OS/X) would be just as vulnerable as Windows if they had more users and were therefore bigger targets.
CP/M? My old Z100 running off two 5 1/4" drives and a 2400 baud com port modem has never been hacked!!! I'll bet that it has less exploits than even mack (for those mods who miss this is humor, consider this notification :-P Mod me down all you want ;-) )
I've been tinkering off and on with Linux for a while now and I'm by no means an expert. About a year or so ago, I got the Knoppix liveCD and did a hard install with it, making it essentially a mixture of Debian stable/testing/SID. Anyway, one day I fire up Quake and, instead of the normal music, it's playing this "We are the Animals" crap. The startup script even says, "This version of Quake has been hacked". I try to install Bastille but can't quite get it to work on this mixed-Debian install. I also can't un-install it.
So, now I'm using SuSE - mainly because it has built in security functions and is easier to configure. I kinda wish I could just go with something like Slackware and set all of it up myself, but I have limited tinkering time these days.
I suspect that a growing population on non-expert Linux users could be a potential security vulnerability.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
(disclaimer blah blah I own a mac blah blah)
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
I think it is partially true. A major web server, for instance, would be under scrutiny. Those would be, most of the time, Linux and Windows. On the desktop front, BSDs/MacOSx don't have alot of public mindshare, so all the exploits being researched are for Windows, since it is pretty ubiquitous on the desktop. But, I think it depends on if the survey is for potentiality-to-be-exploited or history-of-not-getting-exploited. If it is the latter, your observation is true. It's security through obscurity. If the author meant the former, then your observation is wrong. But if it is through obscurity, it seems Palm or Symbian OS, ones that qualify as constant computing operating systems (as most non-geek people I know spend more time on their cell phone than on a computer), would rank pretty high. Just my observations.
I think mac users are a very bimodal group. There are lots of pros, comfortable with various OS's. However, there are tons of totally clueless folks.
I cleaned up a lot of macs in the pre-OSX days when a handful of annoyances like macro-viruses were common.
Yes, one of the first things taught in many network security classes is that security through obscurity is not reliable. The implication here is that Mac OS X is more secure because of the security measures in the OS, not because no one has bothered to look for or exploit flaws.
Linux is often quoted as having a larger marketshare than Mac OS.
Regardless, you can certainly look at the users for the source of these numbers. I think it's harder for a Windows XP desktop user to "get hacked" than a Linux user. Why? Because Linux operating systems, with all their power and flexibility, can be compromised because it's easy to make a mistake. I'm sure you know users that run as root and do all kinds of ridiculous things. Does that mean Linux is insecure? No.
Likewise, I'd point at Windows desktop users and ask - "do you know if you've ever been hacked?" Everyone wants to say no, but most people have no idea how to tell. Or what counts as a hack. So how will you measure the number of attacks? If you ask a Linux user, I think you're immediately more likely to get an educated response because the users are generally more attuned to their computers and how they work.
It's hard to take a report like this very seriously because it has to overcome some fundamental issues.
This defies logic. We all know that closed-source, AKA "security through obscurity" software cannot possibly be more secure than open source software like Linux. Please stop tampering with the metaphysical laws of the universe.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
What is a virii? Do you mean the latin word meaning 'men'?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Mi2G are about as expert in computer security as your local nursery school, they are basically a fraud outfit that decieve companies by using FUD in order to transfer cash from company accounts to the chairmans pocket, and slashdot linked them up
and you wonder why no one subscribes and blocks slashdots adverts
in the security scene they are worthless
Register article
As a Mac user and Linux guy, I have to say that this kind of study is a little tilted... how many Mac users and Windows users really know how to record a breach into their machine? Neither ships with process accounting on out of the box, to my knowledge.
I recently had some puke engage in comment spamming my website. Traceback revealed he was using a Windows XP machine infected with the Subseven trojan. I'd be willing to bet that breach was not recorded.
I think it has to do with the fact that there is much malware written for OS X, and that the OS Security model is better to begin. There is no root account and there are no ports open by default.
of all manual hacker attacks that are successful, most of them happen on Linux, and Mac OS has the least of them. This does not mean that Mac OS is more secure.
They didn't say it was "most secure", they said it was "safest". That adjective takes security-through-obscurity into account.
It's kind of analogous to buying a home in a rural town vs. a downtown metropolitan area -- your neighbors leave their house unlocked all day, but since there's only about zero-point-two reported burglaries in a ten-mile radius every year, who really cares?
In a recent addendum to the mi2g's analysis, Executive Chairman DK Matai says,
Any thinking computer professional will see that Microsoft's Longhorn Operating System has had 0 malicious security breaches over the past year. It is obscene to think that anyone with half a mind would not switch to such a secure platform. Our masterfully elaborate computer models lead us to undoubtably confirm that Microsoft's Longhorn Operating System will be the most secure Operating System until it is released, sometime in the later part of the great year 2015. At that time we believe it will experience a downward trend and will be replaced by BSD as the most securest of all Operatinginus Systamicuses around. This indisputable change will be due in large part to the unquestionable and horrifying death of the BSD platform. Indubitably.
You can't really compare automatic spreading of worms with manual hacking attempts. However, you can compare percentage of manual attacks with percentage of worms written. For example, if we say that "67% of attacks are on Linux servers because most servers are Linux servers", it's valid to say that "95% of worms are written for Windows because 95% of desktops run Windows".
I'm not arguing that a hacking attempt is as bad as a worm. The article does state that the economic impact of worms is much greater. However, worms are written because of known vulnerabilities in systems, which is the same reason for manual security intrusions.
It's been widely repeated by many of my compatriots that Macs are simply more secure because they have a tiny user base. However, hacker culture is based on egos, correct? Imagine the fame one could gain by creating a virus that infects Macs too - they'ed be able to smash the "Macs don't get virii(?)" claim and they would get attention - for some people, good or bad doesn't matter.
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?
OS X really is more secure
If you read about how Opener is built, it's pretty obvious that it's neither a virus nor a trojan per say, but just a malicious script. No reason to get your britches all in a knot: any decent *nix user should be able to whip up some of these easily.
I saw this earlier from a link at osnews (yeah, I know). I was a little surprised it hadn't been mentioned here until I read the article. The site comes across as just another of those l337 haxor orgs trying to "go legit." Lots more disclaimers like that one blaming "people with agendas" writing bad press and even blaming the search engines for linking to it and helping spread the evil word. A "news" page linking to all their press releases where they quote themselves a lot.. oh boy, that's impressive.
Anyway, just in the last fews days I can think of at least one exploit requiring users of real player (on ANY platform) to "update their software" lest they be rooted by a malicious video stream. Previous hacks mentioned in the article were related to both Real and Quicktime being vulnerable to malicious skins.
Since I don't use either of these pieces of crapware I guess I'm 100% safer than everyone else and I don't have to worry about being rooted - because, after all, it's just bad software that makes you vulnerable, not being a warez whore and installing every piece of shit toy on your system that catches your eye.
Actually, the plural of vir, men, is viri. If virus had a plural in Latin, it, too, would be viri; but no plural of virus is attested.
OK, MAC=Mandatory Access Control, Message Authentication Code, or Media Access Control
Mac=abbreviation for Macintosh
Being less popular is a property that may make a system safer. But, less popular systems are not necessarily going to be safer. If windows 95 only has 1% of the market in 20 years, is it going to be safer that Mac OSX? Mac OSX has several security features that make it less exploitable than any current windows offering. It still has a long ways to go, and MS could make windows more secure than it in the future. Personally I'd like to see a system with easily configurable application specific priviledges. Your point about the statistics in this study not being well explained, or even given as raw data is well taken. Without the numbers, their study lacks credibility.
P.S. I'm not sure what you are talking about with the exploit, your description is a little fuzzy. I'm not sure changing your font size is a 'hack' or if that is what you are trying to say.
I can't find the source of the reported breaches. How did they determine which breaches to investigate? Were they only breaches reported to them? I can state for a fact that many companies do not report breach attempts to anyone. So this investigation probably isn't of a very accurate sample pool.
Developers: We can use your help.
First problem: what is a breach? If someone takes down a hosting company's Linux server that is hosting 5000 domains, and someone else takes down a Windows box with one domain and an OS X box with one domain, is that counted as 5000 Linux breaches, 1 Windows breach, and 1 OS X breach, or is it 1 breach of each OS?
Second problem: total number of breaches is a pointless number to look at by itself. For example, if you had 100 Windows servers and 1000 Linux servers, and you had 50 of the Windows server breached and 100 of the Linux servers breached, that would be a 50% breach rate for Windows and a 10% breach rate for Linux. But the way Mi2G reports it they would say 33% of the breaches were on Window and 67% on Linux, so Windows is twice as secure.
Bah. Your manual Linux breeches are no match for my automated OS X pantaloons.
One important factor with Mac OS X security is its default security settings; when someone buys a new Mac, takes it home and starts it up, their firewall is enabled, all of their sharing/webserving services are turned off, and their root account is disabled.
I am glad you pointed out that this is about manual exploits, NOT about which OS has the best security. If we were talking strictly about vulnerbility the story would be quite different. Quite simply, Mac OS would lose (IMHO): http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=131513&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =2&liChannelID=22&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage =1
Not that this matters. But it's also good to know its safe. But how many people actually direct connect to the internet? Doesn't it make sense to have some sort of cheap firewall/router box to protect you?
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
As before, the study ignores the thousands of automatically-spreading viruses for Windows.
And in other news, a new auto-safety study by the National Traffic Safety Commission has shown that SUVs are no more dangerous to drive than other types of cars. This conclusion was reached by ignoring roll-over accidents, which are due to the SUV's design, and are thus not caused by the driver.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I did not think of using a Mac until my last year in college when my FreeBSD box crapped out numerous time during my final software engineering project. I spent all my graduation money on a Mac and I still think that it was a good move because I get the power of Unix and Open Source with a nice interface and a system that does not crash and accepts almost anything I choose to stick in the USB port.
My primary reasons for using a Mac are:
I still can use all my office applications without problems. Office for Mac is not bad at all!
As a Unix dude who runs several boxes at home, I find it almost impossible to use windows because I am am glued to Terminal from time to time. I tried Cygwin and I do use it at work; however, I do not like it as much due to the lack of complete intergration into my box.
Mac has been secure for me. Although I consider myself to be a power user, I do have a girlfriend who likes to download all sorts of crap and click on everything that flashes. I haven't had problems with viruses so far.
Mac OS 10.3 has never crashed on me. I do not remember a single time when something went wrong to the point where I had to do cold boot.
Darwinports rule. Open Source programs just the way I like them :)
Mac is based on Unix and that is a key because I like maintaining all my systems in the same way. For example, I can run the same backup scripts with almost the same variables across all my boxes.
Plug-n-Play, as opposed to Plug-n-Pray on Windows. So far, I had no problems with digital cameras, USB keys, scanners, printers, etc. Plug it in and it works.
Human-Computer Interaction and Mac GUI. I cannot stress this enough: details are important! Natural things, like dragging an image from Safari browser or to iChat's icon, make our lives easier. Smooth fonts appeal greater. Software applications, just like people, will be taken more seriously if they are well polished. Thankfully, Apple spent an enormous amount of time and money on HCI research and then turned the results into something productive. I like OS X because it feels more natural than any Windows edition I've used so far.
This is a small one, but CD burning works with OS X without any problems right out of the box. No additional software installations needed. This list was enough to convince me :)
You might want to check out Fedora Core 3 when it comes out on the 8th. Although SuSE is a nice linux distro, I find that people are more likely to understand Fedora and be able to use more of its functionality. Don't ask me why heh, its just what I've observed. Also, it's a very secure operating system, super easy to set up, very easy update system (a little icon sits in your system tray and starts blinking with a big exclamation point if updates are available) or you can use yum or apt, FC3 is going to have SELinux compiled into it so you can learn about that and test it out. FC3 is also going to have kernel 2.6.9 and Gnome 2.8 so it should be fast, easy to use, and work well with most hardware. But most important(and this is operating system neutral), only run as root when you absolutely have to! You have no idea how important that is, and if you don't follow that rule then just forget about any other security measures. If you are hacked and you know that you haven't ran as root for a very long time and are positive you weren't root when you got hacked, then all you really have to do is create a new user, delete the infected user (copy over some important *data* files first if you must), and life is good again. This is assuming that you haven't made your system or important system files writable to non root users. When you first install a system (if its not done already) its probably best to make everything read only, except for your home directory. With SELinux you can even get hacked and know exactly what was affected and be confident that nothing else was, its very nice and worth reading about.
Regards,
Steve
what sane person would do that
I would, and I think I am, technically, sane. Picture this, your mother knows nothing about computers, has disposable income, and would like to look at web pages and exchange e-mail with all her friends. Maybe she is in a wheelchair and lives in a snowy climate. What do you do? You buy her an imac plug it into a DSL line or a cable modem, set it to auto-login and put big buttons on the desktop for her mail and web browser.
Maybe you have been running windows too long, some OS's don't need extra hardware or additional software to be secure. Her machine has been running faithfully for about five years now with no hacks and no viruses, thanks for asking. This study included machines across a range of uses, including home users.
But since they don't tell you how many of each system type is 24/7 connected, it is very hard to draw meaningful conclusions from this report.
.001% of 24/7 connected systems, then I'm not impressed with their numbers. If they comprised 60%, then I'm really impressed.
If OS X/BSD systems comprised only
And...were the attacks against unique machines? Or once machine A was found to be vulnerable, were there 200 different breaches against that machine? One badly configured system could really blow it for the rest.
Finally...which of the "attacks" were against the OS and which were against the applications? MySQl and Apache run on all their listed OSes. If it was a misconfiguration of those, which OS is really not relavant.
They might have the data, but they do not expose enough of it for me to have any confidence in their conclusions.
Pure marketing hype.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
How ironic!
Linux Apache/2.0.46 (Red Hat) 19-Oct-2004 217.154.246.214 Mistral Internet
According to Netcraft, Apache outnumbers IIS 3:1, and I'm making the (valid) assumption that most Apache web servers run on Linux. Let's also make the other assumption that most 24/7 machines are web servers (that most servers accessible on the net are web servers).
So, Netcraft has 37,620,349 Apache servers on-file, compared to 11,679,222 IIS servers. Mi2G has reported 235,907 successful breaches. First of all, to give you an idea of the sample size, that's 0.5% of all servers recorded by Netcraft! But let's give them that, since this is a sample of breaches occuring in a relatively short time period.
Now here comes the real news. 59,419 of computers recorded as breached are Windows, whereas 154,846 of computers recorded as breached are Linux (mi2g's numbers). Let's take those as percentages of all Linux [*nix] servers, and of all Windows servers. Looks like 0.4% of Linux servers have been breached, whereas 0.5% of Windows servers have been breached. So Windows is a little less secure, by my metric.
Now, this is a little unfair, because my assumption above (that Apache servers run Linux) is wrong. Many Apache servers that Netcraft picks up run BSD and could even run Mac OS X Server, I guess. Even taking this into account, the breach rate would be about the same for the two OSes (probably a little bit better for Linux).
What this doesn't take into account in terms of the Windows/UNIX debate are the hidden costs of an IIS server in terms of administration, virii, stability, reboot requirements, etc. the list goes on and on. It also doesn't take into account SOME hidden costs of Linux/BSD servers, but those are minor compared to the Windows annoyances (trust me, I know: I administer a Windows server, unfortunately).
That said, I do think BSD probably is more secure, and I use Netcraft's "longest uptime" as one of my metrics. To me, it seems the longer a site is on the Internet, the more statistical chance it has to get attacked. That ALL of the top uptime sites on Netcraft's list run BSD shows me that BSD is a pretty rock-solid OS for servers, that you can leave them out there in the wild for years without worry.
The real bottom line is that software that runs on UNIX-like OSes tends to be more secure, and this usually has not too much to do with the OS. For your box to have real security, the system administrator has to be smart (or the distro has to come with Smart Defaults, like I believe Debian does in the Linux world). The only real way to prevent security breaches is to be a smart administrator: to think ahead and secure your boxen before it's too late.
All this study shows me is that no OS is a "magic bullet," that breaches occur on unprotected machines regardless of your OS. No one blames car manufacturers/designers for stolen in-dash CD players if you stupidly forget to lock your doors.
I saw no mention of OpenVMS in the article. I'd say OpenVMS is certainly safer than MacOS X, *BSD, Linux, or Windows.
No, OpenVMS is not dead. Yes, people still use it in environments where security and uptime are critical.
http://www.port80software.com/about/press/012103
Microsoft IIS, widely criticized for security and scalability issues, faced a perception of declining market share during the past few years. This belief has been furthered by the Netcraft Survey, which reviews every detectable domain name (not web server)on the Internet to generate its Web server statistics. "Hosting vendors using Apache to serve numerous small sites bump up Netcraft's numbers in Apache's favor," said Chris Neppes, Director of Sales and Marketing for Port80 Software. "Netcraft's survey reflects a relatively high ratio of domains to Apache servers. If you look at dedicated hosting or corporate environments however, Apache's market share is likely much smaller. Port80 Software's survey of Fortune 1000 corporate Web server market share shows: Microsoft IIS: 54.1% Netscape Enterprise: 21.0% Apache: 17.6% Other Web servers: 7.3% By the way, Netcraft has a survey that pretty much agrees with this, but you have to pay for it...
My own anecdotal experience would be roughly the same (sans OS X experience). I have known someone whose Linux box was rooted, but it, too, was a manual attack. Windows goes without saying. OpenBSD goes without saying, too (oppositely, of course).
Linux is a very good general purpose OS, but it's development is volatile enough that it requires a conservative approach with respect to security. I would use an older more mature kernel along with manually paring down the rc directories and inetd.conf, among other things. OpenBSD, on the other hand, is stripped out of the box, and the user must add services. I generally feel that Solaris ranks more with Linux, in that a manual hardening effort really is necessary. Never would I put Windows on the Internet--it would be like swimming in the ocean with steaks tied to my legs.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
"the Open Source platform of BSD"
The commercial "BSD" is not open source.
If they mean an 'open source' BSD, which one are they recommending? NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD?
enough I say! There needs to be the grand ultimate no holds barred OS hacker challenge! Each OS fanclub gets to put one as equal as possible machine on the net, with a provided IP. 24 hours opened to attack, no DDoS, actual penetration attacks. Set up a directory inside with a file called "hackmeplz", the hackers have to add their tag to that file to prove they were there. Hackers or hacker groups have to pre register, with a hashed sig for verification of who they be,and they are the only ones allowed to try.
And here's the twist, the fanclubs are also the hackers, they not only have to try and own the other teams boxes, they have to defend their box!
Once and for all, let's see who's got the OS and the skillz!
As before, the study ignores the thousands of automatically-spreading viruses for Windows.
And as before, michael just can't help adding his two cents to a story submission, rather than posting a comment in response to it like everyone else, subjecting his opinions to the moderation processes.
If only Slashdot admins could be elected rather than appointed...