Apple Releases 31 Security Fixes

Agram writes, "This week Apple has released fixes for 31 vulnerabilities in its OS, although reportedly a number of known flaws remain un-addressed (according to the instigator of the Month of Kernel Bugs, 'Apple hasn't fixed any of the bugs published during [MoKB], except for the AirPort issue'). Earlier this year, in a move reminiscent of Microsoft's past patching faux pas, Apple released a 'fix' the installation of which broke features unrelated to the targeted flaw. With the growing number of low-level flaws, one has to wonder if Apple's 'more secure' argument still stands. Earlier this month, Microsoft released 6 fixes. Linux does not seem to fare much better. Despite all of these fixes, exploits remain in the wild for each platform. Perhaps, security-wise, the OS choice really boils down to a 'pick-your-poison X user-base' equation?"

Comments

What the URL

[jlebrech]

First of all whats the URL for Linux? and second what's a URL?

You know what, you're right!

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

My linux laptop is all crudded up with 9000 spyware bonzi buddy applets, and my OSX work machine was just discovered to be a spam zombie spewing out half a billion UBE's per week.

Bad, Apple, bad. *thwacks Apple with rolled up newspaper*

Don't break any fixes anymore, you're supposed to be perfect.

Re:I predict...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

All 3 of them?

It Never Did

[RAMMS EIN]

``With the growing number of low-level flaws, one has to wonder if Apple's 'more secure' argument still stands.''

It never did. First of all, you can't compare security of operating systems, because you can't eliminate bias from your tests. Secondly, Apple's OS is closed source, which you can never trust. Thirdly, much of the OS is written in unsafe languages (particularly C, C++, and, perhaps, Objective C - I don't know if the last is unsafe), and thus, the statistical probability that it will contain security holes is high. Finally, I don't think Mac OS X has been so thouroughly scrutinized by security experts as Windows has, so it's very well possible that Windows is more secure by now, regardless of it's starting position. However, we will never know that, because of the first point.

Re:Attacks Still Low

[Old Thrashbarg]

Your argument seems to be that OS X runs on loads of servers, which makes it a great target..

Er, no, his argument was that Unix runs on lots of servers, not OSX.

First off it doesn't run on loads of servers, it has no presence in the server market.

Wow, in that case I'm gonna have to cut down on the coffee because I'm having powerful hallucinations every time I walk into my server room...