Slashdot Mirror
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?"
A few years ago the security situation was a disaster on Windows - every single person I knew or worked with was having massive and/or frequent spyware/virus/trojan incidents. With XP and now increasingly with Vista, those days are almost completely gone. Microsoft has really gotten their shit together even though it is shameful that they 1) let it get that way to begin with and 2) it took so long to fix things.
Huge numbers of Windows users I knew were ready to flee to Linux or OS X, but now with Apple's poor security efforts with OS X and Windows now a secure OS no one is talking about switching anymore. The only people still talking about switching do so for silly reasons like case design or other superficial reasons.
Cracking Linux or Apple is trivially easy. Computer Security students actually learn to write viruses on Linux, since there is no effort involved.
No market & no challenge are the secrets to Apple's "security through obscurity".