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

Re:Attacks Still Low

[glhturbo]

It's no secret ... There are more Windows boxes in sensitive areas (servers, etc.) than Macs. Focusing on Windows is more bang-for-the-buck....

If you are depending soley on your choice of OS

[antifoidulus]

for security, you have already lost the battle. Staying(relatively) secure involves a few simple steps that most people still won't listen to:

1. Run a firewall and only open what you need to be opened
2. Most importantly: DONT CLICK ON STUPID SHIT! Don't run seedy programs etc. It's amazed how many Windows users get infected like that

Those obviously won't protect against 100% of threats, but very few things in life are guarenteed.

Re:If you are depending soley on your choice of OS

[nadamsieee]

for security, you have already lost the battle. Staying(relatively) secure involves a few simple steps that most people still won't listen to:

They shouldn't have to listen; the system should be designed for security from the ground up.

2. Most importantly: DONT CLICK ON STUPID SHIT! Don't run seedy programs etc. It's amazed how many Windows users get infected like that

Relying on user education is #5 on the Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security.

Re:If you are depending soley on your choice of OS

[dal20402]

Almost no regular user is thinking about the security implications of his or her computer use. Therefore, the OS designer should do it for them, to prevent damage to other users.

If they are sophisticated enough to think about security at every step, power users can disable or change security features manually.

A computer, to most people, is a tool to write stuff, communicate, and have fun. It's not, in their minds, a tool to promote security. So why not have the machine be as secure as possible automatically?

Re:If you are depending soley on your choice of OS

[mrsbrisby]

1. Run a firewall and only open what you need to be opened

Do you honestly think anyone but a network administrator has any idea what you just said?

2. Most importantly: DONT CLICK ON STUPID SHIT! Don't run seedy programs etc. It's amazed how many Windows users get infected like that

Do you honestly think people go Hrm, this program is pretty seedy, but I'm going to run it anyway! .

The real problem is people go Oh, I received an electronic fax, that's not a program and people like you just say No you dolt, that was an exe file, gawd how stupid are you!?

Those obviously won't protect against 100% of threats, but very few things in life are guarenteed.

This is what I think the real problem is: Suggesting that people accept faulty software and their own failings.

Here's an idea: a big red button on the side of the computer. You hold it in, and executables can be created. Tell people that big red button lets other people change the way their computer works and no matter how the computer instructs them otherwise, to only push and hold that button in when they are unhappy about how their computer works and feel the need to change it.

That's what root is supposed to be for- whether they be called Administrator or sudo doesn't make it any more or less safe. The fact that Non-root can install software is a security weakness. The fact that the user can run as administrator and not know it is a security weakness.

My mother in law has been actively computing since 2002 without any viruses or "computer problems of any kind" simply because she has to call me in order to remount /home without -o noexec, or sudo for anything. I wish there were a red button sometimes because she's pretty good about knowing when to call me, but because she honestly thought she had to "Runas" in order to read a fax (after all, that's what the email from her son said to do!), she doesn't mind not knowing her own root password.

Re:Attacks Still Low

[NixieBunny]

Perhaps Steve Jobs doesn't invoke the same "I'm gonna get him!" feeling in the black hats that Bill Gates does. Or maybe it's that darn reality distortion field...

Slashdot

[pubjames]

Dear Slashdot editors,

your readers are all technically literate. Please don't post stories where dumb ideas like "how secure an operating system is = number of potential security holes fixed". That kind of stuff is for pointy haired bosses, not technically literate people.

Thanks!

Please

[daveschroeder]

The issue is having an actual usable vector for mass-propogation, resulting in the massive downtime and recovery time, billions of dollars of lost productivity, and tens of thousands of manhours in remediation. That's not to say no one could ever find some suitable vector for propagation that can strike large numbers of Mac OS X users effectively; just that it's very unlikely for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that these days, most Mac OS X computers aren't exposed in such a way that anything could effectively spread en masse remotely without user interaction.

Almost everything relies on some form of user interaction, and yes, these things are still bad, especially ones that take advantage of some shortcoming in the OS. What's laughable about the submission is that it makes it look like it's "bad" that Apple fixed oh-so-many vulnerabilities, and then complains that it's not fixing enough. Apple does fix issues reported to them, period. And yes, we all have stories about this or that outstanding bug or vulnerability that is still open, but Apple has markedly, hugely improved, mostly because of listening to feedback from customers, particularly enterprise customers, in the security arena. It does have a way to go, and whether or not any fix is "fast enough" will always be subjective.

No one sane ever said Mac OS X was invulnerable. It has bugs and vulnerabilities like any OS. Apple responds to them. Someone will always think they're not responding fast enough, or correctly, or what have you, but the fact remains that Mac OS X has been on the market for over 5 years, and there has yet to be any substantial issue that has been exploited on any scale. And no, it's not exclusively because of marketshare.

Re:Please

[daveschroeder]

I don't care if the "average Mac user" thinks that Mac OS X has no bugs, is invulnerable to everything, and will dance a jig if they ask.

Effectively, for almost all desktop users in any environment, Mac OS X is much more secure, much less attacked, and much safer to use from a malware perspective, for almost all average users, period. Some of the reasons are due to marketshare, some are helped in part by marketshare, some are because of architectural decisions, and some are a mix of multiple reasons. But regardless of what someone "thinks", Mac OS X is still a manifestly safer OS for an "average user", and there is simply no disputing that.

If you want to get people to understand that even Mac OS X has bugs, great. (Duh?) If you simply want to make stupid people no longer stupid, that probably won't work. The average person doesn't care. All the average person knows, when they make the switch for example, is that their Windows box was packed with spyware and adware and then "got slow" and had multitudes of typical Windows problems that typical people have, and they don't have the same problems with their Mac.

Do Macs have problems and bugs and vulnerabilities? Yes. Will anyone win the pissing match of "which one is better" when it's not done for any reason other than to be a pissing match, like this article seems to be doing? No.

Re:Please

[AKAImBatman]

...Also, since Apache is not running by default on OS X, it would hit a tiny number of users and most would not care...

...Apple is an Apache contributor and has released security patches in the past...

Precisely! :)

What we're seeing is Apple fixing issues that cannot be successfully exploited on 90%+ of the Mac machines in existence. Worms like Code Red or Blaster wouldn't be able to find enough hosts due to the default security setup of OS X. The only folks who would be vulnerable would be the ones who know enough about internet hosting to enable a service.

While there's no guarantee that these users are significantly more educated, they do at least know that they're running a potentially exploitable service. This is in direct opposition to the situations that made Code Red and Blaster possible. Had IIS Personal Server not enabled itself without the knowledge of most users, it's highly likely that Code Red would have failed to spread. (Especially since a security patch had been available in both cases.)

Re:Attacks Still Low

[Lumpy]

That and it's far FAR easier to get admin access for your app or bug-exploit in a windows machine than any other OS based machine.

A script kiddie can completely take over a critical windows server. It's far harder to get your code executed as admin or with admin priviliges on a linux,unix,or OSX machine.

THAT is the biggest reason. Unixes run far more of the internet than windows does, making it a prime target for someone who wants to cause trouble or steal information.

What the URL

[jlebrech]

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

Re:Attacks Still Low

[femtoguy]

I think that it is pretty simple. It is not the number of security bugs that is the issue, it is their severity, and their remote exploitability. Despite the statistics from the article, my department (which has 500 computers, with a mix of windowsXP, OSX and Linux) has had not a single security breach of a Linux or OSX system, but lots of breaches of Windows systems. Part of it is that the OSX and Linux security problems are situations where a local user can escalate his priveledges, something which is serious, but does not necessarily cause security problems. The other part of it is that the worst WindowsXP security breaches come through ad- and spy-ware that come from routine web surfing. This is not considered a bug in WindowsXP (if we just classed ActiveX and IE as security problems, we would have to list that as a windowsXP bug every month/day/week, and the numbers would change pretty quickly).

Anyway, as we all know, don't trust statistics because 82.35% of statistics are made up on the spot.

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.

As well they should.

[oneiros27]

The main point they should make is that OpenBSD doesn't bundle in lots of other software packages.

Therefore, they don't have people saying 'fixes for 31 vulnerabilities in its OS' ... as Apple patched 31 vulnerabilities, but most of them were not part of the OS (applications like FontBook and FontImporter) and not even maintained by Apple (like OpenSSL, PHP, Samba, perl).

Re:I predict...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

All 3 of them?

Change of the times

[RootWind]

The days of cracking just for "fun" or "reputation" are mostly over. Malware is driven by money now. Botnets, and spyware are the name of the game. No point in disabling ("owning") computers with malicious code when you can just silently commandeer them to make money. A lot of the malware spreading requires user intervention, which requires a mass audience, and a targeted spreading mechanism (e-mail is still the #1 way to spread).

pfft. quantity of fixes means nothing

[Tom]

I fixed over 50 bugs in my web-game during the past two days. Does that mean I'm less secure than windos?

These numbers mean nothing at all.
First, it's the number of fixed bugs, not of existing bugs. If product A has 500 holes and fixes 5 of them, and product B has 50 holes and fixes 10 of them - these dumbwit journalists would tell you that product A is more secure.

Two, quantity alone means nothing. If product A has 5 remote root holes and product B has 20 spelling bugs - these dumbwit journalists would tell you that product A is more secure.

The worst thing is that they get paid for producing this kind of misinformation. No, wait - the worst part is that there are lots of people out there who don't know technology and actually believe that crap.

Come and see the snobbery inherent in Linux!

[Anonymous Coward]

From the blurb: Linux (if you need a URL for Linux, you are probably at this site by mistake)

Fantastic! So what the poster is saying is that "If you're on slashdot and you're not a Linux geek you're out of place here".

Out of place as in not welcome for the most part too considering some of the groupthink that goes on.

Just try to get a valid, non-snobbish answer to a n00b Linux question around here. I dare you. Just like the snobs on #Linux. Try it there and you'll get the same.

The day I decided that Linux wasn't for me was the day I went to #Linux and asked for the name of a good distro a n00b could run without pulling out his hair. The response was directing me to DistroWatch or some-such site with nothing more than a list of distros. Out of 40 people this is the lone answer I got.* Great. And yet Linux users still claim Joe Sixpack is welcome to try to adopt? It sounds more like throwing down the gauntlet as opposed to inviting him in.


* Later I tried DSL and Mepis. While I found nothing "wrong" with them I do find overall Linux support lukewarm at best and I don't have the problems with windows that most claim to have. I just don't see a reason to switch yet. Maybe in a few more years when some of the zealots mature a bit and realize that supporting a product is more than just shouting "OMFG~! It's the best, if you don't like it you're just a fucktard!!11!!" and start producing apps a little bit better than Gimp I'll give it another go.

Mac OS X is still more secure, BY FAR.

[Caspian]

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

No, no, one doesn't.

Number of Windows machines I've had to painstakingly remove highly virulent spyware/adware from: Dozens.
Number of Mac OS X machines I've had to painstakingly remove highly virulent spyware/adware from: ZERO.

This is far more than just anecdotal evidence; this is how things go in the real world. In the real world, 50+% of Windows machines are badly infected by spyware, and 0% of Mac OS X machines.

ZERO.

By far the most prevalent security and stability breaches "in the wild" are not rootkits or remote exploits... they're spyware and viruses, both of which are virtually exclusively Windows issues. You can claim that this is mostly or wholly due to the overwhelming dominance of Windows over all other operating systems (in terms of "market share"), but the fact remains.

Until I start getting calls from blue-haired grandmas to hand-pick bits of Hotbar and Bonzibuddy and porno pop-up daemons out of their Macs, I won't buy the "Macs aren't any more secure than Windows" FUD. And neither should you!

Exactly

[sterno]

If an exploit does nothing more than let you play solitare someplace you shouldn't, then it doesn't matter. And the thing is, even if OS X is only as secure as Windows (which I'd dispute), it's still good for overall security of the Internet. One of the biggest problems with the Internet today is that if 95% of the computers run one operating system, it becomes easier to write exploits that affect the majority of people.

On the other hand, if 50% of the people were running OS X, then no exploit could harm more than half the people at any given time. So in the long run, perversely, OS X is beneficial to the security of Windows.

No duh!

[Infonaut]

Perhaps, security-wise, the OS choice really boils down to a 'pick-your-poison X user-base' equation?

Yeah, like, everyone knows that all OSes are, like, equal in all respect. It's not like they were designed differently or anything. It's all just 1s and 2s anyway. Every computer gets cloggged up with worms, viruses, and malware. It's just that there are more Windows users out there, and the Mac users just keep quiet about their virus infestations, so they can keep the Sacret Cult of the Mac going strong. I know plenty of Mac users who have to do clean installs all the time because their machines get so clogged up with worms and viruses. All of these whiners talk like that's not true!

Re:Attacks Still Low

[Anonymous Coward]

Any program files that might have a negative impact on the OS X system must be authorized with the Admin password.

Wrong. The attacker can simply use a privilege escalation exploit.

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

[OS24Ever]

I'm sorry but I don't agree with this marketshare thing.

If someone is standing on the corner going 'neener neener you can't hit me' someone out of spite regardless of any reward is going to do it. The fact that they've been touting they can't be hacked for several years now and they still haven't been hacked says to me that it's not easy to do/not able to be done as easily as it is on Windows.

Plus a lot of the 'security' problems don't focus on the exploits of IE and simple browsing hijacking your system with crap. That's the largest problem facing most IT departments that I've run across in the last year or two, not the OS itself being hacked but something stupid the browser does destroying the system.

Re:Attacks Still Low

[kestasjk]

A script kiddie can completely take over a critical windows server.

Did you read about the security vulnerabilities? They're practically all privilege escalation! Remember root-my-mac-mini? The script kiddie that breached OS X was probably using one of these vulnerabilities then, six months ago.

THAT is the biggest reason. Unixes run far more of the internet than windows does, making it a prime target for someone who wants to cause trouble or steal information.

Your argument seems to be that OS X runs on loads of servers, which makes it a great target.. First off it doesn't run on loads of servers, it has no presence in the server market. Second the vulnerabilities are mostly all in WiFi drivers, PPPoE code, and Safari. Why would hackers going after servers be looking in client code?

Also you can only apply the fixes to 10.3 and 10.4. Never mind <10.3 users, they can pay $99 for security, and never mind if they have a machine which won't run 10.3, they can buy a new Mac. This is like MS charging for SP1.

If MS came out with a massive load of critical security fixes like this, which had all been around for ages and in use by hackers, they would be quite rightly ridiculed. When Apple comes out with this disgrace

• "You can't go by numbers of critical vulnerabilities alone, maybe MS patches loads they don't tell us about",
• "Mac OS X runs the internet, hackers are much more interested in breaking OS X than Windows, which no-one runs",
• "So what if OS X has had critical, unpatched vulnerabilities which hackers have been exploiting for months? At least OS X doesn't have spyware and viruses!"

I wish I was exaggerating but people really are posting these; it's bizarre the double standards some people on slashdot have.. We should at least like and dislike Apple and Microsoft for the right reasons, there are many reasons to prefer Apple but security just isn't one of them.

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...

Re:Attacks Still Low

[RAMMS EIN]

``A script kiddie can completely take over a critical windows server. It's far harder to get your code executed as admin or with admin priviliges on a linux,unix,or OSX machine.''

Yes, because buffer overflows are so much harder to exploit on non-Windows OSes, and it's so much harder to get someone to type "sudo make install" than to get them to do the equivalent on Windows.

Re:Attacks Still Low

[WaRrK]

I remember root-my-mac-mini - the whole thing was a sham - the guy was giving out SSH accounts to the machine and the "local" user was just using a privilege escalation to get more rights. Granted, its a bug that needs fixing - but giving out logins to anonymous users on the internet isn't something I'm in the habit of.... not after last time..... damn squirrels.....

Re:Attacks Still Low

[TheRaven64]

Or, more importantly, the cracker is more likely to have a Windows box kicking around to practice on. A Linux box is also likely. A PowerPC Mac, however, was not. With the Intel switch, it is possible for a cracker to install a pirate copy of OS X in a VM or on a spare machine and do whatever they like to it, so this level of 'protection' goes away. It will be interesting to see what effect this has.

Why Windows security is terrible and OSX is better

[arete]

Personally I interpret the article summary as anti-Apple FUD. Everyone has security problems, and everyone can do better. I'm not - at all - trying to say that Apple shouldn't be better. They should. But there are two huge problems that make Windows worlds worse than anything else, and will continue to do so until they're actually fixed... Until then, comparing Windows to OS X in desktop* security is merely FUD.

I. ActiveX. ActiveX is DESIGNED to give a web server full control over your machine. With Flash or Java, even if they're enabled a website can only do stuff if they also exploit a - very rare - flaw in your Virtual Machine. In ActiveX, if you let that control run it can basically do anything. They have some checks to try to block the probably-worst applets, but in the end it runs the code unprotected. Until ActiveX is limited to a VM, it should be totally disabled.

I'd personally guess that this alone accounts for more regular attacks than everything-else-put-together. Don't use ActiveX. And if you're not using ActiveX, there's little reason to use IE...

II. Administrator use is chronic. Basically nobody runs OSX in root or sudo-d mode. LOTS of people run Windows routinely in Administrator mode, for a few main reasons: 1) Lots of software only runs that way, and switching is a pain. NO user app should need to be root to run. 2) LOTS of software is very hard to install so a nonAdmin can use it properly, for starters because it only works on the account it was installed into.

I will completely admit that if all the ISVs behaved perfectly 1 & 2 wouldn't be a problem - but it is VERY plausible for Microsoft to exert enough control to make this better for the vast majority of users. Also, I don't believe all these ISVs do it just to be stupid - my guess is that the structure of Windows makes it MUCH easier to do it that way.

  3) Lots of software that shouldn't even need admin privs to install does for no good reason. (I presume because of the way DLLs and the registry work they need to modify system folders even if they're only going to run as a local user - but that's definitely a Windows problem that it's structured that way.) And once you give those pieces of software admin privs, they can do anything - like installing themself as System so you can't kill them even WITH admin privs. All software should be installable with the MINIMUM possible privs. (Obviously system software or a virus checker needs admin privs.)

There are plenty of smaller reasons to be unhappy with Windows security, and I'm not trying to say I love their track record. I didn't address at all the fact that it comes out of the box extremely remote exploitable, (average of ~20 minutes for an unpatched box to be exploited on the internet - and several hours to download the patches!) But those are problems other OSes at least sometimes have and you can make reasonable comparisons. Until the two above are fixed, you shouldn't even COMPARE Windows desktop* security to OS X or Linux.

*Note that I said desktop. While there are some problems, neither of the above super-problems is a server problems. In fact, if you have to choose a server OS, you should probably choose based on what your admin is experienced in - better to have a well administered box than ANY badly admined box.

Re:Attacks Still Low

[drsmithy]

99% of all windows users run as admin. 100% of all windows server administrators log in with a admin level account and do lots of things as admin they they should not.

99% of the things malware wants to do, do not require elevated privileges.

NO APP NEEDS WRITE ACCESS TO THE C:/WINDOWS directory... NONE! yet the microsoft morons designed it that way because of the stupid registry.

Broken application that require write access to Windows system areas are 100% the fault of the app developer. It's got *nothing* to do with Microsoft.

No developer has had an excuse for releasing software that writes to places like C:\Windows for ca. 7 - 8 years.

Let's ignore the fact that most services under Unix lately do not run at the system level but under a protected user that does not have ADMIN access... but hey you were hoping that nobody noticed that.

Like modern Windows services do, you mean ?

Windows web server, buffer overflow = admin access. Linux web server, buffer overflow = user acces. Big different there. granted if you are silly and let apache user read the shadow passwords file your fault for not setting up security right.

IIS runs as its own user. A buffer overflow only nets you the privilege level of that user.

Re:Attacks Still Low

[laffer1]

In my last job, I had to support Mac OS 10.2 clients and servers. It was a nightmare as there is a severe problem with samba in OS X server which would easily cause a DOS attack on the box. I had to disable access to windows clients which were primarily IT and accounting employees. Apple has a terrible patch policy. I feel that they are a large enough company to release patches at least 2 versions back considering they like to do a release every 1-1.5 years. Imagine if Microsoft released a new vista every year. That would be a support nightmare. Of course Microsoft can't even get a start menu change done in a year...

Apple can develop great products, but they sure can't support them very long. Someone at apple needs to learn about maintaining software. Essentially you have to pay for security patches every two to three years. I end up running the latest OS release because safari and a few other things rarely see patches once its a version behind.

Before someone points out that apple is smaller than Microsoft, consider that smaller companies and groups maintain patches to their linux distros for far longer than Apple does with a commercial OS. I suppose some projects have worse policies... for instance FreeBSD EOL'd a bunch of stuff recently. I'm not in a position to back port patches when I get a few releases done with MidnightBSD yet since I don't have many developers. Apple does have developers.