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Microsoft or Apple - Who Is the Faster Patcher?
Amy Bennett writes "And the answer is... Microsoft. Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology analyzed 658 high-risk and medium-risk vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft products and 738 affecting Apple. They measured how many times over the past six years the two vendors were able to have a patch available on the day a vulnerability became publicly known, which they call the 0-day patch rate. What they found: 'Apple was below 20 [unpatched vulnerabilities at disclosure] consistently before 2005,' said Stefan Frei, one of the researchers involved in the study. 'Since then, they are very often above. So if you have Apple and compare it to Microsoft, the number of unpatched vulnerabilities are higher at Apple.'"
The article in question lacks a significant amount of information - hell, it didn't even give a number for Microsoft. It just said that Apple was "below 20" and then got better.
Until I see an article that doesn't throw out one number and then fill the rest of the page with useless fluff and speculation, I'm putting my money on Apple.
Mocrosloth doesn't even say they have a problem, much less announce it until they have a patch ready (or nearly ready). Take a look at the "shatter attack" privilege elevation exploit that just got fixed in Vista, it started with Win NT 4.0, and when was that out? What YEAR was that? And now with have the wonderful Fire-Wire exploit, which they were aware of in 2004, reminded again in 2006, and the exploit finally published in 2007 because they refused to do anything! The only reason why MS is coming out on top is because they own the kitchen and cook their own numbers to order.