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Apple Releases Mac OS X Leopard Security Guide
Wormfan writes to share ZDNet's brief mention of and a link to "Apple's release of a ~250 page PDF of security best-practices and tips to protect Mac OS X Leopard clients. The guide is aimed at experienced users, Apple says, familiar with the Terminal application and its command-line interface."
For "normal" users OS X is very secure, why? Because when you see why most spyware gets downloaded it is either via A) Active X and drive-by-downloads or B) various freeware programs. With OS X, because it doesn't have IE Active X and drive-by-downloads are eliminated and most mac freeware is virus/adware free.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
What are you talking about? Even OpenBSD has security-related documents and manuals. While OpenBSD is super safe for the out-of-the-box install, any time you open a port or enable a daemon, you are exposing yourself to some kind of vulnerability if you don't know exactly what you're doing.
Mac OS X is the same way. If you're enabling advanced services and whatnot, as per the experts this manual is aimed at, you need to know what you're doing. This manual addresses that.
make world, not war
As it is, there is a great false sense of security that comes with owning a Mac. It's like Anti-FUD. Most of it comes from a believe that the OS is "just safe", when that's not the case, especially now that programs like Darwine can run your Windows executables right out of the box. The lack of general malware can most likely be attributed to the Mac OS X file structure and the lack of a significant market share.
Anyone who owns any computer should pay attention on how to keep themselves and their systems safe.
Mac Realist since 2001
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
I have not read the document fully yet (obviously, it is 240 pages!) but I have to say Apple do a damn good job in presenting their documents. The first thing I thought when I opened the PDF was how nicely formatted it is. It is a silly little thing but I much prefer a well presented document than just text dumped. Kudos to whoever put it together, I just hope the content is as good as the presentation!