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Apple's Unlikely Security Mentor: Microsoft
snydeq writes "Apple has much to learn about securing an operating system, and it could learn how from Microsoft, Roger Grimes writes in the wake of further evidence that Macs are more vulnerable to attack than Windows machines. 'It's taken Microsoft 10 years to turn security from a weakness into a strength. Apple can use the lessons learned by Microsoft to manage a quick turnaround. Apple has already hired one of Microsoft's former security leaders, Window Snyder, and it has adopted a modified form of Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle programming practices. Apple has the benefit of seeing how Microsoft fixed its past mistakes.'"
MS is the typical fast followers - let someone else test the market; then jump in and take advantage of the new market while learning from the pioneer's mistakes. then push big to capture the market and crowd everyone else out. Once you're in you can expand and improve your product. It's been pretty effective for them over the years.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Meanwhile actual hackers, like the guys who won the Pwn2own contests by beating OSX security, now say OSX Lion is more secure than Windows (even though they previously freely admitted Snow Leopard was trailing Windows' latest offering in that department.)
"Both Miller and his co-author in the book The Mac Hacker's Handbook, Dino Dai Zovi of Trail of Bits said that from a security perspective, Snow Leopard was little better on Leopard, but that Lion is a "significant improvement." Zovi describes the level of security in Lion as "Windows 7 plus plus." Apple hired the inventor of the BitFrost security system for OLPC, Ivan Krstic, two years ago in an effort to beef up core OS security. Krstic's methods in BitFrost mirror closely what has now been implemented in Lion."
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Most security professionals (and even famous hackers, like pwn2own winners) today acknowledge that Microsoft security development practices are very good, and so are their latest OS. Everbody who has not devolved into pure fanboism understands that this can be the case even if they still have a higher volume of issues than Mac have for now.
Apple is still on safe due to obscurity, the corporate world almost strictly uses MS, while Apple has grown its user base in recent years, they have not touched the corporate market. Anyone will attempt to go after corporate before personal users because the reward is greater. MacOS is still the most vulnerable OS on the market. Yes, you can lock it down changing a lot of settings, but you can do additional configuring on Linux and Windows machines. MacOS doesn't lose Pwn2Own the quickest every year for no reason.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
It's a she, and her real name is Mwende.
I feel sorry for people that don't drink, because when they get up in the morning, that's as good as they're gonna feel
'It's taken Microsoft 10 years to turn security from a weakness into a strength"
Really? A strength? Seriously?
Is that why we got the ping of death back in Vista/Win7/2008 because of a forked TCP stack?....
Because Security is a "Strength" for Microsoft?
Honestly, while security *may* be better [and I'm not sure that's true] at MS, it certainly IS NOT a strength of theirs.
If that's the view of the moron who wrote this - I'll trust everything else written with the same level of massive skepticism. [i.e. It's clear a moron wrote this - so I'll trust everything else in here just as much as I'd trust any other moron.]
The only thing "strong" about windows security is the botnets that grow to 100,000 computers strong
Until MS expunges the litany of windows-running botnets from my inbox I'm not buying that BS. If they can take down the botnets, I'll acknowledge they've taken security seriously from a consumer protection standpoint. They can trot around the ring all day long yelling "We're tough on security now!" and I'll sit back with an "I'll believe it when I see some results" attitude. Put up or shut up. Ya I know, fat chance, but that's my opinion on it.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Considering the phenomenal market share Windows holds in the computer usage domain, no doubt there will be problems. Regardless of whether or not the Windows security model you speak of is broken or not, Its security problems are there for Apple to observe.
The more you know, the more you have to say and the more you should listen.
For malware, yes it is better to target a home user. For exploiting a machine to gain access to their network and steal information, corporate. Not all exploits are malware related.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
Really? A strength? Seriously? Is that why we got the ping of death back in Vista/Win7/2008 because of a forked TCP stack?.... Because Security is a "Strength" for Microsoft?
You'll notice a great majority of the exploits are found in old code. They've got quite rigorous security practices now, and their new code is benefiting greatly from it. I don't know if I'd say security is a strength of their products right now, as there's plenty of old code left to exploit. But they're certainly on the path to get there.
Let's see... The NT family of Windows has full security infrastructure based on user accounts and access privileges. However, that security infrastructure was completely turned off by default when Microsoft decided to merge the WinDOS family into Windows XP so that you could run legacy WinDOS software and software written by idiots without any additional setup. And now, starting with Vista, we've got yet another security infrustructure built on top of the first one which is supposed to emulate access restrictions inside otherwise unrestricted administrator account. Does that sound like a sane security design to you?
But how is some badly written third party software a symptom of a broken security model?
Because Microsoft has encouraged such behaviour in the past ('sure, feel free to write any old crap in the program files tree'), and now continues to support it so as not to break those badly written applications.
And because UAC messages are absolutely useless in most cases. The most common one seems to be 'Access Hard Disk'. What does that mean? Is it trying to write a config file to its own directory or install a rootkit? How am I supposed to tell?
I first met Window about 12 years ago, she was sharp and capable when it came to security. I doubt much has changed. In terms of achievement, not every achievement ends up being a big publicized event where implementors are handed plaques to commemorate the occasion. Security is a boring and incremental effort when you're trying to improve process.
So, I guess I'm a little biased with the (weak) personal connection, but don't hate just because you don't know who she is or what she's done.
I really can't think of two companies that approach the problem from such different directions:
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Pardon me if I'm not overwhelmed.
MS: "Yeah, your home is like Fort Knox - no one will break in through the new stuff we built. Mumble mumble mumble"
Me: "What was that mumbling?"
MS: "Well, everything is really secure, except the old stuff - like, you know, the doors and windows. That's old stuff. You can't hold us responsible, even if we built it. Only the new stuff matters and it's like a rock! No one will break in through the roof or walls!"
Me: "Ah, yeah - I feel so much better already!"
Sheesh.
If the new stuff is SO much better, and it's all that old crap code, then go back and fix it. Until then, I'll assume security doesn't matter much to you since while they can't break the "new" code - there's loads of old code that's full of holes. The practical experience is "it's full of holes." I don't much care where they come from.
[And even then, I don't yet buy the "Well the new stuff is so much better." because I don't see much evidence of it.]
-Greg
'It's taken Microsoft 10 years to turn security from a weakness into a strength.
Microsoft security isn't a strength, it's mediocre at best. This statement is just blatantly false.
Apple have problems but they are fixable because they started with a solid proven design, UNIX. Microsoft never had that advantage.
From Ars, "In Lion, the sandbox security model has been greatly enhanced, and Apple is finally promoting it for use by third-party applications. A sandboxed application must now include a list of "entitlements" describing exactly what resources it needs in order to do its job."
Then there's privilege separation, which breaks up a complex application into individual processes, each of which requires only the few entitlements necessary to perform a specific subset of the application's total capabilities. Video decoding, PDF decoding, and HTML decoding are already handled this way in Lion. (Not to mention sandboxing Flash into it's own tiny little world.)
Windows doesn't have such fine-grained security controls (as least not to my knowledge), but there is a public API that a process can use to lower its privileges. IE is actually one of the programs that uses it.
The problem is, most programs (including things like Firefox) don't use this lower privilege mode.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Three years ago is forever in security terms. "Pwn2Own doesn't test Linux," in present tense, is a true statement; and knowing the relative vulnerability of Leopard, Vista, and Ubuntu 7 tells you next to nothing about how Lion, Windows 7, and Ubuntu 11 stack up against each other today.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
People automatically assume it's a guy? That's chauvinistic.
Also, she has been head of security at Mozilla. I guess the summary didn't want to throw a third party into the debate.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2008-06-17-mozilla-window-snyder_N.htm
Ex: Apache, the most popular and very secure web server.
Ironically, Apache is, in fact, a very good example proving GP's point, since it has more known exploits than the less-popular IIS.
And now, starting with Vista, we've got yet another security infrustructure built on top of the first one which is supposed to emulate access restrictions inside otherwise unrestricted administrator account
You're confused. That is not how UAC works, at all. The underlying security system is the same that has always been in NT OS family - changed are the defaults (no longer root by default), and UAC is really nothing more than sudo.
Yeah, good UNIX proven design
Like setuid servers (not!) where even simple bugs allow an attacker direct root access
Like the hopelessly inadequate me-us-world security coarse-grained security which requires proper ACLs to be bolted on top.
Like you cannot set up proper inheritance of security from parent folder, leading admins to design strange processes to wake up and chmod files.
Like the almighty root to rule them all. No separation of duties there. (Windows has proper separation of duties based on privileges. Even admin does not own all privileges, for instance the admin *cannot* write to or clear the security log).
Like the UNIX idea of a "token" which are just UIDs hard-wired to user accounts. (Windows has *real* process tokens which can be manipulated per process, e.g. stripping certain privileges from a process even if it runs under an admin account).
Windows security design is not perfect, but it is a god deal better designed and more capable than the "UNIX proven design". Why do you think SELinux was developed by the NSA? Because Linux with its "proven design" was woefully inadequate for government work - a task for which Windows is certified but only few Linuxes - those with SELinux).
We keep hearing about this "superior" Unix security design. But it is always referred to in the abstract with no details. Maybe it is some magical fairy or Apple dust?
Yes, a good admin can lock down a Linux with apparmor or SELinux pretty tight. Both apparmor and SELinus are solutions which compensates for the initial inadequate design.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
I only skimmed the summary and was trying to figure out how Roger Grimes could be the name of an OS.