{"id":6301,"date":"2011-08-09T06:21:02","date_gmt":"2011-08-09T10:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/?p=6301"},"modified":"2011-08-09T13:13:05","modified_gmt":"2011-08-09T17:13:05","slug":"windows-more-secure-than-os-x","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/2011\/08\/windows-more-secure-than-os-x\/","title":{"rendered":"Windows More Secure Than OS X"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s another person that wants to debate, without putting anything on the table to debate with. \u00c2\u00a0His argument, since Black Hat says that\u00c2\u00a0Windows is More Secure Than OS X<\/a>, it must be so.<\/p>\n

Reality obviously disagrees with you. \u00c2\u00a0First of all, you show absolutely no evidence to back up your article. \u00c2\u00a0A link to Black Hat doesn’t cover it. \u00c2\u00a0Quite Simply, an article written over an year ago, easily counters your opinion piece ( http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/2010\/04\/the-mac-os-isnt-really-virus-proof\/ ).<\/p>\n

Second, even so, the Black Hat article was discussing MOSX SERVER, not the MOSX Client. \u00c2\u00a0Even so, the claim applies to either Leopard or Snow Leopard, and not the current MOSX Lion.<\/p>\n

Why have we not seen any real world evidence of Virii infections on the Mac? \u00c2\u00a0We have seen plenty of Trojans, but no real cases of virii reproducing in the wild, and automatically infecting systems. \u00c2\u00a0Trojans are an issue due to user education, and users being gullible, it doesn’t match which platform there will always been trojan success stories due to this simple fact.<\/p>\n

But the simple fact is that whoever can successfully make a virius that can will reproduce and infection other systems automatically on the Mac will be famous. \u00c2\u00a0If not the person, than the virus itself.<\/p>\n

Remember the “I Love You”, and Melissa Viruses? \u00c2\u00a0What about the Morris Worm, that brought down the internet…. Heck, I will even ignore the Active X worms, virus, and trojans…The fact is that the underpinings of Mac OS X is basically BSD Unix. \u00c2\u00a0Compare that to Windows, fairly, and you will see a marked difference in security design.<\/p>\n

Does it make MOSX invulnerable to Viruses and other nasties, absolutely not. \u00c2\u00a0But it does give MOSX an edge, and a more stable environment to base it’s security model on. \u00c2\u00a0After all, BSD Unix’s development history goes back to 1977… \u00c2\u00a0 And I think we can also agree that the Unix security model is a fairly robust, and stable security model.<\/p>\n

The number of vulnerabilities really is meaningless, since they will count a vulnerability multiple times, in different software packages… \u00c2\u00a0Even after the vulnerability is patched. \u00c2\u00a0Even so, they are potential vulnerabilities, what you really would need to measure is actual infections or computer break ins.<\/p>\n

After all, I will counter Black Hat, and raise you a Trend Micro’s David Perry:<\/p>\n

For a few days in late January, the Netsky.p worm was infecting about 2,500 PCs a day. Meanwhile the MySQL bot infected approximately 100 systems a minute (albeit not necessarily desktop PCs). As David Perry, global director of education for security software provider Trend Micro, puts it, “an unprotected [Windows] computer will become owned by a bot within 14 minutes.” [http:\/\/www.pcworld.com\/article\/119624\/caught_a_virus.html]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yes, it’s historical, but it makes the point. \u00c2\u00a0Why is one of the first things we have to do to secure a Windows box is either install the Microsoft Defender Suite, or install some other antivirus package? Why is it, that we don’t have to do that on the Macintosh? \u00c2\u00a0The fact is, an unprotected Windows box \u00c2\u00a0will be infected by something. \u00c2\u00a0It is not a matter of how, it is a matter of when. \u00c2\u00a0Even protected Windows systems get infected by Zero-Day exploits. It happens. \u00c2\u00a0It may eventually happen on the Mac as well. \u00c2\u00a0But, at this point, without using a trojan, there is no evidence of a virus being able to reliably infect a Macintosh running Snow Leopard or Lion.<\/p>\n
This doesn’t mean that Microsoft hasn’t improved Windows, it has, but the basic security model for Windows is not yet as robust as on the Mac.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here’s another person that wants to debate, without putting anything on the table to debate with. \u00c2\u00a0His argument, since Black Hat says that\u00c2\u00a0Windows is More Secure Than OS X, it must be so. Well, here is my reply. Reality obviously disagrees with you. \u00c2\u00a0First of all, you show absolutely no evidence to back up your […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[64],"tags":[804,208,31],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6301"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.schollnick.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}