Snow Leopard less secure than Windows, says hacker

**HytrewQasdfg** · September 17, 2009

http://news.techworld.com/security/3...s-says-hacker/

Wasted opportunity to lock down OS, says Mac security guru

By Gregg Keizer | Computerworld US
Published: 13:24 GMT, 15 September 09

[removed - click the link if you want to read the b.s. It's not cool to post complete reprints without permission.]

**Jay-Bird** · September 17, 2009

I love my Leopard. I'm not on an Intel Mac, so I'm not on Snow Leopard. My machine has crashed a total of ZERO times since I bought it in 2005.

**FHopper** · September 17, 2009

What an odd thing to discuss... an obscure weakness in a vastly superior OS! And to begin by implying Windows is more secure through a semantic trick! Wow. Well as with many things, I am glad for the majority to chew Sirloin while I savor Filet Mignon.

**mdl** · September 17, 2009

What an odd thing to discuss... an obscure weakness in a vastly superior OS! And to begin by implying Windows is more secure through a semantic trick! Wow. Well as with many things, I am glad for the majority to chew Sirloin while I savor Filet Mignon.

Right on. Windows is just embarrassing as an OS. And really, if you go through a secured router and aren't an idiot with what you do online and what you download and run/install, it's pretty hard to get yourself into a position where your computer's really in danger.

***iacas*** · September 17, 2009

Stupid article, and way too many things stated as fact when they're not.

**enduro** · September 18, 2009

Stupid article, and way too many things stated as fact when they're not.

Yeah totaly. Especially since the ASLR as he refers to it is part of Darwin which is the open source part of the kernel. I believe it would be anyways. And even if it did create "random" address space for the stack, etc it wouldn't matter. So, if anyone wants to try and craft an exploit, go ahead and download the Darwin source code and have at it! You won't find a thing though since it is built on BSD which is years old and has been per reviewed by thousands of people and is pretty darn secure.

This isn't DOS. The memory is protected by the kernel and no client program has access at any time. No application stack can address another at any time and even if it tried all application memory is addressed virtually. So, where's the problem? I mean, I could create a pointer to the EXACT address in memory of something and try and access it and as soon as this code executed the operating system would core dump it. Like I said, this was something that may have been important with DOS, but not in any modern operating system. I mean, this apparent security expert (who is only trying to sensationalize nonsense) sounds like he's promoting security through obscurity, which is always a bad idea. Because eventually someone will guess right.

**jamo** · September 20, 2009

Why dont people understand that Mac isnt necessarily that much more secure than Windows, just Windows owns 90% (or close to that) percent of the market share, thus it would be much smarter to design a bug that attacks Windows. Mac's dont have a lot of viruses because there arnt a lot of Macs.
I love Mac but people need to know the facts.

**rebby** · September 20, 2009

As a security professional with over 15 years of experience, I thank you for the laugh...

***iacas*** · September 20, 2009

Why dont people understand that Mac isnt necessarily that much more secure than Windows, just Windows owns 90% (or close to that) percent of the market share, thus it would be much smarter to design a bug that attacks Windows. Mac's dont have a lot of viruses because there arnt a lot of Macs.

If you're going to call something a fact, at least make sure it is.

http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/broken_windows

Windows apologists have long argued that the only reason the Mac has been so strikingly free of security exploits is that it has such a smaller market share than Windows. This argument ignores numerous facts, such as that the Mac’s share of viruses is effectively zero; no matter how you peg the Mac’s overall market share, its share of viruses/worms/Trojans is significantly disproportionate. Or that the logical conclusion of this argument — that because of Windows’s monopoly market share, malfeasant hackers would logically only write software to attack Windows — would be to extend the argument to all software, malicious or not, and it’s quite easily disproven that “all software” is targeted only for Windows. Or that, despite the Mac’s relatively small market share, a successful virus/worm/Trojan attack against Mac OS X would likely garner significantly more notoriety and fame; considering the recent publicity given to non-exploited Mac OS X vulnerabilities, it’s reasonable to expect that an outright exploit would result in an avalanche of tech media hysteria. The reason this argument is so popular with Windows apologists is that it’s a convenient bit of rhetoric. They say it’s so, we say it’s not. You can’t get past this argument, because it can’t be disproven without the Mac OS actually attaining a Windows-like market share.

Y'know, because 35 million Macs isn't a large enough target to interest people.

**zeg** · September 20, 2009

What he said. There is no doubt some help from the market-share effect, but there's a lot more to it than that.

Of course, all this security is fine, but we're getting to the point where actual technical security breaches aren't the problem any more. Social engineering attacks are becoming more dominant. Many users will happily follow instructions, including typing passwords and credit card numbers, without thinking or understanding what they're doing. It doesn't do any good to lock the system down if the user is just going to go ahead and run the program as root because an email tells him to!

That said, I'm still in favor of making systems as technically secure as possible. To someone above, yeah, modern OSes are a lot better about segregating memory spaces, but they're not perfect. Normal users still need to be able to trigger system-level actions, and every time that happens there's an opportunity for an exploit. And serious security problems occasionally crop up even in old, well-reviewed open source software...

**jamo** · September 20, 2009

good point, good point

***iacas*** · September 21, 2009

good point, good point

Hey, c'mon, it's Mac vs. Windows. Reasonable responses and a complete lack of fanboyism isn't allowed!

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