Apple not so secure after all?

[Tsuroerusu]

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/s ... 678,00.htm
"OS X contains unpatched security flaws of a type that were fixed on alternative operating systems more than a decade ago, according to a security researcher credited with finding numerous bugs in Apple's increasingly popular platform."

Well, it's a superior Apple product you know!

Yet another reason why Linux and FreeBSD is better, and yes I still consider Darwin as "the victim of rape" of the BSDs!

[Patrick]

Even though we bust on Apple ALL operating systems will have vulnerabilies and bugs. It's a flawed creation of a flawed being. The biggest difference between F/OSS and closed proprietary OS's is how the bugs are handled. The F/OSS community is very upfront about issues and tackles them ASAP. Microsoft is notorious for leaving vulnerabilities unaddressed for months on end until someone blows the whistle on them. If you have half a brain you'll see F/OSS is the way to go. It is the future.

[Tsuroerusu]

Even though we bust on Apple ALL operating systems will have vulnerabilies and bugs.

Absolutely, no doubt about it, if Mozilla assumed that there were never gonna be security issues with Firefox because it didn't support ActiveX and ActiveScripting they would never be considered serious about their "product". Actually I can tell you that when you try to update SUSE Linux 10.0 right after the installation, you will receive a kernel update, because there are vulnerabilities in there.

The biggest difference between F/OSS and closed proprietary OS's is how the bugs are handled. The F/OSS community is very upfront about issues and tackles them ASAP.

Microsoft thinks that security by obscurity is the best way to prevent security issues, like "if you just don't tell anybody, no one will ever know about this thing", Microsoft, and other proprietary companies, argues that if you release the source for your software, you make it eaisier for crackers to go find security issues in it, I and pretty much the entire free and open source software world says that obscurity is bad, if you release the sourcecode, it's an even playing field between you and the cracker, and you can assume he knows the same stuff as you do, with obscurity you don't know what the crackers know.

Microsoft is notorious for leaving vulnerabilities unaddressed for months on end until someone blows the whistle on them.

Yeah, I think their policy of only releasing patches at the second Tuesday of every month is stupid as all hell, if there's a a vulnerability in software that I use, and that I consider critical, I want it fixed within an hour! I don't wanna wait for them idiots in Redmond to get done scratching their nuts and releasing a patch for it!!

Another ridiculous thing about Microsoft's security and patching policies is the way the consider a vulnerability as critical and important. They say that a vulnerability in Windows is critical, only "if its exploitation could allow the propagation of an Internet worm without user action", and then one step down from that they say that a vulnerability "whose exploitation could result in compromise of the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of users' data or the integrity or availability of processing resources" is important. Is don't know how ANY business could find such policies relieable!!! THE SECURITY OF MY DATA IS CRITICAL FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!!

If you have half a brain you'll see F/OSS is the way to go. It is the future.

Yeah, let's hope that more people will report of success stories using Linux and people that have actually migrated from Windows to Linux reports of huge cost savings, because the real heart of Microsoft's brainwashing "Get The Facts" campaign is that Windows offers lower TCO than Linux, which is nonsense.

[Wally Balljacker]

Yeah, let's hope that more people will report of success stories using Linux and people that have actually migrated from Windows to Linux reports of huge cost savings, because the real heart of Microsoft's brainwashing "Get The Facts" campaign is that Windows offers lower TCO than Linux, which is nonsense.

What exactly does Microsoft base these "facts" on?

[Tsuroerusu]

What exactly does Microsoft base these "facts" on?

I think they base it on incorrent values from their customers, for example a 7Eleven-style store chain here in Denmark says on Microsoft danish "Get The Facts" site: "We used to use UNIX, a system like Linux, and with Windows we have saved a lot of cash"

It's very very edgy IMHO, I don't get why people just eat the shit up!

[jsusanka]

Microsoft is notorious for leaving vulnerabilities unaddressed for months on end until someone blows the whistle on them. If you have half a brain you'll see F/OSS is the way to go. It is the future.

they have to take their time about patching because everything is so dam integrated if they patch one thing they have to check a thousand others to see if anything is broken.

FOSS is created with this in mind from the start - modularity - if you have to patch a browser your os networking functions aren't going to be broken because it doesn't touch them.

Microsoft just needs to start from scratch - but they can't - they are their own worse enemy (and not just in the way either).

[Tsuroerusu]

Microsoft just needs to start from scratch - but they can't - they are their own worse enemy (and not just in the way either).

You nailed it on the head, the fundemental security architecture of Windows is so flawed and insecure that it can't be fixed. It's funny, Microsoft success may be their downfall, because if they do abandon the 200 million Windows users out there, they will be cursed to hell by any one of their current customers who will run to Red Hat, Novell, IBM... for Linux stuff, and if they don't do this they will slowly die over time, because Windows is so darn insecure.