Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 20th Mar 2009 13:51 UTC, submitted by google_ninja
Privacy, Security, Encryption Fresh from winning the PWN2OWN contest yesterday, Charlie Miller has been interviewed by ZDNet. He talks about how Mac OS X is a very simple operating system to exploit due to the lack of any form of anti-exploit features. He also explains that the underlying operating system is much more important in creating a successful exploit than the bowser, why Chrome is so hard to hack, and many other things.
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RE[4]: Comment by sadyc
by Soulbender on Fri 20th Mar 2009 17:50 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: Comment by sadyc"
Soulbender
Member since:
2005-08-18

Why not blame FORD executives for refusing to buy the information about defective cars, thereby exposing their customers to the risk?


Except that, for one reason or other, they don't know? And even if they did, who cares who's to blame? Wouldn't it be more important to save lives than play petty blame games? I presume you would gladly let people suffer and die just to point the finger at the execs?
The blame can be assessed at a later time, it won't go away just because you expose the problem. If you keep the problem secret and sell it to them silently there sure as hell won't be any blame dished out.

but I don't think anyone should work for free for closed-source, IP-paranoid company who boasts making a highly secure and usable operating system


Good job missing the point again. It's not about who is closed source and evil or has brown pants or whatever. It's about behaving responsibly and not leaving the general public exposed to danger.
He sat on the bug for a year. FOR A YEAR. Two wrongs does not make a right.

In fact, I'd say it would be extremely shortsighted to help these companies for free instead of contributing to improve FOSS alternatives.


Yes, because all software must be FOSS. It magically makes everything ok. Blah blah blah.

The whole OS matters for the exploit, and OSX is not open source.


Who cares if it's not open source? That's not the point. The point is to not expose the unknowing consumer to risks.

Reply Parent Score: 3