It's the time of year again, folks. "The year 2007 has been an interesting year that brought us improved security with Windows Vista and Mac OS X Leopard (10.5). But to get some perspective of how many publicly known holes found in these two operating systems, I've compiled all the security flaws in Mac OS X and Windows XP and Vista and placed them side by side. This is significant because it shows a trend that can give us a good estimate for how many flaws we can expect to find in the coming months." Do with it as you please.
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Member since:2005-07-06
Please. Nobody has put in better processes to ensure secure software - see Microsoft Security Development LifeCycle.
Microsoft learnt their lesson years ago and as the processes they have put in place have taken root so the security of their software has improved. Apple ignored the lessons of Microsoft until recently and is starting to pay for it despite their small market share. Apple only recently (1 year ago) advertised for a security expert i.e. someone to head up their security efforts. Hopefully Apple can get their quality up before their users start suffering because of their short sightedness.
Member since:2006-02-15
I don't CARE which one has better security frameworks or anything as I am a Linux user myself. All I was saying that one can't realistically determine absolutely anything from those numbers for the reasons I already explained. You can't prove me right with those numbers, but you can't prove me wrong either..
Member since:2005-07-08
I don't know how much security experts does Apple have and how good their security processes are.
But they certainly have brilliant engineers that know how to design good software that is not crap. They don't give root privileges to everybody like Microsoft did in XP. They don't determine if a file is executable just by looking at the extension of the file.
I'll take a Apple system over one from Microsoft any day, I've more confidence in the Apple engineers. Sure, they've security mistakes like anyone else, but their software is better suited to avoid "by-design" attacks.
Member since:2007-08-11
Microsoft learnt their lesson years ago and as the processes they have put in place have taken root so the security of their software has improved. Apple ignored the lessons of Microsoft until recently and is starting to pay for it despite their small market share. Apple only recently (1 year ago) advertised for a security expert i.e. someone to head up their security efforts. Hopefully Apple can get their quality up before their users start suffering because of their short sightedness.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
haven't laughed like that in ages!
Someone claiming that MS must have more secure software because of their "security policy"??! They've had a security policy since they started producing windows...what difference does it make? Even with this new policy, we still see products like Vista hitting the shelves. Not saying its bad but it has just as many vulnerabilities as XP.
I agree that this report means nothing. zilch.
MS dont report all their known vulnerabilities. I thought everyone was aware of this. Apple likely DO report them because they also likely FIX them too. MS fix their bugs but dont release them until the next service pack, which just happens to introduce a ton of new "features" and with it, new bugs.
Nothing new here. Funny that these numbers are still being posted even though the last 999999 times they were put on here, people said the same thing. its irrelevant, so Thom, please stop linking the same crap over and over.
Member since:2006-04-04
yup, so the fact that you can now brick a laptop through activeX
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic...
is a good example of MS improved security practices?
Member since:2006-02-16
Member since:2006-01-06
What can you actually deduct from such numbers? It looks like OS X has gotten the most bugfixes but you can't really deduct the reason for that from the numbers! It could be almost any reason whatsoever: they just might have more bugs that Windows, or they might just dedicate more people to fixing bugs, or people are more willing to report bugs to Apple or... Nah, completely useless numbers. Interesting? Perhaps to some. But useful? Not in any way except for those who try to spread FUD either way.
The reasons, quite frankly, are irrelevant. I could care less why the security exploits exist. What I care about is whether Apple is doing anything to mitigate against similar risks in the future. But, clearly, getting defensive about quality issues -- as you're clearly doing here -- is counter-productive. You can pretend that quality problems don't exist but, in the end, the quality problems do exist. So, just acknowledge that Apple needs to focus more closely on this problem. That isn't FUD. It's simple common sense.
Member since:2006-02-15
The reasons, quite frankly, are irrelevant. I could care less why the security exploits exist. What I care about is whether Apple is doing anything to mitigate against similar risks in the future. But, clearly, getting defensive about quality issues -- as you're clearly doing here -- is counter-productive. You can pretend that quality problems don't exist but, in the end, the quality problems do exist. So, just acknowledge that Apple needs to focus more closely on this problem. That isn't FUD. It's simple common sense.
Umm...Why would I get defensive? I have said it several times that I am a Linux user and I don't even own a Mac.. Duh. I just said that one can't deduct anything conclusive whatsoever from such numbers: not against Mac OS X nor Windows. And no, I don't like Microsoft but I still do defend Windows too when someone tries to bend the truth or just plain spreads FUD. I just wish everyone did that regardless of what OS they run.
Member since:
2006-02-15
This is significant because it shows a trend that can give us a good estimate for how many flaws we can expect to find in the coming months.
What can you actually deduct from such numbers? It looks like OS X has gotten the most bugfixes but you can't really deduct the reason for that from the numbers! It could be almost any reason whatsoever: they just might have more bugs that Windows, or they might just dedicate more people to fixing bugs, or people are more willing to report bugs to Apple or... Nah, completely useless numbers. Interesting? Perhaps to some. But useful? Not in any way except for those who try to spread FUD either way.
EDIT: Forgot to add that we CAN'T even estimate how many flaws will be fixed in the "coming months" either: maybe there will be just as many bugs found, or maybe they have fixed them all now and there won't be so many bugs left to fix, or the difficulty of the upcoming bugfixes might change radically or.. Just come up with more if you please.
Edited 2007-12-20 22:08