Apple ranks first in software vulnerability

[guitarguru777]

I am starting to love Gavin more and more by the minute. Finally another techie on this board with a brain! YAY!!!!!

 

[EerieVon]

The iPhone has had multiple "Malware" issues, even on unjailbroken phones.
(http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/23/safari-exploit-gives-hackers-full-control-of-your-iphone/)



ALWAYS assume that just because the public/vendors are not aware of any open critical vulnerabilities, it does not mean that they are not already being exploited by the bad guys.

Agreed, there are many 0days floating around, and have remained such for awhile. In my expereince exploits generally become known once the script kiddies become aware of them

 

[-Gavin-]

I am starting to love Gavin more and more by the minute.

It'll fade... give it time.

 

[JBroll]

Gavin has taken care of most things worth saying.

There are two things I'd like to add, though. First... although it's often claimed that the BSD base is a big part of OS X's security... Apple has added a ton of things to BSD and it doesn't seem like BSD's vulnerabilities (on the rare occasion that they pop up) are anything but a small minority compared to the rest of the OS X vulnerabilities - OpenBSD, for example, has still had fewer vulnerabilities this decade than I can count on one hand (as far as I know) and Apple has beat that by a long shot. Discussion of Apple inheriting security from its BSD base should thus be taken *very* carefully. Second... looking at Adobe's vulnerabilities and market share, there is no good explanation (apart from advertising and previous popularity, which I'm not considering 'good') for the continued widespread use of their products - we already should have moved to something less painful than Flash a long time ago, and considering the many replacements for Reader (SumatraPDF on Windows, for example) it is sad to still see such high market shares.

Jeff

 

[EerieVon]

I think we still see the market shares because most people are afraid of change. When they first started using computers it was done on a windows desktop with the start button,etc and that's what they are used to and don't want to change from that with the exception of upgrading that experience to a "new and improved" gui with more colorful start buttons and better looking icons.

 

[-Gavin-]

I think we still see the market shares because most people are afraid of change. When they first started using computers it was done on a windows desktop with the start button,etc and that's what they are used to and don't want to change from that with the exception of upgrading that experience to a "new and improved" gui with more colorful start buttons and better looking icons.

I still feel the bigger issue is that the general public would rather see a forwarded .xls file with "50 Hilarious pet photographs" from 2000 people they don't know than avoid identity theft and system compromise.

And on that note... who the fuck uses Excel to group photographs? The first clue the email is full of shit is that XLS is a file format for spreadsheets. Even if the email is clean, the person sending it is still an idiot and should be placed on your spam filter block list for that reason alone.