Microsoft Enters 2006 with Yet Another Major Security Problem

Well here are some thoughts that have grown in my mind over the past two years before I purchased my first mac this past summer. The overwhelming majority of security breaches in Microsoft's systems has seemingly been in the past several years, the majority. So it's not like Windows has always been in this situation, not even since 2001 for that matter. Thus why I never had a problem running my Windows machines until most recently.

But macs have been increasing in numbers more than people take to memory, and I haven't experienced any significant threats at all, without firewalls or anti-virus too. Upgrading to Tiger from Panther actually made my mac more secure than before, as time has progressed it hasn't become less secure with increasing numbers. And to me, it's not just the popularity that counts for making an attack. Would it also not be more less effective if it is in who you are attacking?

The operating system scientists prefer in the fields of organic chemistry, life sciences, geology, and microbiology is OS X. The majority of researach institutes and colleges of science use Macintosh for their scientific research. The national reserve as of last year is run on macs. So is Hollywood, even Disney's Pixar uses Macintosh. Are those not excellent targets? Attacks made on macs are a perfect oportunity to dissrupt or slow down at the very least our productive research, and source of entertainment. Attacking home users as a majority at most will force a reformat. Big deal, to an organized group of hackers who want to cause damage to our society I don't see that as being that much of an issue. As been stated above by other people, hackers aren't stupid. Why would they choose not to attack macintosh? Less in number yes, but in many cases where it counts. Full effort into destroying Windows isn't very logical, it's not the only OS used by important people. Perhaps some shared insight?

To derecks comments point taken inbedding software into the OS is stupid. And I was was making a trying to make a netural comparison microsft has 90% of the pc market. If apple where equaly on Pc,s and could be open on the hardware side I am sure they would face the same Problems. Just because Macs don't get viruses Does make make them superior. As Apple popularity grows so will thier problems with spyware and hackers.

To: DerekTraver

"many of them don't protect themselves against threats."

No kidding. Every dog, man, woman and transgendered out there [almost] has a PC running Windows. I can't imagine some of the stuff that must go on. So yeah, some people are going to be running some pretty crazy boxes. I would think that if Apple were fifty or a hundred times more popular then it would attact malicious coders, schemers and the like. But Windows is were the action is. Needless to say, though, if a person takes reasonable precautions, as they should running any computer on any platform, then they can run relatively securely with Windows. Especially now-a-days with DEP etc. that blocks buffer overrun upon which so many exploits [such as the WMF exploit] depend.

PatriotB6007, Judge Jackson... pretty good :P True as a general statement, NT is more secure than 9x, fair enough. There are more secure solutions to NT as well though, just thought I would have brought that up earlier.

Orion, I agree on many certain terms with you. You do appear to understand what coders go through. I personally do not code for operating systems, but that doesn't mean I don't know what they face and how Windows brought apon themselves the destruction they are seeing today.

But consider this as well. Apple developer's have made sacrifices to make their operating system easier to use and understand by the general public as well for the past five years with OS X. Not to mention, Apple has also increased their market on a massive scale since the late 90's and just doubled year-over-year sales from 2004 to 2005, this year reaching an all time high in revenue and being noted by analysts as one of the only computer company's who did well in 2005. OS X is far more popular than any previous version of Macintosh operating systems, yet you still don't see security problems increasing all the while like others on here suggest as if it's some rule of thumb which goes along with popularity. In fact, each new version of OS X has been more secure than the previous. Makes sense doesn't it, well it should...

Another problem which is overlooked with Windows users many times is how many of them don't protect themselves against threats. Using neccesary measures in protecting yourself is a factor unto itself with security, indipendent of popularity.

And absolutely, Unix was developed to be a secure system. In many cases Unix was used solely for the purpose of protecting important documentation by banks and large corporations in the early 90's. It's also the sub-system for coding chose by Apple to be used in OS X. Apple's OS X Tiger is also one of the most secure operating systems in the world today.

To Nim55:

Sure, that's the case according to the report. But also unaffected are people using DEP capable Intel and AMD processors with DEP fully enabled in Windows.

Sorry to blow the anti-Microsoft bubble, but these buffer overrrun exploits just aren't much going to affect users of Windows on modern computers anymore.