Microsoft

Myth Busted: Mac Security = Santa Clause

Turn to Vista while you still can

By Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor

30th of April 2007, 14:24 GMT

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Mac computers are fallible. Mac computers can get hacked! Mac computers can get infected with viruses! Mac computers do crash! I am not the author of these statements. Believe it or not

I am simply paraphrasing Chad McDonald, CISSP, CISA, the Chief Information Security Officer at Georgia College & State University and a self-proclaimed "proud Mac fanatic" which loves "all things Apple", but a realist at heart.

"The Mac has been hacked!... big deal" is a blog post authored by McDonald over at CSO, that covers the recent Macbook Pro fully patched computer hacked at CanSecWest Vancouver 2007 via Safari Java Script enabled and through a vulnerability in QuickTime.

"I am not really sure where this began, but there is a common belief that the Mac is impenetrable to attack. Who really believes this? My guess is that it's the same people that believe in Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and Santa Clause. Well, I hate to disappoint the blissfully ignorant, but it ain't so. There is no Santa Clause. The esteemed OSX is as flawed as Window, Linux and probably any other operating system in existence. The fa�ade has been broken," McDonald wrote on his blog.

Just for the sake of your amusement, I have tracked down two Get a Mac ads and embedded them at the bottom. I think that it will be obvious to you that Apple believes "that the Mac is impenetrable to attack." Just Watch the Japanese commercial. You don't even have to know the language to understand how Apple stands on the issue.

Now the problem is 'what should anyone expect from an average Mac user when they are educated by Apple to believe that Mac OS X is impenetrable?' This marketing doctrine is very dangerous and it will backfire.

Eugene Kaspersky, the head of virus research at Kaspersky Lab has predicted that the threat environment will focus more and more on Linux and Mac platforms as their adoption rate will increase. This trend is not without legitimacy. Security company Sophos compiled on April 24, 2007 a list with all the web based malware in the first quarter of 2007. In the sixth position is Mal/FunDF-A, malicious code that affects Windows, Macintosh and Unix.

What is the advantage of Windows Vista in all this? Well Vista, because of its predecessors, and of the PC users, has already been through the baptism of fire, and there is a healthy security infrastructure set in place for protection and response. Mac and Linux are just fresh meat...

TAGS:

Apple | Mac OS X | Windows Vista

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