[Ti] Understanding security threats(was Re: Intel Mac Mini?)

[Chris Olson]

On Mar 2, 2006, at 12:36 AM, Lists wrote:

> But if that's the way he wants to play, then that's what he'll do.   
> Meanwhile I'll do the things that I believe safeguard me, including  
> running regular backups.

Thank you Mr. Lists.

George Ou, the ultimate Windows fanboy over at ZDNet, likes to point  
this out all the time:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=165

George is right about one thing; they just haven't gotten exploited  
on the Mac.  The types of vulnerabilities that affect the Mac (buffer  
overflows, privilege escalation, etc.), are the serious kind where  
one day you'll find your machine with the Opener rootkit installed in  
it.

Mac OS X is comprised of many open source components like Apache,  
PHP, tnftpd, etc..  If you look at the open source camps (Linux,  
FreeBSD, etc.) where these open source components are developed  
you'll see that FreeBSD, for instance, patches vulnerabilities in PHP  
sometimes SIX MONTHS before Apple rolls a patch into one big Security  
Update.  Security Update 2006-001 fixed 20 different security holes  
in Mac OS X.  Some of them have existed for MONTHS that were patched  
in Linux and BSD systems long ago.
-- 
Chris

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PGP Key:  http://astcomm.net/~chris/PGP_Public_Key/
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