Interesting Mac factoids....

[cphilip]

Tuesday 2nd November 2004

OS X is world's most secure operating system, report concludes 12:50PM

Mac OS X and BSD Unix have been named as the world's safest and most
secure online computing environments after a year-long study by
enterprise security specialists mi2g.

In what is describes as 'the most comprehensive study ever
undertaken', mi2g's Intelligence Unit analysed over 235,000 security
breaches against permanently online systems and found that Mac OS X
or BSD (on which OS X is partly based) accounted for just 4.82 per
cent of all successful attacks. Linux was the least secure, with
65.64 per cent while Windows accounted for most of the remainder.

In Government environments, where breaches should be treated with the
utmost concern, the positions of Windows and Linux are reversed, due
in no small part to a succession of worms and trojans directed
against Microsoft's OS.

'More and more smart individuals, government agencies and
corporations are shifting towards Apple and BSD environments in
2004,' said DK Matai, executive chairman of mi2g. 'For how long can
the truth remain hidden that the great emperors of the software
industry are wearing no clothes fit for the fluid environment in
which computing takes place, where new threats manifest every hour of
every day?

'There is an accelerating paradigm shift visible in 2004 and busy
professionals have spotted the benefits of Apple and BSD because they
don't have the time to cope with umpteen flavours of Linux or to wait
for Microsoft's Longhorn when Windows XP has proved to be a stumbling
block in some well chronicled instances.'

For more information visit www.mi2g.com.
Simon Aughton

--

[hitech]

I'm willing to bet that OS/400 was NOT included. I do not know of ANY successful attacks against that operating system. IBM hosted the AS/400 web site for many years WITHOUT a firewall and there were no successful attacks. Not for lack of trying...

[LudavicoSoldier]

No big surprise there.

Apple = Quality > Microsoft = Quantity

[Jeffy-CanCon]

Or is it just that hackers ignore Mac OS because it represents such a small percentage of the available targets?

[Rob218]

Or is it just that hackers ignore Mac OS because it represents such a small percentage of the available targets?

Bingo. If as many people had Macs, as people do PCs outfitted with Windows, I'm sure the numbers would be different.

[Enos Shenk]

Or is it just that hackers ignore Mac OS because it represents such a small percentage of the available targets?

A bit of both. OSX is built on a BSD core, so if someone was competent enough to set it up good, the risk of attack would be the same as any other properly secured *nix server.

Thats why i love OSX, the interface is actually smart, and doesnt pester the hell out of you like windows. Its easy for new users, but its also loaded with advanced stuff, and of course you can just open a bash shell, and hack around in a terminal.

[Thordic]

[Hairball]

Bingo. If as many people had Macs, as people do PCs outfitted with Windows, I'm sure the numbers would be different.

There was an article about it on the Register. Turns out the answer is no.


However, here's a nice article for your entertainment.

<i>
Macs help The Spamhaus Project take on spam
By Brad Cook
March 08, 2004 9:45 am ET

It was easier nabbing bad guys in the old days. Tracking them down might have been tricky, but at least law enforcement could rely on physical evidence. Today, though, some of the worst criminals in the world operate on the Internet, and they're quick to digitally cover their tracks when necessary. Many of them are spammers, of course, and Steve Linford, founder and director of The Spamhaus Project, has found himself their number one target because of his real-time, dynamic database of blocked IP addresses as well as ROKSO (Register of Known Spam Operations), a list that publicly names the worst offenders. But while enforcers in the old days carried guns for self-defense, Linford relies on a different weapon: his network of Macs.

"We need our computers to be impregnable," he says, "something that Macs have always been famous for. We are so frequently under Denial of Service attack by spam gangs that everything on our network is designed around surviving it.

"With Mac OS X, we can flip vital services onto backup circuits and IP set-ups in seconds, trace attackers, and weather the storm without our services being interrupted. I don't sit around wondering how many crackers and script-kiddies are hammering our servers; I know those Macs aren't letting them in."

Linford's main servers are Power Mac G4s and Xserves, but the heart of his network is a G4 Cube that maintains his Spamhaus Block List (SBL), which involves feeding real-time database changes to 300 worldwide servers that help more than 200 million SBL users reject around 8 billion spam e-mails a day. He notes that, except for reboots required when installing or upgrading software, he hasn't needed to restart the machine since 2001.

"It's an amazing piece of hardware," Linford says. "There's something very special about Macs in general, which starts from the moment you unpack one and discover that every component is a work of art. And working in Mac OS X simply doesn't feel like hard work; there's a feeling of calm about the OS."

Nowhere to be seen

Ironically, Apple doesn't use the SBL, nor does the company employ the list to protect .Mac users, despite Linford's overtures. He elaborates: "We think Apple is possibly set on Bayesian content filtering only, which is an arms race with spammers who constantly adapt spam content to get around the filters, and which has no fail-safe mechanism to automatically alert the sender when a message is flagged in error and trashed.

"In the fight against Internet spam, which is now 70 percent of all e-mail in the U.S., Apple is nowhere to be seen. In contrast, Microsoft, whose OS insecurities are at the root of most spam problems, is at every spam conference and law enforcement meeting we attend. They position themselves as saviors, but in reality they're very much the silent conveyor of the problem: 70 percent of all spam comes from hijacked Windows machines."

Proof is hard to come by

Many of those hijacked computers are the result of W32.SoBig.E, a Trojan Horse virus that infected machines all over the world last year, creating a network of "zombies" that send billions of spam e-mails anonymously, unbeknownst to their owners. Linford's ROKSO list publicly identifies 200 of the worst spammers, many of whom now use this method to continue their dirty work. But like an old-school enforcer, Linford is working on bringing them down.

"Proving who physically sent a spam is very difficult as most of it comes from anonymous proxies, and showing who owns that Viagra site hosted in China is equally difficult since the spammer will have used a fake name to open the account," he explains. "However, the Federal Trade Commission and a number of state Attorneys General offices are working with us on putting together cases on the major spammers. This year we should see quite a few spammers arrested."

But that could do little to stem a spam flood that Linford projects will account for 80 percent of all e-mail by the end of this year and 90 percent by next summer. He views the recently passed CAN-SPAM Act as one that "legalizes spamming and therefore only makes it worse."

A solution

The answer to the problem, he says, involves making spamming illegal "and then using effective spam-blocking technology so that spammers find it very difficult to get mail servers to accept spam in the first place. The first line of defense should always be a block list, as that will more than halve any ISP's incoming mail stream, leaving a small amount to be mopped up by second-level content filters.

"However," he adds, "with each spammer sending an average of 80 million spams per day and relying on returns as low as 1 in 1,000,000, which is still 80 sales on a bad day, anything that stands in their way is going to be attacked with force."

Which means that there will always be a need for The Spamhaus Project. Linford makes a living running a UK-based ISP and application developer called Ultradesign, but the ever-rising spam tide causes him to devote more and more personal resources to the battle. Because Spamhaus is run by volunteers like himself, he expects that he may soon have to transition part of its services to a funded model. He's currently seeking sponsorship within the computer industry.

"Even if we do end up with a 'Sponsored by Microsoft' logo on our site," he says, "unless someone starts making computers as good as Apple's and an OS as secure and stable as OS X, you'll be able to peel back any Microsoft logo to reveal a 'Powered by Xserve' one underneath."

</i>

[Kevmaster]

UNIX....the only way to make it crash is with a bsaeball bat....OSX is an improved Unix. OSX Rocsk!

[hitech]

I'm telling you guys, NONE of these operating systems is anywhere near as secure as OS/400. Nor as reliable. In those catagories it wins hands down.

[SCpoloRicker]

in the mail, pics when it arrives

20" iMac
512 ram
160 gb hd

Pictures as soon as it gets here.

[datapimp69]

235,000 security
breaches against permanently online systems and found that Mac OS X
or BSD (on which OS X is partly based) accounted for just 4.82 per
cent of all successful attacks. Linux was the least secure, with
65.64 per cent while Windows accounted for most of the remainder.



--

so if my math is right 65.64% + 4.82% = 70.46% ( of successful attacks were to OSX and linux )

so that leaves 29.54 % left, ts says windows was most of that, so lets say 25% = windows

now lets count out the millions of older versions of windows left out there. best est are like 35 % of windows are useing a version older then XP. so 35% of 25% = 16.25 %

so my point is that of all successful hacks of systems only 16% or so were current windows systems. rember we are compareing apples current version of the OS.

if you then throw out all the systems that arent pached to the correct levels and people that are stuiped and open email bombs, leavign trojans on there system.

i bet the real number between OSX and XP would be about them same.

the real shocker is the slacker in the linux community that got hacked so much.

but you can say much for an operating system that the hackers have the source code to look thru and find the holes

thats enuff for me </rant>

p.s. notice i never said anything bad about apple, i owned MAC serial# 128, and love them. but i will allways use windows on a day to day basis. i just hate the microsoft bashing that goes on these days.

[Kevmaster]

20" iMac
512 ram
160 gb hd

Pictures as soon as it gets here.

shoot...i gots me a free one of those still sitting in the box...looking for a place to put her

i may try to trade her for a standard g5 since i already have a 23" monitor imnot using


i love macs

[cphilip]

so if my math is right 65.64% + 4.82% = 70.46% ( of successful attacks were to OSX and linux )

so that leaves 29.54 % left, ts says windows was most of that, so lets say 25% = windows

now lets count out the millions of older versions of windows left out there. best est are like 35 % of windows are useing a version older then XP. so 35% of 25% = 16.25 %

so my point is that of all successful hacks of systems only 16% or so were current windows systems. rember we are compareing apples current version of the OS.

if you then throw out all the systems that arent pached to the correct levels and people that are stuiped and open email bombs, leavign trojans on there system.

i bet the real number between OSX and XP would be about them same.

the real shocker is the slacker in the linux community that got hacked so much.

but you can say much for an operating system that the hackers have the source code to look thru and find the holes

thats enuff for me </rant>

p.s. notice i never said anything bad about apple, i owned MAC serial# 128, and love them. but i will allways use windows on a day to day basis. i just hate the microsoft bashing that goes on these days.

You must have missed the part about the Government applications. Numbers were reversed between Linux and Windows. In applications tested. And no... I don't think thats a good assumption at all. the numbers are there. Read it. Don't try and reanalize it till you do. Reguardless they failed miserably to attack the Mac OS with any sucess. And they were trying and knew its flaws. But it still failed. So in spite of all it was secure and they concluded it. Its not that they were using existing hacks. It was that they were inventing hacks and going at it. And failed on Macs to do so.

[Python14]

Kev. I'll trade my shocker for the G5 you paid nothing fo.