Security begins at (XP) Home

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981 (possibly apocryphal)

"Windows Vista is more secure than OSX 10.4.8" - security researcher David Maynor, 2007 (amazingly, not apocryphal)

Apparently, you see, there are all kinds of wild and crazy "security issues" that some super 133T H@X0Rs have mananged to exploit on MacOS systems, none of which any Mac user has ever stumbled upon in the wild and all of which have as much relevence to real world computer use as understanding the chemistry of hydrocarbons has to do with whether your Mom chooses paper or plastic at the grocery store.

I think the problem is that "security geeks" like David Maynor who keep trying to claim that Macs are not secure are completely divorced from how computers are used in the real world. They focus on technical exploits that might be extremely clever in the lab but have no relevance to what an average computer user would come across in actual usage.

Forget the technical minutiae of stack and heap exploits -- a real test would be to take two grandmotherly types, sit one down on a Mac and one on an average Windows PC and set them loose on the internet for an afternoon of surfing and emailing.

Which one will end that day with their computer clogged with spyware, unwanted porn pop-ups and a general slowdown of their computer?

Could anyone say with a stright face that it would be the Mac user?

That is what "security" means in the real world, not trivia about things like an "Apple SLP Daemon Service Registration Buffer Overflow Vulnerability"

Labels: computers

posted by Mike at 6:40 PM