expect the Mac to attract “more than a tiny fraction of the malicious attention that Windows does”. Harley, too, believes the main attack focus will move to mobile devices, notably the Java and Android platforms. “While I think OS X malware is a long-term trend, I doubt if it will be a dramatic shift like the switch from DOS viruses to Windows malware, for instance”, he says. Chris Clymer, a manager of advisory services at information security consulting fi rm SecureState, also believes there will be a shift toward targeting iOS. He declares it “a stripped down version of OS X that has many of the same vulnerabilities”, and claims that iOS device deployment will continue to grow signifi cantly, more so than OS X desktops and laptops.
There is even a forthcoming book due out in mid-2012 detailing the security issues facing iOS5 – the most recent version of Apple’s mobile operating system. Titled iOS Hacker’s Handbook, it is written by a team of authors including Charlie Miller, who is known for his work in recent years hacking into MacBooks, including a patched Macbook machine using a Safari code execution vulnerability.
Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux vs. Chrome
Industry observers insist the Mac architecture is no more secure than Windows, Linux or even Chrome. Clymer
It now makes economic sense to turn the attention to the Mac OS because there are so many more Mac operating systems out in the world to be infected
Steve Santorelli
says that arguably, depending on how Windows and Linux are confi gured, “OS X could be said to be less secure than Linux or Windows, especially out of the box”, since “Apple’s goal is to sell a user experience”. To provide that user experience, Apple has made concessions around security, he says. As an example, he mentions turning off the fi rewall in OS X to make it easy for iTunes users to play music back and forth on various devices. He adds that Apple has good security tools, but the user needs to know to turn them on because many are not on by default.
Another example Clymer points to is a setting within Apple’s Safari browser – known as Safe Files – that is enabled by default, causing all fi les considered safe to be opened automatically once they are downloaded. That is convenient from a usability standpoint, he notes, but not from a security perspective, as fi les are not scanned and code is automatically executed on a machine, potentially compromising the system.
“In the Windows world, you will typically have a Symantec or McAfee product that will scan the fi le before it downloads or it doesn’t load automatically and you can execute it later”, Clymer observes. “So again, Apple is making choices for usability. It’s not that [a Mac] can’t be confi gured securely, it’s about the default.” While Microsoft has long been blasted for its record with vulnerabilities in the OS, the fl ip side is that it has become very responsive to fi xing fl aws, he says.
Santorelli concurs that unlike Apple, “Microsoft turned on a lot of security features by default; that’s a big shift because you used to have to go in and turn those on”. He adds, though, that there are still a lot of XP users who haven’t updated their operating systems and don’t have fi rewalls.
SecureState’s Clymer believes there will be a shift toward targeting iOS devices, since the operating system is a stripped down version of OS X
(Photo credit: J. Henning Buchholz/
Shutterstock.com) 48
Historically, Macs have been signifi cantly safer than PCs, but the gap is quickly shrinking, claims Andrew Schrage, co- owner of Money Crashers Personal Finance, a website that uses both Macs and PCs. Echoing the others, Schrage says Windows has made strides toward becoming even safer, especially with the advent of Windows 7, “which is signifi cantly more secure than previous versions. Linux, due to its barebones operating system and software, is likely the most secure of all.” Because it is a much less complex system
January/February 2012
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