OS X as many holes as Windows?

This isn't the first round of updates either

That's a considerable amount, and I do remember the CERT distribution list identifying some other OSX vulnerabilities about a month ago, but I personally wouldn't be comparing it to Windows just yet.

Any major closed sorce OS who doesn't have thousands of coders reading the source every day will have lots of security holes.

khiloa said:

Any major closed sorce OS who doesn't have thousands of coders reading the source every day will have lots of security holes.

Click to expand...

Even open source ones have them. ITs the nature of making software. Programming that many lines of code ain't easy.

khiloa said:

Any major closed sorce OS who doesn't have thousands of coders reading the source every day will have lots of security holes.

Click to expand...

And so begins the closed source vs open source again.

Personally I still stand by my statement that ANY OS that is popular and used by a majority of people will be the target for Virii, hackers, heavy scrutiny etc..

Yes an open source OS will have more people checking it for problems and so there will be less chance of problems being "ignored"(lack of a better term).

BUT in terms of numbers how does an open or closed source mean there is less holes in the code? The number of people looking at the code doesnt mean anything if 200 people looking at Vista's code find 3000 holes and 2 million people looking at *nix find the same number of holes. Neither OS is any more secure.

Some OSes are more secure than others (just take a look at OpenBSD). That said, security holes are to be expected. Adragontattoo is correct. However, you can design a system that is more secure and you can focus more on fixing bugs/security holes than adding features. Being obscure doesn't make the system more secure, it just means fewer people try to break in. OSX does have security holes, this isn't news. In fact, I've been repeatedly suprised over the past few years at how slow apple is to patch a lot of these problems. THe fact that there aren't many exploits in the wild is a testamet to how few people care about compromising macs, not to apple's "commitment to security." That said, OSX has some good security features.

Oh yea we have security holes. Ill admit it. But i think the reason theyre being exploited is the whole OSX86 project. That gave anyone with an x86 CPU the ability to tinker with this OS.

If the OS is available for people to run on their every day PCs, people would exploit it. Im sure if OS/2 or heck IRIX was on X86 NOW someone would find exploits, because it would be se easy, since its the minority

MadSkillzMan said:

Im sure if OS/2 or heck IRIX was on X86 NOW someone would find exploits, because it would be se easy, since its the minority

Click to expand...

Contary to popular belief IBM only stopped shipping OS2 (the warp versions) Effective December 23, 2005, and this was available for X86 (ive got a x86 warp disk that was purchased mid 2005)
IBM will continue to suuport the product till the end of standard support which is December 31, 2006[/url]

MadSkillzMan said:

Oh yea we have security holes. Ill admit it. But i think the reason theyre being exploited is the whole OSX86 project. That gave anyone with an x86 CPU the ability to tinker with this OS.

Click to expand...

There has always been the ability to tinker with the macOSX on x86 since the base of OSX (Darwin is Open Source).... in fact there are downloads of various versions such as GNU/Darwin on linuxiso.org
The technical information regarding x86 is also published on apples open source darwin site.
The only thing that apple do not opensource is certain parts of the kernel and the gui however many people have run it with KDE or Gnome after all is just a BSD with a face lift

http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/
http://www.opendarwin.org/
http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/darwin-x86

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3757&page=2 <----- history of darwin

Can PC viruses affect the x86 Macs? Or does the differences in OS, filesystem, etc... nullify operating on the same processor type?

Encore2097 said:

Can PC viruses affect the x86 Macs? Or does the differences in OS, filesystem, etc... nullify operating on the same processor type?

Click to expand...

The mac osx is a unix style bsd and as such Windows viruses do not effect this system, there are however viruses and exploits for osx and linux but these are not widespread

A lot of the issues aren't due so much to the nature of the security holes as to the way an OS is typically used. Any Linux user with an ounce of common sense doesn't run his system logged in as root on a day to day basis - he/she creates a normal user account and uses su or sudo when root access is needed. As such it's harder for programs and downloads to compromise the system as very little is run with administrator permissions unlike the likes of Windows where the user is by default an administrator.