Mac’s low popularity makes it look more secure than Windows
By Ruben Francia
The number of people surfing the Web using a Mac has doubled in the past eight months to 6%, but this number is still not enough to attract hackers’ attention. It makes me wonder whether the commonly-held “Mac is more secure than Windows” belief is true?
Most Mac users see their operating system as being much more secure that Windows. Well, I can’t blame them; its what they’ve come to know as true, and most are hopelessly fixated with this image.
But look closely. Much of Mac’s immunity from malicious attacks can be attributed to its very low popularity, as hackers go for the more widely used operating system to grab the most attention.
According to research made by Ray Wagner, Gartner’s managing vice president in the secure business enablement group, an operating system would need to hit the 20 to 30 per cent penetration level before it really becomes a target for hackers. This is the point where hackers will feel it is worth the time to expose vulnerability and Mac does not have this popularity number yet.
“If a hacker turned their attention to the Mac, it would suffer just as much as Windows,” Wagner said. “Attacking the 95 per cent of the market gets them more attention.”
Look at what happened in the recent CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, particularly the Mac-A-Hack contest. The $10,000 bounty certainly attracted hacker attention, and resulted in the discovery of a zero-day security flaw in Safari.
People may say that the hack was made possible because the those in charge of the event made the contest’s rules more lax; that may be true, but still it demonstrates that given an incentive to hack a Mac, someone can do it.
While the flaw affects most browsers and includes both Windows and Mac machines, the point here is that Mac was successfully targeted first, all because the contest gave someone an incentive to do it.
Mac enjoys few security attacks compare to Windows, but this does not mean that Macs are inherently more secure than PCs. Low popularity numbers for Macs means that the systems attract less attention from hackers, which only makes Macs looks more secure surfacially.
Only when Mac enjoys comparable popularity with Windows can we truly compare which system is more secure. But, can this be a reality? And does it really matter anyway?
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May 10th, 2007
Right
All the research and thoughtful analyses that have pointed out the security flaws inherent in the Windows OS as compared to ANY *NIX-based OS must be wrong.
Get a grip Ruben. The Mac OS X operating system, AND EVERY UNIX-BASED OS, are ALL *inherently* more secure than Windows. Look it up.
May 10th, 2007
Here is why this argument is so illogical. If someone actually DID come up with a truly malicious piece of Mac malware or virus it would get 100 times the publicity that a Windows virus garners. Hackers are as much about the glory as anything else. It would be truly grand and glorious to take the Mac down in the eyes of a dedicated hacker. Your argument holds no water. I’ve been hearing it since before OS X beta was released in 2000. It’s mid-2007 now, and STILL no serious OS X virus.
May 11th, 2007
MacsdoUnix stated much of what I’ve been thinking … Bragging Rights !
No different then “My Kid’s an Honor Student at _______”, biggest fish, fastest car, etc. And, not to leave the Ladies out of “BR’s”, most shoes, biggest savings on a purchase ( I don’t get that one ) ….
In OSX could be whacked by the script kiddies, it would have been by now …
May 13th, 2007
This article is ridiculous for the reasons already given, but it’s mainly just lame and old. Come on, people have been saying this forever, and you bring nothing new to the argument whatsoever. It’s just regurgitation of what has already been said for years.
And if you’re going to rehash some threadbare old cliche, at least pick one that passes the laugh test.
September 23rd, 2007
Computer Network Security
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting
August 13th, 2008
security thru obscurity is def signif benefit to osx (and “classic os”). check secunia freebsd5.x all advisories. as of now, 1% is unpatched. total 94 advisories in 2003-08, 1% “extremely” critical.
ms still loves to leave the sys lax (also, somehow ie settings get reset lax by occasional ms patches, which would be very annoying, except that i don’t use ie.)
beyond corporate/marketing policy, i have no idea whether nt is weaker than *bsd.
pro admin vs home “admin” is likely the most significant factor. think i read somewhere, in 2007, that lots of “amateur” home servers (linux) get hacked. and linux is the cheap training ground for *nix hackers.
[safari on] “Mac was successfully targeted first”
wasn’t safari on win still beta in may 2007 (this page date)? and safari is a browser, not the os.
caveat regards secunia et al: i used winME up to end of lifecycle (june 06). as of late 06, secunia showed 3 unpatched criticals. yet if you read the detail page of each of those, you’ll notice they require you to do something few sane ppl would do (eg, run java in ie). IOW the much maligned winme is (per secunia) rather secure. (i don’t recall winme’s yellow advisories. their list descriptions probably also appeared of negligible concern)