Apple Computers design great looking computers and have many unique features. According to Apple, people who buy Apple computers and some in the media, the Apple operating system is much safer that anything from Microsoft. Well, it turns out that that may not so true. Secunia is an independent company that tracks security problems in operating systems and software programs. Larry Dignan and George Ou, who write ZDNet's Zero Day blog did an analysis of data from Secunia on 2007 operating system vulnerabilities for both the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows operating systems.
Totaling up the vulnerabilities for Microsoft Windows XP and Vista versus the Apple Macintosh OS X, here is what they found:
| Microsoft | Apple | | extremely critical | 4 | 0 | | highly critical | 23 | 234 | | moderately critical | 3 | 2 | | less critical | 4 | 7 | | total flaws | 44 | 243 | | average flaws / month | 3.67 | 20.25 |
You can read the complete analysis at ZDNet's Zero Day blog Now because the Windows installed base is so much larger than the Macintosh, it's a more inviting target for hackers. This doesn't mean that hackers haven't gone after the Mac's operating system and tried to break in. There are numerous reports that hackers have tried, and they have been successful. What this does mean is that ALL operating systems have security flaws; and users and administrators need to be aware of the flaws and keep up with the patches that the vendors put out. It also means that people in pretty glass computers shouldn't throw stones. Top of Page
Back to Great Lakes Geek News
 | 
