{"id":2025,"date":"2003-12-14T07:46:28","date_gmt":"2003-12-14T23:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/12\/14\/security-mac-os-x-vs-windows\/"},"modified":"2019-12-06T14:42:51","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T22:42:51","slug":"security-mac-os-x-vs-windows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/12\/14\/security-mac-os-x-vs-windows\/","title":{"rendered":"Security: Mac OS X vs. Windows"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:12673,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/abcnews.go.com\\\/sections\\\/scitech\\\/ZDM\\\/mac_vulnerablility_pcmag_031211.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/abcnews.go.com\\\/sections\\\/scitech\\\/ZDM\\\/mac_vulnerablility_pcmag_031211.html&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:12674,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.infowarrior.org\\\/articles\\\/2003-08.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:12675,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.mrbarrett.com\\\/mt\\\/archives\\\/2003_12_14.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.hugedomains.com\\\/domain_profile.cfm?d=mrbarrett.com&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Last week, a minor firestorm erupted when PC Magazine columnist Lance Ulanoff wrote a ridiculously inflammatory article gleefully declaring that, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/sections\/scitech\/ZDM\/mac_vulnerablility_pcmag_031211.html\" title=\"Macs Are Not Invulnerable\">the Mac OS is just as vulnerable as Microsoft Windows<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  I know this is wrong, but in one respect I was happy to learn earlier this month about the discovery of a significant security hole in the Jaguar and Panther versions (10.2 and 10.3, respectively) of the Apple operating system (OS).\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Richard Forno, former Chief Security Officer for Network Solutions, has responded with a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.infowarrior.org\/articles\/2003-08.html\" title=\"Muckraking, the PC Way\">comparison of Mac OS X and Windows security<\/a> &#8212; and Windows doesn&#8217;t exactly come out ahead.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  In a December 11 column that epitomizes the concept of yellow journalism, he&#8217;s &#8220;happy&#8221; that Mac OS X is vulnerable to a new and quite significant security vulnerability. The article was based on a security advisory by researcher Bill Carrel regarding a DHCP vulnerability in Mac OS X. Carrel reported the vulnerability to Apple in mid-October and, through responsible disclosure practices, waited for a prolonged period before releasing the exploit information publicly since Apple was slow in responding to Carrel&#8217;s report (a common problem with all big software vendors.)\u00a0 Accordingly, Lance took this as a green light to launch into a snide tirade about how\u00a0 &#8220;Mac OS is just as vulnerable as Microsoft Windows&#8221; while penning paragraph after paragraph saying &#8220;I told you so&#8221; and calling anyone who disagrees with him a &#8220;Mac zealot.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>  You&#8217;re either with him or with the &#8220;zealots.&#8221;\u00a0 Where have we heard this narrow-minded extremist view before? \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>  More to the point, his article is replete with factual errors. Had he done his homework instead of rushing to smear the Mac security community and fuel his Windows-based envy, he&#8217;d have known that not only did Apple tell Carrel on November 19 that a technical fix for the problem would be released in its December Mac OS X update, but that Apple released easy-to-read guidance (complete with screenshots) for users to mitigate this problem on November 26.\u00a0 Somehow he missed that.<\/p>\n<p>  Since he&#8217;s obviously neither a technologist (despite writing for a technology magazine) nor a security expert, let&#8217;s examine a few differences between Mac and Windows to see why Macintosh systems are, despite his crowing, whining, and wishing, inherently more secure than Windows systems.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mrbarrett.com\/mt\/archives\/2003_12_14.html\" title=\"Muckraking, the PC Way\">Damien<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, a minor firestorm erupted when PC Magazine columnist Lance Ulanoff wrote a ridiculously inflammatory article gleefully declaring that, &#8216;the Mac OS is just as vulnerable as Microsoft Windows.&#8217;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2039],"tags":[65],"class_list":["post-2025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}