Mac OS X Security
April 21st, 2007
Infoworld are crowing that a “myth” has been crushed, as a hacker managed to break in to OS X to win a security contest in Vancouver. No myth has been crushed - at worst, perhaps a misconception has been dented. OS X is not hack-proof - there is no operating system on earth that is 100% secure when attached to a network, and the way some people have responded to a run-of-the-mill Safari vulnerability, you would think that there has been an apocalypse.
What the Infoworld article fails to mention is that CanSecWest organizers relaxed the rules Friday after nobody at the event had breached either of the Macs on the previous day. It doesn’t specify exactly how the rules were relaxed, but a comment mentions that “The successful attack on the second and final day of the contest required participants to surf to a malicious Web site using Safari”. If this is the case, then as far as I’m concerned, the contest only served to show how well secured OS X really is.
The article quotes Dragos Ruiu, organiser of the event:
“You see a lot of people running OS X saying it’s so secure, and frankly, Microsoft is putting more work into security than Apple has”
Dragos: the reason Microsoft is putting so much more work into security than Apple is because it needs it so much more. How many times have I had to fix friends’ Windows computers for no other reason than they left it online for a few hours without a firewall? No myth has been crushed, common sense has prevailed. Your Mac is not untouchable - it is advisable that you tighten security controls on your web browser, and be careful of surfing to dodgy sites on the internet. As long as you don’t make a habit of antagonising MaddoxX, then you can be reasonably confident that your computer won’t be trying to nuke eBay if you leave it online untended for the weekend.
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