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Discussion on:
Majority of vulnerabilities go unpatched, IBM

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There you have it, Apple OS X is the worst OS
honeymonster Updated - 3rd Feb 2009
by a *wide* margin when it comes to
vulnerabilities and security.

Many people will not believe this, even though
it has been clear for a long time (hint: try
finding Vista, OS X and Ubuntu on secunia).

Vista is the operating system with
the fewest vulnerabilities, Linux
(kernel i.e. not any specific distribution) has
about double that of Vista, OS X has about
triple that of Vista.

It may still be true that you are factually
"safer on a mac" (and Linux) - but it is
certainly not because the bad guys are short
on exploitable vulnerabilities on those
OSes.

This is the best proof that the relative
security you have on OS X and Linux is
only because of the lesser market share
makes it much more interesting to go after
Windows.

It also thoroughly debunks the myth that "many
eyes" review open source OSes and thus they
inherently let fewer vulns through. Microsoft
is using the SDL (security development life
cycle) and paying reviewers and testers
and accepts longer time-to-market because of
the inherently more rigid process.

Add to the above statistics that Vista + 2008
are the also the operating systems with most
extra protection mechanisms in place, wioth the
most granular access control lists and with the
most extensive group policies. This means that
even though a vulnerability was counted in the
above statistics it is far from certain that it
was actually exploitable.

Myth busting statistics indeed.
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