Jeff Jones Security Blog : Mac OS X Security Myth #1: Mac OS X Has Few Security Bugs

Passend zu den monatlichen Sicherheits Updates von Microsoft erscheint mir der aktuelle Blog Eintrag von Jeff Jones. Gibt es sie wirklich, die sichere Plattform??

Hat schon der Monat der Kernel Bugs (siehe: the Month of Kernel Bugs (MoKB) archive) ein für viele überraschendes Ergebnis gebracht, so ist jetzt auch Apple mit Mac OS ins Kreuzfeuer der Kritik gekommen. Aber wie schaut es denn in Wirklichkeit aus?

Jeff schreibt:

Mac OS X v10 Vulnerabilities in 2006

First, let's hop over to the "Apple Security Updates" web page at https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61798, and see what we find.  Immediately, I notice that the highest numbered Security Update for 2006 is Security Update 2006-008.  Well, that seems pretty good, only 8 security updates during 2006.  ... Click into #7 - whoops - that one seems to address 22 vulnerabilities in November.  I'm going to have to take a deeper look. ...

It turns out that the Apple Security Updates and associated patches addressed 161 unique vulnerabilities in Mac OS X v10 during 2006.  Now, if this were an Enterprise Linux distro, one might argue that you have to filter out non-applicable "extra" applications included in the release, such as either Gnome or KDE or some of the server applicatoins.  That doesn't apply to Mac OS X, which is simply a rich workstation environment, so they all count.

Comparison with 2005

Adding the 2005 data to my spreadsheet and doing a bit of simple addition, I found that Apple's highest numbered Security Update in 2005 was Security Update 2005-009.  Wow, if one wasn't careful, one might leap to the assumption that 2006 was an improvement, since they stopped 1 short of 2006-009.  Tallying up the vulnerabilities, though, I found that they fixed 132 vulnerabilities in Mac OS X v10 in 2005 - lower than 2006, though still fairly high.

I think I'll stop there, though I do plan to include Mac OS X in my other Workstation analysis throughout the year.  In summary, my brief research found that Apple Mac OS X does not have few security bugs.  In fact, with 161 in 2006, up over 20% from 132 in 2005, they have had to fix quite a lot of security bugs.

Mac OS X Security Myth #1: Mac OS X Has Few Security Bugs

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