//Are Mac’s Taking Over The World?

Kind of a misleading title, but the fact that I’m sitting in a Caribou Coffee with 6 other people who are all using their laptops to watch movies, surf, or do work, it struck me that everyone outside the corporate walls seems to be using a Mac. Of those 6 people I see 4 MacBook Pros, 1 Macbook, and 1 lonely HP Netbook. It could be that I’m on a college campus and that the Mac is the current “in” laptop to have based on Apple’s genius marketing campaign.

The other side of that campaign is based on the the fact misconception that the OS X is more secure than Windows. In 2007 OS X had 243 total software flaws that required patching versus just 44 for XP and Vista combined (OK, mainly XP since no one is actually using Vista). Also, the current release of the OS 10.5.7 fixes nearly 70 security flaws in OS X. One thing to keep in mind if you’re looking purely at the number is that OS X has many security patches to a singe Windows patch. As anyone on a linux box who has run the yum -y update command recently should be able to tell you, each component of the system requires an individual update or patch. Since OS X is built on many of these open source components it is no wonder the numbers seem to be in Windows’ favor.

If we can assume that OS X is as flawed as, if not more than, Windows then why aren’t we seeing a barrage of attacks against OS X? I think the right question should be is this even a viable platform to attack? If the motive of current attacks is money in the form of credit cards, bank accounts, identities, etc. then we can speculate as to why not. Ignoring the fact that OS X holds a low market share of the market, if most users are college student using Mac’s would it even make sense to compromise a system to access a credit card that has a $500 limit…mainly because the student filled out an application just to get a free $2 tee shirt. Or, is it the fact that Windows is so easily compromised that it makes no sense to go after Macs. I’m going with the latter for now.

While I wrote this a while ago I’m glad I held off on posting it. Since that time a study was conducted at the University of Virgina of incoming freshmen and which OS they picked for their laptop. Seems that Apple is starting to take a larger share of the higher ed. market...well, at least at Virginia. The issue around the total number of vulnerabilities in OS X was also covered today in an IBM ISS meeting I attended to discuss the findings from the X-Force 2008 Security Study.