Apple and its security issues. Are Mac fans ignorant?
According to a well known and quite the infamous hacker-turned-security expert, Marc Maiffet, Apple and its users are 
quite ignorant when it comes to the security fo their systems.
There is apparently a mass misconception that Apple Macintosh is far more secure than PC’s. In the words of Maiffet, “they are wrong and ignorant about their security risks”
It has come to the attention of many a security expert that Mac simply does not place major importance on security, not as much as Microsoft does at least.
Having secured quite the name for himself as a hacker, Maiffet, who is at present the chief security architect at FireEye (a security firm), has many years of experience targeting Microsoft’s’ vulnerabilities and exploiting them. It was in fact Maiffet that discovered the security hole that eh Code Red Worm (back in 2001) exploited.
It is with this gathered knowledge that one can safely assume Maiffet actually has an inkling of what he is talking about. He goes on to say that in his opinion, Microsoft does one of the better jobs in the industry, when it comes to security.
Maiffet explains:
“From an internal process in how they go about auditing their code and securing software from a technical perspective, they do have one of the best models. The area they still have room for improvement is around time lines of how long it takes for them to fix things.”
As for Mac, Maiffet is less accommodating; being of the frame of mind that Mac leaves its users vulnerable to security risks. This is what he has to say:
“they try to market themselves as more secure than the PC, which you don’t have to worry about viruses, etc. Anytime there’s been a hacking contest, within a few hours someone’s found a new Apple vulnerability. If they were taking it seriously, they wouldn’t claim to be more secure than Microsoft because they are very much not. And the Apple community is pretty ignorant to the risks that are out there as it relates to Apple. The reason we don’t see more attacks out there compared to Microsoft is because their market share isn’t near what Microsoft’s is.”
If judging by the words of this infamous hacker turned helper, we were to base our consumer antic on his viewpoints, I think it would be safe to say that Microsfot wins the battle this time, tht is if security is a priorotuy for any computer suer – whcichc is should be.
in closure, this is what Maiffet has to say about it all:
“I think Microsoft does a better job with their code auditing than folks like Apple do. We’ve only seen a scratching of the surface as far as Apple vulnerabilities because nobody cares to find them. There’s nothing inherent with Apple themselves and their development. The only reason Apple gets little increase in security is because they’re running on top of a Unix-based operating system and they can take advantage of some of the things that have been done for them.”
Food for thought I would say!
