Apple promised us that Snow Leopard, their new operating system, would be faster than their previous operating system and better than Windows 7.
“Microsoft dug quite a big hole for themselves with Vista,” Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice-president of software engineering told developers at the WWDC conference in San Francisco back in June.
Speaking about Window 7, Serlet said it uses the “same old technology” as Vista but that Apple came from a “different place”. So now that Snow Leopard has finally arrived, does it cut it?
Not according to security expert Charlie Miller, of Baltimore based Independent Security Evaluators, and co-author of the Mac Hacker’s Handbook.
Computerworld reports that although Miller says that the latest Snow Leopard is more secure than the previous version, Leopard, “it’s not as secure as Vista or Windows 7”.
That’s quite a statement when most of us are more familiar with Microsoft having security issues.
According to Miller, Apple ignored security developments that Microsoft implemented three years ago when they built Windows Vista and by doing so missed an opportunity.
He refers specifically to Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) which “randomly assigns data to memory to make it tougher for attackers to determine the location of critical operating system functions, and thus make it harder for them to craft reliable exploits.”
Although Apple has dealt with some security issues, such as those with QuickTime and DEP (Data Execution Prevention) which is a security technology used in Vista, they did nothing about the issues surrounding ASLR according to Miller who says “It’s the exact same ASLR as in Leopard, which means it’s not very good”.
Miller does acknowledge that PC users are far more likely to be the victim of hackers than Mac users but maintains that this is because there are significantly more PC users than Mac users and not because it is easier, it is just more worthwhile.
“It’s harder to write exploits [hacks] for Windows than the Mac, but all you see are Windows exploits” Computerworld reports Miller as saying.
“That’s because if [the hacker] can hit 90 per cent of the machines out there, that’s all he’s gonna do. It’s not worth him nearly doubling his work just to get that last 10 per cent” said Miller.
So basically what is being said here is that Microsoft operating systems are more secure but Apple’s are safer. Now what?
With Snow Leopard newly out on the streets and Windows 7 just around the corner, the Apple versus Microsoft operating system war is only just beginning.
