Alright, this seems to be getting kinda far in heat. Going to extremes and what not.
First of all, Imagine two buckets filled with water. OSX and XP, both have a few holes in them. XP has a few more and so the water slowly drains out a little faster. People even go to XP and punch their own holes into it, a few times they are patched but more holes spring leaks. Ignoring OSX. Some how people notice OSX has all the water, and then look and see its lower holes are pushing water out a lot faster than the XP bottom holes. They jump to conclusions! They had the mind set that OSX was a solid bucket and when they see it has a few holes in it, it shatters their mind set. They forget that all along OSX had holes, and XP had more. They ignore that if you believe any OS is perfect your wrong.
pointless story? or do you question its validity.
First of all this is published from...
"That is according to statistics published for the first time this week by Danish security firm Secunia."
This is a Security firm! You know they are not a gov, they are a security firm.
Second it is a statistic, I can make any statistic point any direction. Think about it, what are their interests in? Keeping people safe? No making money. If people think OSX has just as much holes they will never leave XP. Windows is where the security $'s are at!
Third
The stats, based on a database of security advisories for more than 3,500 products during 2003 and 2004 sheds light on the real security of enterprise applications and operating systems, according to the firm. Each product is broken down into pie charts demonstrating how many, what type and how significant security holes have been in each.
This includes Applications. What good is a unholy application if the OS is pumped with holes. Then again, who really cares at all about the security of 90% of your applications?
Example: who cares if Adobe Photoshop has a giant hole in it, some how someone is going to waste their time and attack a unsaved document, while your using it? We want to see the OS! If the OS stops them before they get to the App who cares?
Fourth
One thing the hard figures have shown is that OS X's reputation as a relatively secure operating system is unwarranted, Secunia said. This year and last year Secunia tallied 36 advisories on security issues with the software, many of them allowing attackers to remotely take over the system - comparable to figures on operating systems such as Windows XP Professional and Red Hat Enterprise Server.
The first line.. what exactly does that mean? Reputation, haha they are attacking a reputation not the solid facts. Relatively secure, again meaningless dribble. They are attacking OSX, does this include the OSX Server? Do they have a solid firewall on their server?
this entire paragraph is pretty meaningless
Fifth
"Secunia is now displaying security statistics that will open many eyes, and for some it might be very disturbing news," said Secunia chief executive Niels Henrik Rasmussen. "The myth that Mac OS X is secure, for example, has been exposed."
ok, show me these statistics. Show me the data, the distribution, Standard Deviation, X-Sqr!... give me something other than a "pie chart", im not going to believe a pie chart let alone one they have not shown me!
Sixth
Its new service, easily acessible on its website, allows enterprises to gather exact information on specific products, by collating advisories from a large number of third-party security firms.
This article is looking like an advertisement to me...
Seventh
Mac OS X doesn't stand out as particularly more secure than the competition, according to Secunia. Of the 36 advisories issued in 2003-2004, 61 percent could be exploited across the Internet and 32 percent enabled attackers to take over the system. The proportion of critical bugs was also comparable with other software: 33 percent of the OS X vulnerabilities were "highly" or "extremely" critical by Secunia's reckoning, compared with 30 percent for XP Professional and 27 percent for SLES 8 and just 12 percent for Advanced Server 3. OS X had the highest proportion of "extremely critical" bugs at 19 percent.
Again, show me the #'s! I can make a 40% look like a 4% compared to anything I choose. How much can we trust statistics? Show me them! (also I huge validity issue, is they are looking at %'s, and %'s comparable with 36 and 46, HUGE difference.
Eighth
Secunia agreed that straightforward comparisons aren't possible, partly because some products receive more scrutiny than others. Microsoft products are researched more because of their wide use, while open-source products are easier to analyse because researchers have general access to the source code, Kristensen said.
Nothing like discrediting your ENTIRE argument.
So I question.. What are you all arguing about?
Keep it peaceful
-Graphite.
