On Jan 18, 2007, at 9:16 AM, Todd Woodward wrote:

> IMHO: It all comes down to average user education in self-maintaining
> security and security practices, initial setup that involves creating
> both an admin and user account, typical attack and vulnerability
> vectors
> (less likely that it's anything really specific to only Mac OS X), the
> easy ability to self-patch/sub-patch/micro-patch open source
> components--such as OpenSSH and Samba--instead of waiting for Apple to
> bundle them all together, as well as more active/proactive Mac OS X
> security research.
>
> All of the above and more have been spoken to before by myself and
> others, so this isn't an original opinion. Thankfully a lot of these
> issues could be mitigated or eliminated in managed enterprise
> environments. Unfortunately, as I pointed out in a recent Security
> Response blog, I think it's safe to say that MOST Mac OS X systems in
> the enterprise are unmanaged or "rogue."

Agreed...but there's another distinction than just managed vs
unmanaged; there's also Mac OS X vs Mac OS X Server (or Mac OS X used
in a server capacity or running server services).

All of these articles talking about what is likely relatively
isolated and anecdotal evidence of Macs being "zombies" are probably
almost all exclusively server systems running vulnerable web apps
that have nothing to do with Mac OS X. Now, many of these systems are
probably irresponsibly run at some level (else there would be
mechanisms or policies in place that would have ensured that the
vulnerable apps got patches).

So it's not the desktop machines that are getting infected or
zombied...it's poorly run SERVER systems, getting compromised by
things that don't have anything to do with OS X-proper; e.g., weak
account passwords via ssh, or via vulnerable php-based web apps. That
said, Apple could probably do more to protect against examples like
the ssh vector, and encourage more secure usage of php, etc. But if a
Linux host gets compromised via a vulnerable web app, does that mean
there's some deficiency in Linux? The user education you speak of (or
at least the kind I think you're speaking of) hits desktop users,
sure, but not any of the primary ways that Mac OS X systems are
actually getting compromised.

Apple also could certainly engage the security issue more than it
already has, and there is a definite need for much quicker and much
more granular patching, even if it's via special channels.

- Dave0? *?H?÷

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