It's only a matter of time..., 2005-08-18
Story continued from Page 2
On the Windows front, vulnerabilities are being exploited very quickly after they're announced publicly. Most of the time, Microsoft has the luxury of releasing patches at the same time the vulnerabilities are disclosed, but this still doesn't abate the forthcoming onslaught of exploitation. What does Apple have to look forward to when they start to receive this sort of attention?
The one thing that OS X does have going for it is a solid foundation, so we can be reasonable sure that it won't face the quantity and severity of vulnerabilities that we've seen littered within Windows. But there will be vulnerabilities, and some of them will be severe, and with the current patching speed for OS X, this paints a pretty scary picture.
In the end, once OS X starts to receive serious attention by black hats, Apple's security team will need to seriously shape up their patch release schedule. Only time will tell if this will be a preemptive change, or a reactionary one.
