Security exploits and market share

This is a follow up to an older 07 video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bocwCV3GuCE

Security is all about smart users and great OS security design.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• software
• security
• malware
• viruses
• market
• share
• osx
• computers
• hacks
• exploits
• worms
• trojans
• windows
• vista
• xp
• microsoft

[overclockedtech]

I totally agree with your points on why market share does not matter. The system design and flaws are what make these exploits appears in the wild.

[mrbit10]

well that actually already goes on, if you see secunia, they track what is call proof of concepts and possible holes in the system. The exploit has to exist to be hacked unless brute force is used which is almost never as it does not have a great success rate. However, they would go a much easier route, why mess with system hacks when you could simply trick a human being into downloading your hack bypassing the security?

[EverNumb]

I was wondering if (hypothetically speaking) Apple had some market share in the business OS market and a good share of business machines that had valuable was running some variation of the Apple OS; do you think that we would see a concerted effort to find flaws in that OS?

How successful would those attempts be?

how possible would it be that more higher risk flaws be found in your opinion?

[EverNumb]

Interesting points. Thanks for the thoughtful replies.

One detail about the pwn2own contest I didn't mention was that the browser Chrome wasn't broken into. This may be because it is very secure or that there has not been a real effort to find flaws in it. If it is the former it might be worth switching over to it.

[WipeClub]

Ok, I see the distinction between system exploits and exploits that take advantage of human error.

I can see that OS X being based Unix probably made it more secure than XP prior to SP3 and perhaps even with SP3.

Nils, one of the prize winners of pwn2own, has stated that he thought that Vista was harder to exploit through a browser than OS X

I'm thinking that Snow Leopard will make that less true. One hopes that Win7 and the new Mac OS will both be more secure.

[mrbit10]

actually that is a way in, but the system can sandbox the port as they are already beginning to do. Quicktime and safari are two OSX examples of that

[mrbit10]

Well, I cannot disagree that a windows system has more value than say unix or linux system but an exploit has to be pre-existing within the system not a hack to trick a human. OSX has vulnerabilities, and you can go to secunia and see FreeBSD security vulnerabilities as well as OSX.

[mrbit10]

well, we are talking about system exploits, not human exploits. Testing a computer vs a human for information in other words.  Windows did have its issues via the system where the human did not have to be fooled, that has nothing to do with market share - is my point

[EverNumb]

Now a concerning trend is that as Operating Systems become more secure people will take advantages of application weaknesses.

I'm sure you're aware of the browser and OS combinations that were highlighted by the recent pwn2own. In this arena it seems that neither OS X or Windows is particularly secure at the moment.

[EverNumb]

My point is that marketshare does matter in that it increases the value of an exploit for windows over OS X because the windows exploit is more likely give you access to a computer that would give you valuable personal information.

Now as for OS X being more secure than Windows. Yeah I can see that since up until Vista the MS didn't give much lipservice to the dangers of using the administrator account all the time. I'm sure the majority of Vista users use the administrator account anyways.