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Are Mac users “in denial” about security?

Posted by Eunjin Gregorio under Uncategorized

The contest held at CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver to see who could find and exploit a vulnerability in Mac OS X has re-ignited the debate about which is the safest operating system. Are Mac users in denial over security?

The contest was an interesting one. Two MacBook Pros, each fully patched using the latest updates, were pitted against anyone wanting to take a shot at them. The contest was won by Dino Di Zovie, who walked away with the $10,000 prize put up by TippingPoint’s Zero Day Initiative.

The exploit that Di Zovie discovered was a bug in QuickTime and he leveraged it through Safari. It’s the nature of the bug that has caused some to question the validity of the contest - after all, is a QuickTime bug an Apple exploit?

My take on it is that a bug is a bug. QuickTime is Apple’s code and Apple ships QuickTime with Mac OS X. It’s interesting that Di Zovie decided to attack the system using Safari, following in the footsteps of hackers who attack Windows via Internet Explorer. No one argues that an Internet Explorer-based attack on Windows isn’t a valid one, and similarly this attack shouldn’t be dismissed because of the chosen attack vector. [ Via ZDNet ]

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