In an ideal world, these vulnerabilities should have been found and fixed before the software ever shipped out of Cupertino.Įvery vulnerability found may be good news (“it’s been found!”), but it’s also a failure of quality control and testing. Not that any of this means that you shouldn’t take security seriously, of course, and this doesn’t negate the importance of applying security updates and running Mac anti-virus software. It’s well known, for instance, that the number of new malware variants created for Macs is tiny compared to the onslaught analysed on Windows by anti-virus labs every day. You might also convince yourself that it doesn’t matter that much just how many vulnerabilities are found in an operating system, but how actively attackers are attempting to exploit them in order to compromise systems or infect them with malware. If you wanted to try to put a positive spin on things, you might argue that it is good that so many vulnerabilities are being found on Apple operating systems, as that (hopefully) means they are getting patched promptly and who knows how many more severe vulnerabilities there might be in, say, Windows that as yet lie undiscovered. Something that may be a shock to those who dream that their devices “just work” perfectly. Still, there’s a clear message here that Apple OSes are frequently the subject of serious vulnerability discovery. For instance, each version of Microsoft Windows gets its own entry-but Apple operating systems have their different versions lumped together. The chart doesn’t seem to be entirely fair from my perspective. Steel yourself, and take a quick look at the chart produced by security firm GFI: Meanwhile, 67 of the vulnerabilities were given a medium severity.Ī combined 127 vulnerabilities were reported for iOS, with 32 of the security flaws rated high severity, and 72 medium. In total, 147 vulnerabilities were reported in OS X during 2014, with 64 rated as “high severity.” Those are the most serious vulnerabilities that could be exploited by an attacker remotely. In short: security researchers are saying that Mac OS X is the most vulnerable operating system out there. Here is some news which will upset the Apple fanboy in all of us.Ī new report has found that the number of high severity security vulnerabilities increased in 2014, and the Mac OS X and iOS operating systems dominate the chart, while Windows recedes. Recommended + Security & Privacy + Security News OS X and iOS Vulnerabilities Top Security Vulnerability Chart, Far Ahead of Windows
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