Infamous hacker applauds the security of Microsoft, Less pleased with Apple.

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[Archangel]

by Sebastian Anthony (RSS feed) Apr 16th 2010 at 10:30AM

Marc Maiffret, despite having a name that sounds uncomfortably French in origin, is one of the founding members of a special and elite club: he's a turncoat hacker. Once an infamous black hat, he's now the chief security architect for leading malware protection system developer FireEye. His list of notable accomplishments is many, but they will all be shadowed by his latest statement: Microsoft software is more secure than Apple's.

In a frank and interesting interview over on CNET, Maiffret spends a lot of time discussing how Microsoft has really shaped up in terms of producing secure software. Maiffret says that Apple is only now looking at improving its code review and auditing procedures -- something Microsoft has done well for a long time now.

Maiffret also notes that desktop apps are now the biggest threat to our security -- apps like Adobe's Creative Suite. There isn't a tried-and-test patching process for desktop apps: if a security hole is found in Flash or Photoshop it can be a long time until it's patched.

Meanwhile, it seems Apple's primary defense is still security through obscurity: "We've only seen a scratching of the surface as far as Apple vulnerabilities because nobody cares to find them." Ironically, Apple continues to claim that its OS X is more secure than Windows -- a very dangerous act, according to Maiffret: "... They try to market themselves as more secure than the PC, that you don't have to worry about viruses. Anytime there's been a hacking contest, within a few hours someone's found a new Apple vulnerability. If they were taking it seriously, they wouldn't claim to be more secure than Microsoft because they are very much not."

So, good news, Windows users -- you might not be aware that you're using the more secure operating system... but you very much are!



 C3VAmmunition for the next time I talk too another smug apple user hope you like swiss cheese because you're os of choice resembles it.  

[A-HK]

I assume this is based on the the article:

Marc Maiffret--the quick rise of a teen hacker
April 15, 2010 4:16 AM PDT 
-- 7 months ago? Why bring this up now?

Anyway, Maiffret's "sold out" now and is in the security business -- he's no longer a hacker of any "hat" colour.
So he may well be sucking up to Microsoft, or trying to get Apple customers to buy his services by talking up threats, as security people do.

In any case, while of course Macs aren't impregnable; despite the possibility of attacks, in the wild, they just aren't compromised.

I don't use Macs much, but I would recommend them to anyone who wanted a secure system. When I help a friend set up a PC, I spend a lot of time setting up firewalls, antivirus and such. And then they get screwed because some colleague sent them an email and it installed a trojan.

I've never heard of any Mac user that has had that happen.

It's not just "security through obscurity"; MacOSX is just built on a more secure foundation, Unix. Which was multi-user and networked from the start. Windows evolved from single user DOS and had features accrete to it. While never overcoming the basic design that allowed anyone with access to take over the whole PC and do whatever they liked; and Microsoft for many, many years was building features that made it EASIER for applications -- and even DOCUMENTS -- to do things to the system automatically,: and so the long history of Word macro viruses, Visual Basic, IE and Outlook exploits, etc, etc.

For every door they finally close, they create a backdoor to allow some vendor to do something "cool" that compromises security. E.g., Autorun USB flash drives -- for fuck's sake. A friend with Windows 7, all up to date, had that happen to her this week.

How idiotic  is it that Windows allows that?




 

[Archangel]

For those who want security and are not gammers and want to just e-mail,web surf,and multimedia I set people up with a less expensive and better alternatives "Ubuntu Linux". It's far cheaper to build a linux box then outright buying a mac that most of the time cant be upgraded easily or cheaply. Those who want a windows based pc I have been suggesting windows 7 with MSE installed and windows firewall active. On top of that getting a router with a built in firewall that can be upgraded overtime with reliable firmware updates. This comes at a slightly higher cost then a linux box but If ones a gamer it usually ends up costing more to build a better box. I must also add that I my self was never a windows fan boy but windows 7 has shown me that Microsoft is now paying much more closer attention to OS security and reliability then ever before.