Apple behind Microsoft in terms of Security

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but Apple’s OSX isn’t nearly as secure as Microsoft’s platform. In fact, Eugene (Yevgeny) Kaspersky, co-founder and CEO of Kaspersky Lab, said:

“I think [Apple] are ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security. For many years I’ve been saying that from a security point of view there is no big difference between Mac and Windows. It’s always been possible to develop Mac malware, but this one” referring to the Flashback malware that infected hundreds of thousands of Mac computers” was a bit different. For example it was asking questions about being installed on the system and, using vulnerabilities, it was able to get to the user mode without any alarms.”

The illusion that OSX is more secure was born of the platform’s obscurity, not good design. Even though Microsoft’s platform was more secure, for a long time it was the only platform worth targeting. Think of it like a locked car: Mac was an unlocked Pinto while Windows was a locked Mercedes with motion sensors and coded entry. Yes, you could break into the Pinto more easily, but there’s not much of value in it. Worms wouldn’t travel far simply because there weren’t enough computers for them to infect. So it was worth targeting the stronger platform.

But now Apple is in the same boat that Microsoft was in 10 years ago, having to issue out patches and security updates to prevent the system from being compromised. Said Kaspersky:

“Apple is now entering the same world as Microsoft has been in for more than 10 years: updates, security patches and so on. We now expect to see more and more because cyber criminals learn from success and this was the first successful one. They will understand very soon that they have the same problems Microsoft had ten or 12 years ago. They will have to make changes in terms of the cycle of updates and so on and will be forced to invest more into their security audits for the software. That’s what Microsoft did in the past after so many incidents like Blaster and the more complicated worms that infected millions of computers in a short time. They had to do a lot of work to check the code to find mistakes and vulnerabilities. Now it’s time for Apple [to do that].”

Just something to think about. The time when Apple’s platform is more secure might be at an end. Though of course, Kaspersky sells security software, so he does have a vested interest in telling you that the end is nigh unless you buy security software.

ZDNet