Five Factors Shifting the Future of Malware and Platform Security

Ακούγεται ότι ένας από τους σημαντικότερους λόγους που το OS X και το Linux δεν πάσχει από malware και viruses είναι ότι επειδή δεν κατέχει μεγάλο ποσοστό στην αγορά, δεν είναι το προσφιλέστερο θύμα για τους κακόβουλους hackers.
Εν μέρει το πιστεύω και εγώ αυτό. Σίγουρα τα κρούσματα έλλειψης ασφάλειας θα ήταν περισσότερα. Για να δούμε όμως τι λένε και τα παρακάτω 2 άρθρα. Αξίζει να αφιερώσετε 10 λεπτάκια και να τα διαβάσετε.
Why Appe won't inherit Microsoft's Malware Crown.
Επίσης και αυτό το άρθρο.

Για αυτούς που βαριούνται να διαβάζουν, αν και αξίζει, ορισμένα keypoints:

1) Ιt is likely true that the limited exposure of Mac OS X to attacks, based on its historically small market share, has helped to prevent any Mac malware industry from developing. However, that’s not the only factor in play, nor even the most significant.

2) First, Apple’s iPhone platform is fully malware resistant. As that platform grows, it will be very difficult to distribute malware, easy to kill it, and trivial to clean it up. Apple is limiting the distribution of software in a model similar to the console video gaming market. There are no real malware exploits dogging the PlayStation 3, the Wii, or even Microsoft’s Xbox 360. There weren’t any for the Sega Genesis, nor the GameBoy, nor the NES. That’s because malware isn’t a product of popularity, it’s a symptom of weakness. The iPhone’s firmware, like all of those gaming platforms, can be attacked to run homebrew software, but that unsupported software can’t run on default systems, preventing any malicious malware from spreading outside the homebrew community.

3) Second, Mac OS X is going to follow in some of the same security practices as the iPhone:Apple can only grow, while Microsoft can only struggle against shrinkage), Apple will continue to erect new barriers to the problems that do not currently affect the Mac platform. There will not be a scourge of Mac malware because the Mac will harden its defenses before ever being seriously attacked. Additional Mac market share and the increase in attention from malware authors will not overcome the expense and difficulty of developing Mac malware that already exists. New efforts to bolster Mac security will keep the cost of developing Mac malware high enough to be impractical.
As will be detailed later, Microsoft did not work to stop malware on Windows because it either benefitted from it or because it saw no payback in solving the problem for users. Only when the security crisis of malware began to make Microsoft look bad did the company make any effort to address it, and by then it was too late to make meaningful, rapid adjustments. The absence of malware on the Mac is a key feature Apple advertises, so the company has a powerful incentive to stop malware attacks before they ever begin to infiltrate the platform.
Microsoft Wasn’t a Malware Victim; It was a Malware Villain. The future will not be a simple repetition of Microsoft’s past; even Microsoft is divorcing itself from its disastrously irresponsible engineering legacy. Will there be efforts to advertise spam, pop up ads, and spy on users in the future? Certainly, but those efforts will not delivered at firehouse pressures via the cheap, tacky Windows PCs that Bill Gates served up, where computers shipped right from the manufacturer with a poorly designed operating system full of weak holes, open ports, and ActiveX plugins that begging for exploitation, topped with bundled spyware from Microsoft itself and their prominent desktop real estate auctioned off to the highest bidder.

P.s
Γεγονός είναι, ότι εκμεταλλευόμενοι ένα hole στο Safari 3.1 hackers σε διαγωνισμό κατάφεραν και ¨μπήκαν¨στο OS X σε 2 λέπτα με έτοιμο κακόβουλο κώδικα. Ακολούθησαν τα Vista και μόνο το Ubuntu κατάφερε και έμμεινε αλώβητο. Περισσότερα για τις λεπτομέρειες και απαιτήσεις του διαγωνισμού μπορείτε να δείτε εδώ.
http://www.news.com/8301-13579_3-9905095-37.html
Σε μερικές μέρες η Apple ανακοίνωσε ότι θα patchaρει το hole....