“Apple not only released a preview of its next operating system, Mac OS X Lion, to developers today, the company is also giving it to security experts for review,” Elinor Mills reports for CNET.
“”I wanted to let you know that I’ve requested that you be invited to the prerelease seed of Mac OS X Lion, and you should receive an invitation soon,” said a letter sent by Apple to an unknown number of security researchers,” Mills reports. “‘As you have reported Mac OS X security issues in the past, I thought that you might be interested in taking a look at this. It contains several improvements in the area of security countermeasures.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Mmmmmm “countermeasures” 😉
The Iranians are studying the security implications of rolling out Macs to their nuclear processing facilities as a counter to the Stuxnet worm.
But by then the masses would have overthrown that nutjob Ahmadinejad making Mac deployment welcome but not imperative.
It’s not that nutjob Ahmadinejad. It’s the rag-hat extremist Islamist that are pulling his strings. Was once told that religion of any sort was like whiskey… A little bit every now and then won’t hurt you, but too much, too often will ruin you for sure. Too bad software can’t be written that would mellow out all the wackos of the world.
Agreed (sort of). A little bit of religion can bring out the best in people. A lot of it usually brings out the worst.
Ultimate authority indeed lies with Khamenei, but Ahmedinejad is a radical in his own right – a follower of the even more radical “Twelver” sect led by people like Imam Yazdi. They believe that the return of the hidden 12th imam can be brought about through provoking a great struggle. So they don’t fear an armageddon, they seek it!
So yes, it’s great that Stuxnet was able to disrupt their nuclear project for a bit by taking advantage of Windows based controllers. But their project continues. And if it’s Macs they want, they’re available – like many embargoed goods – by smuggling them from across the Persian Gulf.
Nice to see this proactive approach.
Sounds like Apple is quite confident of the security inherent in Lion. I want to hear what the security firms say about it in response.
This is BRILLIANT news. Now I want details, like:
-> Whether Apple’s new ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) runs rings around Microsoft’s crap version, which ran rings around Apple’s current crappier version.
-> Whether Apple finished 64-bit QuickTime and made it secure for change. (QuickTime X 10.0 does not qualify).
-> Whether Apple includes a more than token anti-malware detection system. And I’m not talking about lame ClamAV.
I write about Mac security at:
Mac-Security