“Apple has released a range of patches for security holes – both old and new – for its Mac OS X operating system, which it advises users to download immediately,” Kieren McCarthy writes for Techworld in an article entitled, “Mac OS X riddled with security holes.”
“The company is downplaying the issue but one security company at least is concerned that the vulnerabilities could be extremely serious. Secunia has given the five – yes, five – patches a ‘highly critical’ rating and warned that they may allow hijacking, security bypass, data manipulation, privilege escalation, denial of service and system access,’ McCarthy writes.
McCarthy writes, “In other words, it makes Microsoft’s current Sasser problems look no more than a nasty nip. There isn’t a worm exploiting the holes as yet but the company is strongly advising users to download and install the patches as the OS looks like an easy target at the moment… Secunia has given the series of patches a ‘highly critical’ rating, which it explained was due to the Apple’s dismissive attitude to one of the holes.”
“This strange habit of pretending a big problem is of no significance was also displayed last month, when Apple explained that it was ‘aware’ of a Trojan horse that could be used to compromise its systems and was investigating it, but refused to say any more, commenting only that it has an excellent track record of patching holes,” McCarthy writes.
Full FUD here.
MacDailyNews Take: What a laugh riot! Give us a call when one (1) Mac OS X machine is compromised, okay, Techworld? Or better yet, why not FAX the UK Coastguard – oh wait, their operation is severely disrupted due to Windows’ Sasser worm. So are a host of banks and other operations worldwide. Is Techworld scared of something? They sure sound like it and it’s not Mac OS X’s so-called “security holes” that’s scaring them. We give this article a solid 10 out of 10 on the MacDailyNews FUD scale.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Windows Sasser net worm spreading rapidly; Macintosh unaffected – May 03, 2004
Windows Sasser worm severely disrupts UK coastguard; Mac users remain unaffected – May 04, 2004
Windows Sasser worm mutates, knocks out banks, EC; Macintosh unaffected – May 04, 2004
Hey, someone has to divert attention from Microsoft. People are starting to hear virus and Windows in the same sentence all too often these days.
Pathetic to say the least.
Oh no, MDN, this one goes up to 11.
There is no depth to which some will descend to obfuscate the logic that if you didn’t run Windows, but rather Mac OS X, you’d have no viruses, no worms, no spyware or adware, and very, very few problems. They are afraid of the problem-free extended uptimes Mac OS X offers its users, it seems.
Pathetic is right. No serious decisionmaker would pay attention to this sloppy excuse for an article.
Mac User: you wrote: No serious decisionmaker would pay attention to this sloppy excuse for an article
Yes, they will, for the simple reason that Apple has done nothing to inform them that OSX is not subject to the same virus problems.
Does Kieren McCarthy also write for the “Enquirer”?
hmmm interesting maybe mac aint as secure as it suppose to be.
Wow! Toss out a few ambiguous scare statements and quote one security company (“at least” one
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No OS is perfectly secure. But a real worm in the computer is worth one-thousand theoretical worms in the minds of security companies and journalists. As usual, MDN has this FUD pegged.
so if banks used osX they could of had major problems too
artiom,
Don’t fall for the most blatant piece of FUD in recent memory. This article makes Paul Thurrott look like a balanced, logical tech writer in comparison.
These morons react more strongly to their “virtual” reality than to reality itself. Sad, Sad….sad!
Apple releases patches for a whopping five security holes, and Techworld writes an article about it? I downloaded a patch bundle for twenty (20) patches for Windows 2000 a week ago. And that is in addition to the patches I downloaded the month before that, and the month before that, and so on…
Fred – took the words right out of my mouth! So I guess all I can do is agree with you.
This article must be doing something. ‘artiom’ fell for it. You can’t under estimate the number of drones out there.
that little Sasser worm has currently shutdown systems at the IRS. Versus an unexploited security hole, a current selfpropagating virus problem is a much much bigger deal. Morons!