“A number of open source advocates have spoken out against a survey that labelled Linux as the least secure system, pointing to ‘gaping holes’ in its methodology,” Damian Clarkson reports for ITWeb. “European research firm Mi2g unveiled the survey findings last week, stating that BSD and Mac OS X are the most secure operating systems, while Linux was said to be the least. Microsoft was the second ‘most breached’ but a long way behind.”
“But Mi2g’s decision not to count viruses has skewed the findings of the survey, says open source advocate Bruce Perens. ‘The report really did everyone a disservice by not pointing out that viruses are the main problem. Even their own study says the financial impact of viruses on Windows is tremendously greater than the penetration on Linux. Linux is still more secure, it’s just the fact that this report doesn’t count automatic viruses,'” Clarkson reports.
“Mi2g executive chairman DK Matai conceded that Linux would have been rated more secure than Windows had they counted viruses, but said both would still be less secure than BSD and Mac OS X. However, Matai said BSD and Apple are not protected from attacks just because they are relatively rare compared with Windows and Linux. BSD and Apple are used in many mission-critical and high-security applications. ‘There are many genuine reasons to attack BSD and Apple,’ he said,” Clarkson reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Seems to us that the bottom line fact remains, no matter who’s arguing: Mac OS X is much more secure than Linux or Windows.
Related MacDailyNews article:
Study: Apple’s Mac OS X ‘world’s safest and most secure’ operating system – November 02, 2004
Study: Apple’s Mac OS X is most secure operating system – February 20, 2004
Report says Apple Mac OS least vulnerable to attack – October 31, 2002
