Apple Mac less secure than Windows in 2007?

“During 2007, Apple has patched more than ten times the number of critical vulnerabilities in Mac OS X compared to the number patched in Microsoft Windows,” Tom Espiner reports for ZDNet UK. “George Ou, a writer for ZDNet Australia sister site ZDNet.com, analysed in-depth statistics from security research company Secunia as a basis for his research.”

MacDailyNews Take: ROTFLOFAO, he called what Ou does “research!” Please see related articles:
• ZDNet’s George Ou Exposed as Ignorant Microsoft Shill – RoughlyDrafted
• George Ou’s Greatest Apple Hits! – The Macalope
• George Ou: When Gerbilling isn’t fun enough – Artie MacStrawman’s Apple Orchard
• George Ou’s Bad Idea: Comparing Apple Ads to Nazi Propaganda – Wired

Espiner continues, “He found that Apple’s latest operating system, Mac OS X, faced more critical flaws than Windows XP and Vista combined… Ou made the comparison as an indicator of how many vulnerabilities might exist in 2008, rather than a comparison of the relative security of the operating systems.”

“Some experts have said that counting vulnerabilities is not necessarily reliable as a measure of security,” Espiner reports. “Tristan Nitot, president of Mozilla Europe, told ZDNet.co.uk this month that it was more important to take into account the time it takes to patch vulnerabilities.”

Espiner reports, “The amount of exploit code available in the wild also has an impact on security. While there are thousands of pieces of code that seek to exploit Windows XP vulnerabilities, exploit code for Mac OS X is relatively rare.”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: In “honor” of George Ou, we’re going to continue surfing the Internet unimpeded with our Mac OS X Firewall turned off for another six years.