Former OLPC Security Chief to Make Macs Safer?

[JMcEntegart]

Apple has snapped up former One Laptop Per Child Foundation security chief Ivan Krstic.

Former OLPC Security Chief to Make Macs Safer? : Read more

 

[Yoder54]

Apple seems to be moving in the right direction with all of these high-profile hires in the past year. Maybe that is one reason their stock has increased almost 50% in the last few months...the industry sees them going places.

 

[chripuck]

Stock prices provide no indicator to a companies success in the coming future. Do you honestly think that Apple and Google are 10x's more valuable than Microsoft... because that's what stock prices tell you. And before you answer that, Microsoft had 60 Billion in revenue in 08 vs 32 Billion by Apple.

Stock prices are as much about how many outstanding shares there are as they are about them "going places."

At this point Apple has no where to go but down and all of their recent hires are to ensure they don't go that direction. They've had one hell of a ride and I dont blame them for wanting to stay on top, even if all they've done is be the "cool" computer to own.

 

[chripuck]

PS My Ford stock has increased 300% in the past few months... do you think that means they're going to even higher places or do you think its an artifact of the ridiculously low prices that the stocks have dropped to?

 

[warezme]

Yes if my salary jumped by a couple of zero's I would consider that as "having found my new adventure" to.

 

[deltatux]

Interesting concept by running everything in isolation. Sounds like what Google did with Google Chrome by sandboxing every single tab and window within a process.

I think this is an indeed a great way forward as one software gets infected, the infection can't spread to other parts. I wish we can do this on the human body without amputating someone as that's basically what we're doing with these viruses. By cutting them off from being able to infect the rest of the system.

 

[tenor77]

That's quite a jump from a job designed to get computers to everyone, to a company designed to be computers for the few.

 

[Guest]

AFAIK, the BSD kernel that OSX stole is (was)just as secure as the Linux kernel. The reason that the Linux kernel is secure is that it doesn't allow arbitrary execution of code, which only leaves "L337 low-level wizardry" and "user stupidity/phishing for idiots" exploits. However, where Windows and OSX fail is that they've engineered and added all kinds of big brother-ware/back-door/"ET Phone Home" functionality in which hackers then discover and exploit.

 

[solymnar]

Bringing some "bright sparks" from the industry at large seems more a pre-emptive move to deal with the power vacuum Jobs is leaving behind and diversify the brain power at apple.

Its a good move, imo. Apple could definitely handle increasing the diversity of their approach to things a bit. Simply relying on the idea that hackers ignor macs due to low penetration as they've done in the past is an extremely poor strategy to say the least.

 

[danimal_the_animal]

cool...so this puts the nail in the coffin that it is currently unsafe.

now that apple has all those commercials "claiming" that they dont get viruses ect. (total bullshit)

now they have to put up or shutup

 

[jhansonxi]

I met Ivan Krstic at a conference when he was with OLPC. He's a really smart guy.

 

[Herbert_HA]

It's a smart move - and the only move logical - to stay ahead in the game and prevent the worst case scenario, where people will begin to exploit OSX faults.

Hopefully Apple and Microsoft will double their attention regarding security issues with their Os's and create better ways to safeguard the end user.

 

[war2k9]

Finally Apple is addressing its os problem.

 

[keither5150]

But... Justin Long says Macs don't get viruses.

How can they say something that isn't true? Are they running for office?

Justin should go back to dodging rubber balls.

He's more believable as a geek than a cool guy.

Epic fail.

 

[keither5150]

However,

The OLPC’s Bitfrost system seems interesting. I would think that a system like that would eat up resources.

 

[acecombat]

Isn't this also what MS introduced in Vista?? If you have a look each process is run with "Virtualization" which is meant to run everything in it's own memory space...It's mainly to prevent stack/buffer overflow exploits moreso than virii all together.

 

[norbs]

lol so many fanboy's and jumping on bandwagons here at tom's hardware...

 

[7amood]

MACs are SAFE... but according to this article, they are not that SAFE...
what now?? is it safe or not??

 

[keither5150]

Norbs.... It seems to me that you are just trying to see how many thumbs down you can accumulate.

It would be nice if you made sense now and then.

If English is your second language, then I apologize.