Mac OS X is the Most Dangerous OS

News
By Douglas Perry
published

The security experts at Trend Micro have crowned Apple's Mac OS X as the riskiest operating system to be used based on the long patch cycles. There was a huge 644 MB patch sent out last November, five months after the previous patch. Trend Micro pointed at the sheer size of the update, but noted that " Apple’s penchant for secrecy and longer patch cycles also increased the risk for users."

There was not any more information for the honor, but we would think that Apple may be anyway at greater risk as Mac OS X is capturing greater market share and popularity. Security, and is especially the perception of a secure operating system, may be something that Apple will have to take much more serious in 2011.

Trend Micro also mentioned WordPress as the most dangerous software of 2010, IRC as the most dangerous IP protocol, Google as the most dangerous website due to its gateway role to malware threats, Facebook as the riskiest social network site, PDF as the worst file format, IE as the most dangerous runtime environment, the web browser as the main malware infection channel, and CO.CC as the most dangerous top-level domain.    

Douglas Perry
43 Comments Comment from the forums
  • tonitelaoag
    if all these are true, what else can we do online besides watching youtube videos? i'de rather do what i usually do, get on with it and if my system got infected, reformat and reinstall everything oh wait, i have the image of my clean boot drive so no worry for me. mac osx is just my second drive just to try exclusive apps releases, win7 is my main bread and butter, nothing beats it period
    Reply
  • wildwell
    ... and riding in a car is the riskiest way to travel
    ... and buying food instead of growing or raising it yourself is the riskiest way to eat

    I guess I should just unplug my computer and find a bomb shelter to hole up in for the rest of my life.
    Reply
  • joytech22
    I remember when flame wars happened here daily, and Apple fan's would flame about Windows security flaws.

    NOW look who's laughing, you're exposed to threats for months at a time.
    Reply
  • christop
    Trend Micro sells fear... wait we have something that will protect you... Good one.
    Reply
  • cybr
    The most risky thing to own is a computer due to it's susceptibility to viruses, etc etc.
    Reply
  • tonitelaoagif all these are true, what else can we do online besides watching youtube videos?Technically can't even do that since YouTube is a Google site lol.
    Reply
  • house70
    It's all about the user, in the end...
    Reply
  • THE_Ted
    Mac OS X isn't currently nor has it been targeted by viruses or malware. This isn't because it is magically immune but because, at least so far, it hasn't had enough users to make it a target. But the idea of judging it based upon patch cycles when it wasn't under attack is ridiculous. There is no way to determine how well or how poorly Apple would crank out the patches if security flaws were being exploited, when at the moment they aren't.

    Companies don't patch or even admit problems (like security flaws) even when they know about them UNTIL they start causing problems. That is universal across all markets, all goods, and all services.
    Reply
  • razor512
    the most dangerous thing to do it to be born because there is a 100% death rate.

    anyway, the mac os will get hit harder and harder by malicious users since it is nor a larger target.
    Reply
  • The_Prophecy
    9265235 said:
    anyway, the mac os will get hit harder and harder by malicious users since it is nor a larger target.

    I've been telling people this for years. It's only a matter of time before Apple's security holes start getting exposed and we start having to clean and/or wipe out Apple devices due to virus infections.
    Reply