[Spliffdaddy]

According to the National Vulnerability Database, in 2003, 2004, and 2005 more software flaws were found in Mac OSX than in Microsoft Windows.
In 2005 approximately 65 flaws were found in Windows while approximately 85 flaws were found in OSX. 29 of the OSX flaws were of "high severity" while 38 of the Windows flaws were "high severity.

Interesting stuff. Found the article in the March 21st edition of 'PC Magazine'.

[ghporter]

Old news... and note that while there were more "flaws" found in OS X, fewer of them were "serious" than those found in Windows XP; the percentages are 34.1% for OS X and almost 58.5% in XP. No software can be perfect, and with the addition of new features and capabilities, there's always a risk of introducing bad code. Apple's coders are apparently better at not adding as much bad code than Microsoft's coders. To which I say "duh!"

[Millennium]

So there were more minor flaws, but fewer serious ones. Apple responded faster when flaws came up, and many of the flaws were not actually in Apple code.

I fail to see what the point of this thread is, other than FUD.

[Dark Helmet]

Last time I posted this everyone went ape ****.

[Chuckit]

…but still not as many flaws as anyone who takes this article as evidence that Mac OS is worse than Windows.

[Weyland-Yutani]

Darwin is open source and as such makes it easier to find flaws through peer review of the source code. Windows flaws are only discovered in-house or by accident.

cheers

W-Y

[TETENAL]

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=280250

[meelk]

Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani

Darwin is open source and as such makes it easier to find flaws through peer review of the source code. Windows flaws are only discovered in-house or by accident.

cheers

W-Y

totally and completely NOT TRUE. You should pay attention to the number of security firms and such that alert MS to problems. You'll find most of them are detected by 3rd parties without any evil intent.

[Spliffdaddy]

Originally Posted by TETENAL

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=280250

That thread lacked the 'official' Mac OS flaw count.

This thread shows that there were more flaws in OSX than in Windows - something that the other thread didn't address - and, in fact, dismissed as an impossibility.

[ghporter]

Still, look at the rate of serious flaws... Maybe OS X drops a digit in a calculation-Windows drops two AND opens a buffer to an unchecked overflow condition-which is a potentially exploitable security flaw. Reread my previous post; Apple has not screwed up nearly as badly as MS, and the OS architecture is probably about 90% responsible for that.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by Spliffdaddy

This thread shows that there were more flaws in OSX than in Windows - something that the other thread didn't address - and, in fact, dismissed as an impossibility.

In fact that other thread did not dismiss it as an impossibility.

Anyway, the raw number of discovered (and already fixed) flaws tells us nothing about the security of an OS. You'd have to look at the nature of those flaws and how they were discovered. Could be because there were more, could be because the software was screened more etc.

[Weyland-Yutani]

Originally Posted by meelk

totally and completely NOT TRUE. You should pay attention to the number of security firms and such that alert MS to problems. You'll find most of them are detected by 3rd parties without any evil intent.

Yep, absoloutly true. Verification of source code makes it easier to find bugs and fix them. While the bugs in Darwin are fixed and gone, unknown un-verified bugs remain in Windows source.

cheers

W-Y

[production_coordinator]

I also wonder if these are "normal users."

If a serious flaw is found in Apache, do they count that for OS X? Most Mac users don't use Apache, Perl, FTP, SSH, etc. etc.

[turtle777]

Lamas have more security issues than hampstors....

-t

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by Dark Helmet

Last time I posted this everyone went ape ****.

No one went apeshit, you just kept trying to justify your post, and people got annoyed.