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Mac OS X: The world's safest computing environment |
Jools
Joined: May 21, 2003
Posts: > 500
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http://star-techcentral.com/t[....]hnology/9302251&sec=technology
LONDON: The mi2g Intelligence Unit said that the most comprehensive study it has ever undertaken reveals that the world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment -- operating system plus applications -- is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkley Software Distribution) and Mac OS X based on Darwin.
The study was conducted over 12 months, the London-based analyst firm (www.mi2g.net) said in a statement.
The last 12 months have witnessed the deadliest yearly period in terms of malware -- viruses, worms and trojans -- proliferation targeting Windows-based machines, in which over 200 countries and tens of millions of computers worldwide have been infected.
The mi2g Intelligence Unit said its study analysed 235,907 successful digital breaches against permanently connected -- online 24/7 (24 hours a day, seven days a week) -- computers across the globe, covering a wide variety of entities.
The sample of breached computing environments was holistic and all possessed some antivirus protection and basic security at the very least.
The sample consisted of micro entities (homes and small offices without a separate firewall unit); small entities (organisations with a turnover of below US$7mil or RM26.6mil with a separate firewall unit); medium entities (organisations with a turnover between US$7mil and US$40mil or RM152mil with a separate firewall unit and basic intrusion detection); and large entities (organisations with a turnover in excess of US$40mil with firewall layers, intrusion detection systems and dedicated computer security staff).
In 2004, 32.7% of all digital breaches were carried out against micro entities including home-based individuals with 24/7 online computers; 58.8% of all digital breaches were against small entities; 6.1% of all digital breaches were against medium size entities; and only 2.5% of all digital breaches were against large entities -- businesses, government agencies and non-government organisations inclusive.
The study also revealed that Linux has become the most breached 24/7 online computing environment in terms of manual hacker attacks overall.
The Open Source operating system accounted for 65.64% of all breaches recorded, with 154,846 successfully compromised Linux 24/7 online computers of all flavours.
The number of successful manual hacker attacks against Windows-based online computers remained steady and accounted for 25.19% of all breaches recorded, with 59,419 successfully compromised Windows targets of all versions.
In sharp contrast, the number of successful hacker attacks against Mac OS X or BSD online computers has demonstrated a declining trend and accounted for just 4.82% of all breaches recorded, with 11,370 successfully compromised BSD targets of all flavours including Apple.
In a remarkable switch in top rank within the Government computing environment over the last 12 months, the most breached operating system for online systems has now become Windows (57.74%) followed by Linux (31.76%) and then BSD and Mac OS X together (1.74%).
This is in stark contrast to the situation six months ago, when Windows was significantly lower in terms of recorded government server breaches compared with Linux.
The number of recorded breaches against government online computers running BSD or Mac OS X worldwide remained very low.
The recent global malware epidemics have primarily targeted the Windows computing environment and have not caused any significant economic damage to environments running Open Source including Linux, BSD and Mac OS X, mi2g said.
When taking the economic damage from malware into account over the last 12 months, including the impact of MyDoom, NetSky, SoBig, Klez and Sasser, Windows has become the most breached computing environment in the world.
Microsoft's OS accounted for most of the productivity losses associated with malware proliferation.
This is directly the result of very insignificant quantities of highly damaging mass-spreading malware being written for other computing environments like Linux, BSD and Mac OS X.
"More and more smart individuals, government agencies and corporations are shifting towards Apple and BSD environments in 2004," said mi2g executive chairman D.K. Matai.
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ThreeX
Joined: Dec 21, 2002
Posts: > 500
From: Sweden
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Interesting reading but no surprise to me 
I have been running FreeBSD servers for four years now and i am/have been very happy indeed with performance!
I quit using Linux because of the small but irritating changes between the distributions and because in an effort to make installation user friendly, you tend to get a lot more daemons running than you want/need and more diskspace wasted on applications you didnīt ask for in the first place.
When you choose a minimal BSD install, you get just that, the bare necessities! Then you can manually add what you really want and need,either through ports collection or directly from respective website (like apache.org and php.org)
Happy owner of: Ericsson GH198, S868, SH888, R310s, T10s, T28s, A2618s, T39m x2, T68m, T66, SE t68i, T610, S700i, Nokia 2110i, 6210, 8310, 8850, 8890 and 6680 Siemens S55 | |
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Posted: 2004-11-02 15:59
