[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Mac most secure servers?



On Thu, Feb 22, 2001 at 10:58:27AM -0500, Steve Rudd wrote:
> I have been told by a "Mac-head" that the Mac is the most secure server and 
> that it is significantly more secure than any unix system, including Linux.

Believe it or not the U.S. military made such a claim about 18 months or
so back.  They had an NT based web server defaced, so they switched to
MacOS.  Their reasoning was that since MacOS is not designed to be
multi-user and remotely managed and stuff that there's less of a chance
that it would get cracked remotely.  IMHO that's the worst possible
reason to claim that the Mac is secure.  It's just an ugly form of
security through obscurity.

The thing is, any box on the network is going to be insecure, and the
level of insecurity is going to be inversely proportional to the
usefulness of the machine.  Sure, maybe you can't remotely manage a Mac.
I could do the same thing to a Unix system and make it significantly
more secure, but that also makes it a lot less useful.  Maybe the Mac is
more secure than the *default* installations of most Unixes, but I'd
hardly claim that it's more secure than a Unix or (maybe) even an NT
system could be.

noah

-- 
 _______________________________________________________
| Web: http://web.morgul.net/~frodo/
| PGP Public Key: http://web.morgul.net/~frodo/mail.html 

Attachment: pgpkriagsdZTv.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Reply to: