Re: Mac most secure servers?
On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, Noah L. Meyerhans wrote:
> The thing is, any box on the network is going to be insecure, and the
I second(third?) that.
The best way to reduce the security risk to zero on ANY system is to:
1. Unplug ethernet
2. Unplug power cord
3. Lock system in concrete box
4. Drop in Lake Erie
REDUCE the risk by keeping up on security upgrades. OS patches, admin
skills, etc. All of which requires that you use an OS that can be
upgraded and/or patched easily and quickly.
Just my 2 cents , adjusted for inflation.
-John
> 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.
>
> 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
>
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