Re: Mac most secure servers?
I've used macs as servers for fairly large numbers of people working for a
school district (k12 districts aren't into *nixes much yet, at least mine
wasn't...). It ran webstar (httpd), eims (mail), quickdns pro, and
netpresenz (ftpd). In my estimation, the security advantage definitely
goes to the mac. Quite frankly, I never spent any time performing security
checks / tests, because there just isn't the ability to buffer overflow to
a rootshell, for example. If an app crashes, that app dies (and, being a
mac, chances are the rest of the system dies with it). Believe it or not,
macs used as servers (that are intelligently set up) are fairly stable...
at least, far more stable than a mac that's used as a desktop (nothing
approaching *nix stability, of course).
These days, I really wouldn't recommend a mac as a server:
* much more expensive than x86 hardware running linux
* less usefull than above x86, unless you need only basic services
* performance wise, not very suitable for heavy loads
Of course, now it's all about Mac OS X. The builds I've tried so far have
a fairly modest default inetd config - that is, not too much is turned on
by default. I'm pretty sure that I'll have to pay more attention to
security in Mac OS X, especially if I decide to use any of the more
exploitable services (bind, sendmail, etc). Really, though, I'm quite
happy running that stuff on my linux box... Macs are desktop computers,
and they should be used as such. To do anything else is a waste, imho :)
On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, 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.
>
> Any comments
>
>
>
> --
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-security-request@lists.debian.org
> with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
>
>
Reply to: