Macs Easier To Exploit
In what turned out to be an exercise in how to insert foot in mouth, a Swedish Mac fan set up a Mac Mini as a Web server & challenged the hackers of the world to "try and gain root control." Less than six hours later, the box was compromised, and the site it was serving defaced with the message "This sucks. Six hours later this poor little Mac was owned and this page got defaced."
The hacker, who goes by the nickname "Gwerdna," later told ZDNet that he achieved the hack in less than 30 minutes. He claims to have first looked for some obvious flaws, after which he proceeded to attack the box through an undocumented exploit that Apple has no patch for yet! Whether or not this is just hot air we don’t really know, but the fact is that the Mac OS box was compromised in a matter of hours after the challenge was thrown out.
Considering that Mac OS has one of the smallest subscriber bases around, not too many hackers are interested in even trying out thier skills on a Mac box.This is what makes the news of the hack even worse for Apple! If hardly any hackers are training to hack Macs, and the Mac Mini was still hacked so quickly, not much can be said for security on Apple’s OS.
Many believe that even a Windows box could have held out longer! So is the Mac going to become the new Windows? Well, not inless it can match Windows in terms of sales as well, which is a tall order.
Another thing we were left wondering about is that if the Mac OS is based on the FreeBSD OS, which is considerd one of the most secure operating systems around, what exactly have Apple changed, and more importantly, Why?