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> The Unix Design is significantly less granular than that of Windows, not even having a basic ACL. The UNIX design came from a time when security was less of a

> The Unix Design is significantly less granular than that of Windows, not even having a basic ACL. The UNIX design came from a time when security was less of an issue and not taken as seriously as it did, and so does the job adequately. Windows NT (and later OSes) were actually designed with security in mind and this shows. This comparison doesn't even make sense, comparing a decades old UNIX design to a comparatively newly designed OS (Windows NT). POSIX permissions have stood the test of time for a long time and by far were much better than what was available in Windows for the longest time. Off course Windows NT has improved on what was available at the time. That being said, Mac OS X since 10.4 has had ACL, so that argument goes right out of the window. ACL's are enabled by default and they function as designed. touch testing chmod 700 chmod +a "otheruser allow delete" su - otheruser ls -lahe testing rm testing > They often share vulnerabilities with core libraries in other UNIX like systems with samba and java being two examples. That is because they use that exact open source software. This is a simple no shit sherlock kind of deal. Luckily those are going away and won't be in Lion. Java will be an extra download, like Adobe Flash and Samba won't be included by default because of the GPLv3. Apple's policy regarding third-party software vulnerabilities could definitely be improved, and they already have, but it could still be better. Ultimately many of the third party tools they ship are never used by consumers and even though they may be exploitable they aren't accessible to an attacker (looking at you PHP ...) > They are extremely difficult to deal with when trying to report a vulnerability, seemingly not having qualified people to accept such reports. Even if they do manage to accept a report and acknowledge the importance of an issue they can take anywhere from months to a year to actually fix it properly. This has been fixed recently, they have a new head of security [1] and have increasingly shown that they are getting faster at closing bugs and bringing out updates to fix issues. Look at the Pwn2Own contest iPhone bug, Apple was notified and an update was made available that fixed only that one flaw. Do I think they are doing the best of job? No, MSFT has them beat by a mile with their security response team (really impressive), however the above sentence makes it sound like this is still the case which is no longer true. -- It is a pretty good article in that it shows that there are certain issues that Apple could definitely improve upon, but completely ignoring any development to OS X for the past couple of years doesn't look good at all especially when the flaws you are attempting to point out have already been fixed. [1] http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/apple-hires-new-security-chief-012411 http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/apple-hires-new-security-c...

rlpb 15y ago
Whether ACLs are present or not makes little difference. When a user is logged in, he either has access to do something or he doesn't. Only one line of that ACL really matters, and that's the same on a system with permission control but no ACLs (such as traditional Unix). If the user is able to escalate his privileges (whether with UAC or sudo, the OS doesn't matter) in order to install malware then he loses.
- X-Istence 15y ago
  I completely agree, I was merely refuting the authors point. Not stating that security does or does not rely on ACL's.
- tobylane 15y ago
  The recent malware entirely (as I understood) depended on the user putting their password into an OS prompt for permissions for the bad program. How can the OS make the line between that and something safe like Growl or Virtualbox?
  - LaGrange 15y ago
    Stating the obvious: App Store only software installs, and other DRM solutions. And yes, that has a price that people may or may not be willing to pay. It's somewhat scary, but I'm starting to think that we will be forced to adopt something like that. Computers are used for serious stuff too (payments, medicine, things like that), and, apparently, way too many people can't be trusted to administer their computers securely. Right now people are mostly damaging own life, but if this starts happening to medical records, it's going to go beyond personal security. It's too bad, really. Even if "developer programs" were free -- i.e., just required asking the corp for a developer key (this could be enforced on state level), it would be more of a hassle than it should be.
    - tobylane 15y ago
      So lets see an option in 10.8, aka Ocelot, where there is a fairly hidden button called Allow non-app store app installs, with a readable (unlike itunes eula), in Security.

rlpb 15y ago

Whether ACLs are present or not makes little difference. When a user is logged in, he either has access to do something or he doesn't. Only one line of that ACL really matters, and that's the same on a system with permission control but no ACLs (such as traditional Unix). If the user is able to escalate his privileges (whether with UAC or sudo, the OS doesn't matter) in order to install malware then he loses.

X-Istence 15y ago
I completely agree, I was merely refuting the authors point. Not stating that security does or does not rely on ACL's.
tobylane 15y ago
The recent malware entirely (as I understood) depended on the user putting their password into an OS prompt for permissions for the bad program. How can the OS make the line between that and something safe like Growl or Virtualbox?
- LaGrange 15y ago
  Stating the obvious: App Store only software installs, and other DRM solutions. And yes, that has a price that people may or may not be willing to pay. It's somewhat scary, but I'm starting to think that we will be forced to adopt something like that. Computers are used for serious stuff too (payments, medicine, things like that), and, apparently, way too many people can't be trusted to administer their computers securely. Right now people are mostly damaging own life, but if this starts happening to medical records, it's going to go beyond personal security. It's too bad, really. Even if "developer programs" were free -- i.e., just required asking the corp for a developer key (this could be enforced on state level), it would be more of a hassle than it should be.
  - tobylane 15y ago
    So lets see an option in 10.8, aka Ocelot, where there is a fairly hidden button called Allow non-app store app installs, with a readable (unlike itunes eula), in Security.