Hell has frozen over! Run for the hills! The sky is falling! Vista is declared more secure than Mac OS X says security researcher Dino Dai Zovi (gesundheit). Why do we care what this guy has to say? Well, for starters he was awarded a $10,000 prize for gaining shell access to a Macbook Pro at the CanSecWest security conference just over a week ago.
When asked about which platform was safer this is what he had to say:
I have found the code quality, at least in terms of security, to be much better overall in Vista than Mac OS X 10.4. It is obvious from observing affected components in security patches that Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) has resulted in fewer vulnerabilities in newly-written code. I hope that more software vendors follow their lead in developing proactive software security development methodologies.
But fear not because Dino had some advice for Mac users to help keep things a bit more safe on your rig:
I recommend that Mac users make their primary user a non-admin account, use a separate keychain for important passwords, and store sensitive documents in a separate encrypted disk image. I think these are fairly straightforward steps that many users can take to better protect their sensitive information on their computer.