OS X Struck By Severe Security Hole

You know what I think about this?

Not that this hole was caused by it, but I was thinking... Apple releasing their platform into the x86 market is going to open OS X up to so much more viral attacks, exploits and hacking. I don't care what anyone says, the x86 market is so much larger than the Apple market was. Dropping the OS into "Windows territory", so to speak, is going to give all those underground folks something new to pick apart... and they will. They like new challenges.

This is evidenced by the many successful attempts to force OS X to operate on any unapproved x86 machine. Microsoft's had to deal with this sort of piracy for a very, very long time... and I really don't think Apple is going to do much better at thwarting them.

Not trying to chew out anyone, mind ya'. Just speakin' what I'm thinkin'. I think as long as Apple churns out the patches quickly, there'll be nothing to worry about. This particular exploit also, for example, only works if Safari automatically starts what it downloads. That, in my opinion, is a very dumb thing to do. I've seen a fair share of browsers with that option, and I can't the reason why anyone would actually use it. That kind of automation is extremely dangerous, even before this exploit came into being.

The x86 platform is VERY mainstream. I think we'll be seeing lots of problems popping up in OS X because of it's release to this platform. I'm not shooting at the browser! Must stress that fact. H O W E V E R (happy, Ed?!) .....ahem. However, when you put something under hundreds of thousands of more eyes, there's bound to be problems nobody's seen before.

I'm not one to go 'haha! OS X has an exploit!' or 'haha! Windows has an exploit!' because I think they'll always have some. In my opinion, Microsoft's problem isn't in that there's a bunch of exploits in Windows, it's that they take way too long to fix them when they're discovered, if they fix them at all. I think Apple does a brilliant job in patching known exploits quickly and properly... and that's what'll make it a secure OS.

So, in conclusion, Mac OS X will come under major attack by the massive amount of Windows hackers that there are, due to it's release to x86 platform... and it'll have flaws they'll find. But if Apple keeps fixing exploits the way they have been, then Mac will still be able to tout the "more secure than Windows" line.

...and I dunno why I wrote this. o.O