January 3rd, 2006
Count Your, er, Blessings: 5,198 OS Security Flaws You Weren’t Affected by Last Year
By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
Well, at least hopefully. The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has released its year-end summary of computer vulnerabilities. And before you say it, no, those 5,198 flaws are not all Windows-related. Nope, they are distributed among various operating systems. In fact, despite the poor reputation Windows has, US-CERT found four times as many vulnerabilities related to Unix and Linux than to Windows.
Exact numbers were: 812 were for the Windows, 2,328 for Unix and Linux, and 2,058 affecting more than one operating system. I looked at the multi-OS bugs, by the way, and they were related to things like applications (which might have the same vulnerability across OSes). Example: Adobe Acrobat / Reader Plug-in Buffer Overflow.
We Say: Surprising results. For some reason, no MacOS vulnerabilities were listed, though several were found over the year. Also, due to its Unix roots, OS X should be vulnerable to some of the core OS issues found with Unix / Linux.
Another Mike says:
Just to let anyone who has a wish to see some Apple flaws, there are a few mac os x flaws actually listed under the unix/linux portion. I guess they didn’t come out totally clean.
January 4th, 2006 at 12:16 pm