* Posts by Joshua Lee

4 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Jun 2008

Apple sneaks malware protection into Snow Leopard

Joshua Lee
Jobs Halo

the real OS X 10.6 Malware protection

The real OS X 10.6 malware protection is the improved stack-smashing protection, and Safari sandboxing, among other new security features Apple aren't talking about because they don't want to make earlier OS X look as relatively insecure as it was compared to features in Vista and Linux. (Though Vista is a craptacular operating system, it had new (for Windows) security features that made it, in theory, more secure than OS X Leopard.) As easy as it is to make fun of the feature mentioned in the article, that is only a small part of under-the-hood malware protection in Snow Leopard. I suspect hackathons will be much less embarassing in the future for Apple.

Apple releases bumper patch batch

Joshua Lee
Jobs Halo

apple has email bulletins

@Hud Dunlap

Apple has a security email list available, "security-announce", among many other mailing lists available from apple.com, as soon as security updates are offered emails are posted on it. Apple is very tardy at security fixes, but let's criticize them for actual failings rather than imagined failings, OK?

Apple DNS patch doesn't patch Mac clients

Joshua Lee
Jobs Horns

fanboys

I got a Mac not too long ago, but thanks to this flawed and late response to what could be the exploit of the decade the honeymoon is over. OS X has an excellent design, many of the security checkboxes are checked, but even though it's Unix(r) it needs to get security updates or it *will* have security flaws. Security through obscurity is no excuse for this one, it is an attack that, in automated form, does not distinguish between operating systems.

Microsoft urges Windows users to shun 'carpet bombing' Safari

Joshua Lee
Thumb Up

desktop littering

To reply to a comment, the default download area since Leopard on OS X is no longer the desktop, its the Downloads folder. Still, I don't even want that folder to be carpet-bombed by a malware site, so I use Firefox even on OS X; even though the chances of getting a virus are small. Besides, Firefox 3.0 RC1 is as pretty and small in memory usage on Macs as Safari, with more features! I can't wait 'till the release. :-)