While fanboys may believe that Apple’s operating systems are invulnerable to attacks, it looks like Apple isn’t being quite as naïve anymore. Earlier this year, Eugene Kaspersky claimed that Apple is, “ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security,” a comment that drew a lot of attention from both sides of the fence. While many agree that viruses in general are no longer a major problem, other types of malware, such as Flashback on the Mac, are still very dangerous.
Wired reports that in order to help combat this problem, Apple recently hired Kristin Paget, a security expert that helped Microsoft clear up many of the security vulnerabilities in the Vista operating system. Her official title is, “Core operating system security researcher,” although it’s unclear whether she’ll be focusing on iOS or MacOS. Given her background, we assume the latter.
Before she moved onto hardware debugging, Paget was brought in as a consultant to help find and squash bugs within Vista. Much of this information was secret, protected by a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with Microsoft, but the NDA expired in 2011, leaving Paget free to discuss details. Apparently when she was brought into the company, executives were confident that there would be few issues. This assessment proved to be incorrect, as Paget’s organization was able to find so many bugs that Microsoft was forced to delay the release of Vista. For her trouble, she received a t-shirt that said, “I delayed Windows Vista.”
It’s good to see Apple focusing more resources on security. Fewer compromised machines, regardless of OS, leaves everyone on the Internet safer from attack.
Source and Image via Wired
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