Mac OS X vs. Linux - Red Hat vs. Windows 98 and Above Including Windows Vista

Microsoft's Windows operating system came on top out of three different alternative platforms including Mac OS X, Linux (Red Hat), and Solaris 8/9/10, in terms of the volume of holes it contains.

Taking into consideration that when it comes down to security vulnerabilities less is actually more, various versions of Windows, from Windows 98 to Windows Vista account for fewer flaws than direct rivals Mac OS X and Linux. Although in the past, Jeff Jones, Security Strategy Director in Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group, has played the operating system vulnerability counting game and the results were disputed due to his affiliation with the Redmond company, this time around its independent security company Secunia doing all the counting.


"Red Hat was found to have the most number of vulnerabilities (633), with 99% (629 vulnerabilities) due to third-party components. Solaris, which had a total of 252 vulnerabilities, came next and had 80% (201) due to third-party components. Apple Mac OS X came third with 235, 62% (146) of which is due to third-party components. Fourth came Windows with 123, but with only 4% due to third-party software. Last came HP-UX with 75 vulnerabilities, 81% (61) of which are due to third-party software," Secunia revealed.

Well, the fact of the matter is that, with the exception of HP-UX 10.x/11.x which had just 75 security vulnerabilities, although Windows was found to be impacted by only 123 flaws, the vast majority of holes were in the actual operating system namely 118, and only 5 in third-party software. This is not valid for Mac OS X and Linux (Red Hat with the exception of Fedora). Mac OS X was affected directly only by 89 vulnerabilities out of the total 235, while Red Hat by just 4 out of 633. "These figures should not be misinterpreted in any way to determine the "most secure" operating system. A straightforward counting of the number of vulnerabilities should be interpreted merely as that: the number of vulnerabilities affecting a particular operating system," Secunia added.

source: news.softpedia.com

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