Does the Mac OS X Have Security Flaws?

Mac OS X has always been called "Virus-free" and one of the big reasons you would switch to MAC, but for some reason, it seems as MAC got more popular, i assumed that so did the hackers think that cracking the system would mean more chances of spreading their virus?

My question is, how secure is OS X Mountain Lion?

 

Every Mac OS has a security flaw, no exceptions. The question is, can apple patch it faster than the virus devs?

 

Every piece of software has flaws... security or otherwise... every OS has security flaws.

I think your whole premise of...

is misleading. Some people on forums and Apple-lovers may claim that, but thats about it. Apple has said and still implies that it is more secure than Windows, but thats far from saying perfect. They've also said its free from Windows viruses, which is true, just like its free from all other Windows-only software by default.

Also, with the official definition of "Virus" its actually true there hasn't been a virus on OSX. The problem with that statement is that most people don't know the definition of Virus, and are thinking Malware, and call all Malware viruses. Any software that runs that does bad things for your computer is Malware... wether its a virus, trojan, or any other number of things... but many people call them all a virus even if thats not technically correct.

 

It's kind of irrelevant whether there are any "technical viruses", because the major differentiating factor is whether it can copy itself (like a human virus), which doesn't really matter if the infection rate is high and the nature of the infection is serious. If you can be infected silently, without any social engineering, then you basically face the ultimate security breach.

So it's a little bit esoteric to make the differentiation, just saying.

 

Being "virus-free" has always been security through obscurity. The Mac platform was virus free for a long time because of the <10% marketshare Apple held in the past. People were busy making viruses for Windows.

Mac OS has been more secure mainly due to protecting the user from itself. Think about how many times Mac OS asks you to authenticate something with your password. That right there stops a lot of people from willy-nilly installing things, because they actually have to pause and wonder why they have to put in their password. Windows came up with something like that with UAC.

It sounds silly at first, I know.

 

Every OS has a security flaw, it's called human error

 

well as I was trying to point out... "virus-free" is a useless metric. You need to look at Malware as a whole. Its not possible to stop all Malware whent he user has control of what they can get and run...

 

True.

As others said, any OS is not 100% secure, there will always be security flaws that people will try to exploit. OS X as Linux have the advantage of having a smaller install base compared to Windows which makes Windows the target of choice. That being said, most of the malware i've heard about regarding OS X were social engineering in nature. There was one issue having to do with Java (Flashback: Researchers uncover new espionage malware preying on Mac users | Ars Technica) which didn't require user intervention for example. Note the security flaw has been patched.

Regarding security, in the end, the manufacturer will try to make the OS as secure as possible, but people will still find ways to go around it. For now though, Windows remains the main target of attacks. There was one interesting piece of malware targeted specifically at certain mac users if you want another example: Surveillance spyware migrates from Windows to Mac OS X | Ars Technica.

Anyone with the right skills and enough motivation will manage to get through as well. Personally, regardless of the OS you're running, having a safety net in the form of an active AV and smart browsing habits go a long way too. In the end something can always happen, you can inadvertently click on something malicious, get infected by flash drives that got plugged into previously infected computers, etc. Having a mac decreases the likelihood of catching malware, but better be safe than sorry.

 

Thanks for the answers.