Thursday, November 01, 2007

Tech: Leopard Security Features

Matasano.com has a nice write up about the various security features in Leopard. Along with the various improvements are also some flaws in the implementation. I suspect some of the flaws are due to 'time constraints' of meeting the release schedule and will be addresses in future patches.

When talking about the new "Address Space Randomization" feature in Leopard Ptacek mentions:

This feature removes a talking point argument about Microsoft Windows Vista’s superior security, but it doesn’t address the underlying point of that argument. Cocoa programs running in Darwin are less secure than Win32 programs running under NTOSKRNL, and aren’t even in the same ballpark as Managed C++ or C# programs.

I wonder if that's true, Vista having superior security. Perhaps there's a side-by-side comparison somewhere.

Labels: Apple Mac OSX Leopard, Security, Windows Vista