CE-Oh no he didn't! Part XXIII - Gates: "security guys break the Mac every single day"
By Ryan Block 
posted Feb 3rd 2007 5:59PM
posted Feb 3rd 2007 5:59PM
Wow, um, Bill, old buddy, old pal. We're sorry to skewer you on this one and all but seriously, what the hell were you thinking telling Newsweek that "Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine."? We understand the few questions preceding interviewer Steven Levy's query about Vista's security compared to OS X's may have gotten you a bit riled up, but let's be honest for a second. We follow this stuff fairly closely and we haven't seen or heard about any globe-trotting worms or prominent security threats to Apple's operating system in quite some time; one of the highest risk threats we've heard about in recent memory turned out to be a hoax (although, as many readers have pointed out, there's always the MOAB). We're glad Vista is enhancing Windows security (and usability), we really are, but we really think you and Jobs (and Hodgman) should go have a few drinks and just enjoy your filthy richness or something.Love, Engadget
Remind me never to buy anything from a CompUSA in New York if this idiot is representative of their fine employee training and knowledge.
Really got your numbers mixed up, I think linux has about a 27% market share. Maybe you should rethink your posts??? As for the Bret Hart thing, did your dad ever explain to you the wrestling wasn't real.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_05/b3918001_mz001.htm?campaign_id=nws_insdr_jan21&link_position=link1
No wonder I never buy from CompUSA! Are you in the 5th Ave and 40th Strret store? Damn, back when I worked Computer retail (in the days of Computer Factory) computer sales people actually had to know what the Hell they were talking about. Imagine that! Now, the same same guy who flips patties at MacDonalds is qualified to sell computers at CompUSA. That's a damned shame!
Uhh, yeah, about your "just check number" statement (are you still learning english?)- is that based on 1996 market shares? Why don't you google 'mac market share' and see it is approaching 7%, yeah still small but how much has it gone up in just tha last 5 years? I will bet it is at 10% or over by 2010, judging by the amount of people I personally know who switched.
By your ratioanale, McDonalds is the best restaurant, WalMart is the coolest store, NASCAR is the best sport, and Mercedes Benz suck because they have a lot less cars out there than everyone else.
But why am I even responding to someone who actually quotes a, get this, PRO WRESTLER! HA ha ha! Wow, if your going ot be a fanboi, at least make it something worth while!
Yes, you appear to have drawn the same conclusion, if not only by blind chance, that most people with a shred of intelligence have come to; Microsoft, as you so aptly put it, CAN do what they want. Unfortunately being able to do whatever you wan't doesn't directly lend itself to doing what you need to to truly lead an industry. Cornering an ignorant market and then making stretched claims about the steadfastedness of your security vs. a company who has been made a social minority (Apple and Jobs), will bolster the support of ignorant peons who will spend thousands of dollars to upgrade their computers needlessly to simply be capable of running what? Windows Media Player, Word, AND Excel without too much processor lag?
Let's forget security for a moment; let's discuss the other massive disadvantages to Vista: You can't possibly run Vista at full capacity on your current machine, unless you recently upgraded your pc to a 64 bit processor, at least a couple gigs of ram, and plenty of hard drive space to harbor the 3rd party programs that most likely are having support issues with this beautiful operating system. Secondly, what does Vista look like? No one eats a veggie burger unless it looks remotely like the real thing, and the veggie burger that is Vista is haplessly trying to emulate OSX tiger...which it isn't even doing to the fullest. Moving forward, in a mere few months, Tiger (which Vista can't emulate to the fullest currently) will be replaced by Leopard, which anyone with half a brain (sadly this excludes the vast majority of brainwashed Windows PC cohorts) recognizes as far superior to the current version of Mac operating software. This new OS will also, shockingly enough, be compatible with most current Macs, as well as *guffaw* some older models! Blimey!
I was an avid pc builder and user, but lets be honest with ourselves; Bill Gates screwed Steve Jobs early on. Just recently Jobs has truly regained his savvy and gained an upperhand on Bill, and now its surfacing; Bill is a thief and the captain of a flagship that is losing face to the public. The 21st century will see the tides change towards a true visionary; Jobs and his stock options!!!
Perhaps he was referencing the month of apple bugs?
Of course macs can be haxed everyday, just keep on hacking the same dude that does not patch his windows on mac and you have a potential victim !
Thank you Windows for all those possibilities :) Hacking a mac became worth the try the day windows became available on macs.
month of apple bugs is a joke. most are bs
Once again, CEOs have proven themselves the absolute worst people to advertise their product
i guess engadg somehow found making people fighting over this topic really helps their webiste growing...3 same titles in 1 day
waiting to see another war here between windows and mac...
fight people! fight!
Can't wait until tomorrow to read the comments on this.
"I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine." Sounds like ol' Bills throwin' down a challenge to me! Release the hounds!
He was referencing the month of Apple bugs.
And before anyone is like; "ZOMG most of those required third party programs or drivers ZOMG!!!"; keep in mind the vast majority of Windows exploits do also.
I thought the vast majority of Windows exploits just required Internet Explorer.
Immediately after the interview, Gates goes back to living under his rock.
I'm sorry? While Steve Jobs sits on his cash, Bill Gates is helping those not as fortunate as you or I in other countries with his. He's certainly not sitting under his rock.
I'll take ya Bill.
I also want to learn how to hack and crack ..:) someone can help me where to start?:)
Bill got all riled up, that's nonsense what he said, but he was bound to say it by the line of questioning, Also, I found this quote cute.
"We follow this stuff fairly closely and we haven't seen or heard about any prominent security threats to Apple's operating system in quite some time"
Well Ryan, that's not so much something to tout.
http://ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20060513
=)
"Bill got all riled up, that's nonsense what he said, but he was bound to say it by the line of questioning..."
You think he's such a thin-skinned little puppy? Levy's questions were puff balls, actually.
Gates lost it--proof the Apple ads are hitting a nerve. Frankly, if anything, Hodgman's shtick is gentle satire. PCs are on average much, much worse and their users--present company excepted, of course, har har!--much more doltish. Let Gates spend an hour doing Windoze tech support if he thinks otherwise about the great unwashed using his crapware!
Poor (Rich) Bill
So, the writer of this article is not only unaware of the entire Month of Apple bugs, but also discounts the Wi-Fi hack as a fraud because they did exactly what they said they were doing, which is hacking third party driver, and then declares "what Mac hacks? I haven't heard of any!" Wow, it is the very definition of "where ignorances is bliss, 'tis folly to tread!"
i think your refering to the bluetooth hack, the one that only worked on an obscure version of 10.2, and the one that apple fixed in under a week. If someone was going to update their machine to this version, then never update it again, and also have a bluetooth enabled machine running 10.2 (bluetooth wasn't very prominent in 2002-3), then i guess you could have a security flaw.
As much as I'd like to pretend that Mac's are compromised every day they, 'sigh', they...well...sorry Bill the truth hurts
i think everyone can agree that the apple commercial references in everything is getting old and repetitive.
i for one welcome our windows (now bug free) overlords.
this should make my rating go down...
Come on guys, Windows would also be a lot more secure if it weren't for those 3rd party apps, you know, like Outlook and Internet Explorer.
Lloyd,
its not because they call it the month of bugs that they find one everyday is it?
they falsly claimed that the exploit was also with apple airport card/software, which was not true
that made the exploit a non issue as all macbooks and macbooks pro have airport cards anyway
but since you seem to know that there are countless other bugs and exploits, maybe you can help us ignorant people with some references and evidence instead of just calling names?
Bill is the founder of the windows fanboy club. What else do you expect him to say?
Eh, the truth.
Looks like someone his having a hissy fit!. Want some candy to make you feel all better, Bill?
Reality is, even if Mac indeed had one exploit (which it doesn't), that's still only one to the hundreds found on the PC.
Yes, security guys did have done it a couple of times. 14 year old students break Windows daily.
I'd say, people break (and hack) Macs for fun. Windows? you do not need to break them - they crash all by themselves for you. And one needs to hack them to make them actually working.
Back of John Hodgman, he's funny as hell. I dont know why he's doing commercials though... I guess because his face isn't really out there a great deal, and it would help him sell his hysterical book, the Area of my Expertise.
um, actually read your article before citing it. your percentage is about the number of SERVERS running linux, not desktops.
"On the desktop side, IDC sees Linux' share more than doubling, from 3% today to 6% in 2007"
I'm not sure about it breaking every day, but there have been a fair number of "proof-of-concept" announcements.
3 things I could think about bill gates.
1. Bill gates must've been too busy doing whatever he does to use a windows PC for like the last 10 years.
2. Bill gates got some next level anti virus software and a firewall which some aliens made just for him.
3. He doesnt work at microsoft.. He's lying to everyone, He think's his coffee table is a computer.
When Gates said, "I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine," he was daring them to LIMIT themselves to once a month...
I think we can all learn a valuble lesson from this. That is:
When you steal a concept (i.e. GUI), you must do everything in your power to prove that you did not steal it, which may include lying. Lying some more. And then accusing others of lying and then stealing another of their concepts. And then lying some more. And then falling on your face and lying. Some more.
("Haha, virus, virus, haha, virus virus" Does anyone remember that one?)
man puts kick me sign on self and own company.
How about you go play, In the freeway..
Stick 2 the subject ass!
The best part is that just a few questions earlier, Gates blasts people who lie about stuff :p
I thought the same thing when I read that and you article. Then I thought well there is an wasy resource to check. It looks liek he wasn't that far off base Security Focus is tracking a lot of vulnerabilities in Mac Os lately. http://www.securityfocus.com/bid
Comparatively XP has slowed down a lot. Does this signal a shift in focus for hackers looking for a new playground? I would imagine that they will shift thier focuse to Vista now.
I don't like Macs, they never work the way I want them to. I like my Windows. I can customize to actually do things the way I want it do, for a lot of things, but I'm gonna say that Mr Gates went out way on a limb here. Yes, Macs had the month of bugs, but why? Just to prove it's possible. How many people actually cared to use these to turn people's lives into hell? If you'd do the same thing for Windows and no doubt it would be possible (probably even based only on Microsoft software) then people would actually take the time to read it, virus creators, especially those after your bank details would take notice, hey someone else is doing work for you and you can use it to make some dough.
Windows has a large attack surface because it is the big user base with more stupid users. That's why you have to have protection. You need to have a certain level of intelligence, another reason there are so few Mac users.
Seriously Bill, don't dare people to do this, you know your gonna have to sit your software engineers down and follow that post so they can release those patches faster than Michael Jackson cum from little boys.
Please click the link below to find out why Mr. Gates is really losing it. VERY ENLIGHTENING!!!
http://www.iowaconsumercase.org/010807/PLEX_7264.pdf
2006 Market Share
http://www.macrumors.com/2006/06/01/mac-market-share-update/
Month of Apple Bugs
http://projects.info-pull.com/moab/
A note to apple, if you build a computer for idiots, only idiots will buy them. The market share and world wide use of Windows says it all. As for security, its up to the user not the system. "I downloaded this email picture from some guy I don't know because it was in my email..."
A note to apple, if you build a computer for idiots, only idiots will buy them. The market share and world wide use of Windows says it all. As for security, its up to the user not the system. "I downloaded this email picture from some guy I don't know because it was in my email..."
so who's the real idiot??
Public bashing of a smaller company like this is obviously more motivated by Bill's ego being hurt than by anything else...windows has a ridiculous amount of market share on apple as posted earlier.
That being said:
for all of you who don't keep current on this type of stuff, a shitload of OSX exploits have been made public as of late.
Although most of them may be stupid DOS POC's, theres still ALOT of priv escalation and REMOTE code execution exploits that have really been popping up (publically) lately. I really wonder how many private ones havent gotten released/leaked yet.
@asaa: That's because of the "Month of Apple Bugs" in January. That's why you've seen them. And, frankly, when something like and exploit in VLC Player is one of those bugs (and it was a bug in the player across all the systems, not just on OS X), and there are another five third-party apps in that list, that definition of an "Apple bug" is kinda thin.
Sorry, I look at the compromised machines that are network filter lists on the campus I work at and I see no non-Windows machines on that list. We are talking dozens of compromised machines and not one is running a non-Windows OS. Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 are all on that list... but no Mac, Solaris or Linux boxes.
I wonder why?
what's even more hilarious are the people defending gates' statement. Yes, OSX has exploits, it's not perfect, but PLEASE! I don't think any person with a clue can agree with Bill's ignorant statement.
I find J.Jones security blog a interesting source of comparable statistics w/ verifiable citations (supports independent verification – do your own analysis), a breath of fresh air in an area where ideology tends to count more than facts. http://blogs.technet.com/security/
To think that apple (or any other software vendor) does a better job than MS when it comes to designing, building, testing, fielding (including end user education) and updating software one needs to believe that there's an order of magnitude difference in the quality and/or numbers of people doing this work on a particular product, and that everyone else has invested the billions that MS has on security over the last five to ten years since they became "target number 1" for the 15-minutes-of-fame team-acne. Hard to believe this is the case. If MS turns out to be a less attractive target one of these days, I fear we'll see even larger business losses due to the lack of investment and security discipline by the secondary vendors including, orcl, adbe, ibm, appl, csco, goog, etc. MS has at least demonstrated the ability to survive while under continuous attack. Will the others be so fortunate when MS becomes a less attractive target? i.e. when the ROI in compromising users of an "all ms" environment is much less than other proven vulnerable targets, like a Mac. Especially systems where they find it impossible to correct/update all shipping versions simultanously.
I can see it now.. Headlines: "MS unfair to competition, too secure, too much of a head start investing billions in secure development training, tools and practices. MS has an unfair advantage because they have cornered the market in (home-grown) security expertise in their market segment because trustworthy computing as a continuous improvement discipline is currently not taught in any school." "The European Union today demanded that MS divest itself of its security teams."
of course windows is broken only one a month,thats why there are only 114,000+ windows viruses. Evedently Bill Gates need to keep more up to date on the techology his company develops, i would be embarrased if i were the person that said that. He then went on to say that Macs get viruses everyday, #1)bullshit #2)bullshit #3)although there are security flaws in OS X, they are discovered by security people, who then pass them onto Apple for fixing, other then in the case of the people with MOAB, in which case they pubicly showed off their ignorance by releasing bugs for mainly 3rd party apps, and what was Apples software was fixed very haistly, as was the 3rd party stuff. I do love when the ZDnet emails arrive and the neadline is "another MS Office zero-day exploit released".
Apple admits vulnerability. If you check out the latest Apple Developer Conference, viewable through iTunes, you'll see one of their programming guys admit as much.
At issue is Unix -- at least according to the guys over at Mac Geek Gab -- they say there are so many levels to ask permision at, it's impossible to unknowingly allow a bot/virus onboard.
Yeah, the Apple spokesguy said:
"We'd like to debunk a few myths about the Mac:
*Mac are invincible;
"We know Mac's are not invincible. We know that we are being targeted by hackers, we are very cognitant of that, and that is why we spend a lot of time in our product design, in our product review, in the way we design our user interfaces, and the way we respond to issues when they appear - to be very proactive about that."
*Mac's are sucure becuase of small market share;
"Again we know that the hackers are targeting us, it actually doesn't take a very big bot army for a hacker to make a lot of money. They can make money off a little bot net of 5000 machines or 10,000 machines, and run a dos attack against someone and blackmail them. So what's really happening is the hackers are targeting wherever they find weakness, and it's our job to make sure the Mac is not weak, we actually have a very good track record there and i'll talk a little bit about our strategy and our process for achiving that."
And there's more; "We've always had with Mac OS X a very easy single update process, so as a result our usersactually keep there systems up to date and always have with Mac OS X, and we think always will cause we've made that so simple, we've paid attention to ease of use. So our security are very simple: number 1 good security starts with design, it's not something you slap on. Number 2 good security is easy to use, security that's not easy to use doesn't get used. Number 3 good security continues to improve."
"Finally we're very proactive about making sure that issues don't become problems, jumping on theoretical exploits as they become publicized. Making sure we do timely updates, we don't wait for the next month to roll around, we do updates on an as needed basis. I know there's some controversy in IT shops 'woultn't it be easier if we could have our security scheduled on a monthly basis or something like that' we actually think it's better to get those security updates out as soon as we can get them out and not wait for the next month to roll around. We work very closely with security communities, so that includes people like CERT or FIRST, the free BSD security team for the OS, we work with the department of homeland security. Security involves a lot of communication with these groups, and again we're very proactive, we have a whole process for doing that. We've done 44 in the last 5 years, for those of you that are keeping count. This is an ongoing process that I think we've actually gotten pretty good at. And finally continuing to innovate in areas that will stop these issues before they become a problem, or provide features like file vault that allow people to keep their data secure."
If one compares the number of exploits found in OS X vs. Windows, Windows comes out very favorably. Microsoft currently leads the industry when it comes to in house security training and security response. Apple, however, likes to pretend there is nothing wrong, which is what sparked the month of apple exploits (a sort of wake up call, if you will). I think Bill is asking for trouble daring people to find exploits in windows (though it could be an incredibly clever ploy to get the exploits shaken out while there are still relatively few vista boxes to exploit), but he is right about the Apple exploits.
Why aren't more Macs compromised if the platform is less secure? Simple economics. Modern exploits aren't malicious worms anymore. They are targeted malware designed to make money (and often patch the exploit they used so others can't). If you can choose between 95% of the computer market or < 5% (and sorry folks, Apple is STILL less than 5%) you go after the larger pot of gold, even if the 5% represent the proverbial low hanging fruit (you can also assume that a large majority of that 95% isn't great about keeping patched).
Or, just look at the numbers in the link below:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/hacking/2006-08-02-black-hat_x.htm
And for further nay-sayers about windows security (though not related to apple)
http://blogs.technet.com/security/archive/2006/10/19/windows-vs-linux-workstation-comparison-q3-2006.aspx
So in short, for all of the asshats here who have no idea what they are talking about before they start typing (i.e. all of the Mac users who think MS security is in the same state of disarray as it was in 2002), why don't you try and educate yourselves first.
I think Bill Gates is right about this. Here is an interesting blogpost about the Mac Ads.
http://blah.winsmarts.com/2007-2-Hi,_I'm_a_PC,_and_you're_just_a_liar.aspx
Specifically about security, scroll down to 3 links where the blogger busts myths about Mac OS security.
FP, Microsoft created an environment that made hacking easier. For instance, the design of macros for Office and ActiveX were neon invitations to creating malicious code. (I've been in this business for a long time, and I remember reading technical articles when these products were released that said, in essence, "Holy crap, watch out for the trouble these suckers will cause!"
Yes, it's up to the users to be careful, but if you design a system that makes it easy for a normal user to unknowingly infect their computer, then that's the designer's fault, not the user.
3 pages. We're doing good aren't we? :P
Start calling 911... I smell flamethrowers firing up :P
Anyway, wouldn't that comment kinda.. you know... encourage people to find all the possible holes in Windows security? Just to make the richest man in the world eat his own words :$ Go hackers, good luck MS!
Microsoft suck but Mac suck even more. I remembered the days when there we didn't own a computer. Such wonderful days.
Perhaps if Apple didn't run arrogant ads focusing direct attacks on PC's running Windows we wouldn't see comments like these. I think Apple really shoots itself in the foot with these advertisements. If Apple had any real plans to gain market share and make OS X a more prominent operating system they'd open it up to other hardware manufacturers. (Wasn't Michael Dell quoted as saying he'd be very interested in offering OS X as an option on Dell Computers?) The truth is, although OS X is a good platform, you're locked in to running it on Apple Computers, and compatible hardware.
I'm a former Mac user that switched to PC's. Maybe if Apple opened up OS X to the PC World and wasn't in the business of proprietary hardware/software combo's I'd buy and run OS X on my PC.
Mike, You Lie...
OK maybe you would buy OS X... If it were offered. But that isn't the point - you guys on this board here are NOT the target market for Apple's OS X... as in all you people who say "If Apple were to release X for generic machines then..." Well TBH some of you may switch... Most of you would download the torrent and play with it for a bit... Some might even stick with it - but that won't be added to Mac sales. Even if Dell were to offer it as a BTO option the market would only clock those as PC sales - don't think they are able to split them down further than that at the mo - so it won't help Apple's market share anyway.
So it's a spurious argument at best.
In my opinion, Gates said "security guys" as in there aren't any n00bs good enough to h4x the Mac. I can imagine they [Apple, Microsoft] pay the best computer techs in the world to test their software for any vulnerabilities. Nothing is safe, people are paid to do this kinda crap all the time, lol.
Nice little hissy fit from Ryan here! This mud slinging is par for the course when it comes from Jobs but the moment anything bad is said about Apple and hissy from Ryan.
Let's face face the facts. The two operating systems are different. Windows has users in mass and Apple has fringe users. Both of those situations bring different problems and different mud to sling at one another. No reason for hissy fits here!
Shut Up Mac fanboys! My friend has a Macbook Pro and it was attacked and hacked everyday! His Bootcamp partition running WinXP was infested with exploits, so what Bill said is true!
I'd like to subtly point out you answered your own angry assertations in your own message; did you ever stop to put the pieces together and recognize that your friend's partitioned drive running XP is the part of his hard drive that is infested? This is why I choose to avoid any such partitioning or dual-booting. I would be willing to bet that your friend would not have the viruses and infestations on his windows XP portion of his hard drive if he...hadn't installed windows XP..on his hard drive.
Squirrels, you need to lighten up dude. Haven't you ever heard of irony in humor? You must work for the Boston PD.
is he using drugs?? or he never used windows in his entire life !!!
brendan , is that why known remote exploits present in FreeBSD 6 years ago have just been recently patched in OS X? Of course Apple can roll out updates whenever the want, they don't have to worry about corporate america not wanting to install patches every week or two as they have no install base there, but they are also not all that quick to fix exploits.
Oh, and Squirrel, have you used vista or just repeat everything your turtleneck clad friends sprout on forums? My desktop is 20 months old and runs EVERYTHING in Ultimate turned on without a hitch. I built it for around $1500 so it isn't some ridiculously tricked out system. My tablet also runs it fine, though I don't have aero turned on because the video card is a little on the crap side.
I think the reasonable people here know that each system (Mac and PC) have their faults and strenghts, security and otherwise.
On the security side though, I've never had a month of Windows patches that equalled 180MB, and I HAVE had this with my Mac. I'm glad I didn't buy a Mac for my parents on a slow connection, or they'd STILL be downloading patches...
This could actually be true now.
He did not say the hackers exploit OS X everyday.
He said hackers exploit Mac's everyday.
Since Mac's now run Windows, one of Bill's statements is actually true and accurate.
Easy to see what he's doing. He's edging hackers to try and perform as many exploits as possible so they can identify the flaws and plug them as quick as possible. Crafty Bill, crafty.
Newsflash : Computer software has flaws, some of which can allow malicious people to damage or take control of your system.
It's silly to argue that Macs are inherently secure. It's not silly to posit that they are more secure, by default, than traditional Windows variants (excluding Vista, with which I have no experience yet). Default security policies on Macs are smarter, for the most part, which is a big help. But that's neither here nor there.
Exploiting 3rd party code, on either system, is only a shot against the OS maker if some OS policy allowed such an exploit to be more effective in it's compromise.
Further, the main issue i take with Bill's statement is the following portion : "Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally."
Clearly referring to MOAB here, he's just blowing smoke. The majority of MOAB exploits are denial of service, not security compromises. Look, I'm not downplaying the severity of DOS attacks, or any of these bugs, and I'm glad we're seeing them publicly, but the statement Bill makes is patently false.
Show me a remote root exploit on any system once a day. It's asinine to say and undermines his credibility. He should've just said, "Computer security is a challenge for anyone, as the MOAB project recently showed, and Vista's going to be better than ever." At least that would have been true.
Its like the PC guy in the Mac commercials finally saying "You know what, you're so full of shit!"
Bill is doing what any other man would do.. defending what is his. He is rich but still has an ego. However, that does not justify that he is right. Everyone knows that once you go Mac.. you will never go back!!
Poor(rich)Bill