OS X riddled with "ancient" security flaws

Blergh. If you've heard it once you've heard it a thousand times: OS X isn't the impenetrable fortress of computerdom everyone makes it out to be. You really don't have tokeepremindingus. Continually ranting on about this is like fanning the flames of a fire in Hell. It's there. We get it. Move on.

But very few take my words to heart, and thus we have a story by ZDNet Australia claiming that our beloved Mac OS X isn't just vulnerable to future flaws -- but has a whole mess of flaws that should've been eliminated years ago. The article basically quotes one fear-monger, a senior researcher at security firm Suresec, who sadistically claims, "The only thing which has kept Mac OS X relatively safe up until now is the fact that the market share is significantly lower than that of Microsoft Windows.... If this situation was to change, in my opinion, things could be a lot worse on Mac OS X than they currently are on other operating systems, regarding security vulnerabilities."

Of course, his opinion is wrong. Small market share is obviously a contributing factor in OS X's rock-solid security track record, but there are also other components, like the fact that root is disabled by default, anything that makes any global changes to your machine requires a password, etc. Besides, even if the market share thing is monumentally important, it's not like OS X is going to be the most-used platform overnight. So we're still safe (for now).

[via MacObserver]