Friday, December 21st 2007
U.S. Army Buys Macs to Curb Hacker Attacks
The United States Army is quietly integrating Macintosh computers into its systems to make them harder to attack. In an interview with Forbes Magazine, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel C.J. Wallington explains that fewer hack attacks have been designed to infiltrate Macs and adding more Macs to the mix makes it harder to destabilize their system. Jonathan Broskey, who once worked for Apple, argues that the Unix core at the center of Mac operating system makes it easier to lockdown. While the number of malicious software programs targeting Macs has been small in the past, it is beginning to grow. Charlie Miller, a software researcher with Security Evaluators, worries that the Army's diversification plan will not stop a determined intruder. He also explains that Apple's security is a myth and has been proven more vulnerable than Windows.
Source:
Forbes
21 Comments on U.S. Army Buys Macs to Curb Hacker Attacks
And weren't Macs Just shown to Have more vulnerabilities to begin with? Remembering the news a couple days ago posted here.
relying on others is bound to introduce security issues
Tho I don't remember Apple having a business support... maybe because I never heard of a company using Macs in more than a few labs.
And just the other day we got news of security vulnerabilities for Mac OS X going up this year exponentially.:rolleyes:
As long as they're not taking iPod to their departments, my guess would be a stable custom built Linux would serve the purpose of data-safekeeping.
Anyway ...
It does not matter what the US military uses as whatever they do will be leaked to the press and everyone will know anyway at some point, just like any other government that isn't under totalitarian rule.
If the mil tried to write their own OS, they would have to start from scratch and would encounter the same security pitfalls that all the major OS makers have been fighting for years. Why re-invent the wheel?
Macs? Windows? Unix? It really doesn''t matter as the people who are determined to hack into the military networks will find a way. It's just a matter of time.
They are better off spending their money on ways of making communications secure and intrusion almost impossible with an existing OS, than writing a new one.
Just my thoughts.
Amazon wont even tell you what they base their server OS on until you sign an NDA.
It's pretty sad that the US spends more than half its budget on the military, but the morons can't get up a competent, secure computer network.
532.8 billion $USD this year alone.
Correct me if I'm wrong, isn't it way easier to hack a mac than a Wintel running a decent software firewall (ZA, Sygate..)?