The organizer of the Pwn2Own hacking contest, Aaron Portnoy, has claimed that the Windows 7 OS is more secure than Apple’s Snow Leopard. Portnoy, who is the lead of the security research team with 3Com TippingPoint, said “Safari will be the first to go. [Safari will] be on Snow Leopard, which isn’t on the same level as Windows 7.”
This deals a blow to all those Mac lovers who claim their systems to be unbreakable. At last year’s contest, a security researcher broke into a Mac via their browser Safari, and it only took five seconds! The year before that, the Macbook Air was broken into in less than two minutes, again via Safari.
There is a debate over which is the more secure OS, with proponents of each vehemently defending their own. Mac users have long claimed that the Mac is more secure than Windows-based systems because of the large number of viruses, Trojans and other malware that can infect Windows PCs. Many Windows users counter that there is more malware aimed at Windows because that’s where the users and the money is. Writing malware for the Mac, they argue, simply isn’t worth the effort because of the Mac’s relatively small market share.
Source: PC World.
