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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4183405" data-attributes="member: 710">Security is... sketchy. Macs are relatively secure because few attack Macs. There was recently a <a href="http://dvlabs.tippingpoint.com/blog/2008/03/19/cansecwest-pwn-to-own-2008" target="_blank">contest</a> where people had to hack into a Macbook, a vista notebook and a linux (Ubuntu) notebook. (<a href="http://dvlabs.tippingpoint.com/blog/2008/03/28/pwn-to-own-final-day-and-wrap-up" target="_blank">Wrap-up</a>The Macbook Air was hacked first, under to strictest conditions for the contest. The Vista notebook fell in the second phase, where common applications could be used (in this specific case, they used an exploit possible due to Adobe Flash). The Ubuntu notebook remains unhacked. I may be of note that while the prizes for the contest weren't bad (the hacked book plus cash), but on the "exploit market", they would be worth even more. So, as it stands, Macbooks are not more secure by design. They still benefit from the lack of determination for the "serious" hackers. MacBooks are pretty stable, but so where my last 2 Windows PCs and my work notebook. Many instability issues with Windows seem to come from hardware drivers. One of the Macs strength definitely is that they only use a very limited set of hardware. It's a lot easier to create the "perfect" drivers for the Mac ecosystem. This gives you less options on how to equip your Mac, but honestly - who cares? I rarely change my system configuration on my desktop PC, and I'll probably never do it for my Notebook (the notebook I used before I got a MacBook Pro seemed impossible to turn apart to change anything. At least my work notebook has easy access to the RAM. But I don't see me or anyone else upgrading its Harddisk or CPU anytime so)</blockquote>

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