{"id":3153,"date":"2011-07-21T09:23:02","date_gmt":"2011-07-21T08:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/?p=3153"},"modified":"2015-09-09T19:37:10","modified_gmt":"2015-09-09T11:37:10","slug":"os-x-lion-brings-major-security-overhaul-to-apple-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/2011\/07\/os-x-lion-brings-major-security-overhaul-to-apple-users\/","title":{"rendered":"OS X Lion Brings Major Security Overhaul To Apple Users"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a long time coming but with the latest release of Max OS X Lion – Apple<\/a> has really stepped it up in terms of security and pro-active protection.<\/p>\n

Just a few months back in May we reported that – Mac Malware is Becoming a Serious Threat<\/a> and back in march Day One At Pwn2Own Takes Out Microsoft Internet Explorer and Apple Safari<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With this latest update they have really integrated some very modern security techniques with many claiming this puts them ahead of Windows 7<\/a> and Ubuntu in terms of security.<\/p>\n

With Wednesday’s release of Mac OS X Lion, Apple has definitively leapfrogged its rivals by offering an operating system with state-of-the-art security protections that make it more resistant to malware exploits and other hack attacks, two researchers say.<\/p>\n

Unlike the introduction of Snow Leopard in 2009, which offered mostly incremental security enhancements, OS X 10.7 represents a major overhaul, said the researchers, who spent the past few months analyzing the OS.<\/p>\n

The most important addition is full ASLR. Short for address space layout randomization, the protection makes it much harder for attackers to exploit bugs by regularly changing the memory location where shell code and other system components are loaded. Other improvements include security sandboxes that tightly restrict the way applications can interact with other parts of the operating system and full disk encryption that doesn’t interfere with other OS features.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s a significant improvement, and the best way that I’ve described the level of security in Lion is that it’s Windows 7, plus, plus,\u201d said Dino Dai Zovi, principal of security consultancy Trail of Bits and the coauthor of The Mac Hacker’s Handbook. \u201cI generally tell Mac users that if they care about security, they should upgrade to Lion sooner rather than later, and the same goes for Windows users, too.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There were a couple of blunders back in 2009 when Snow Leopard (commonly known as SL) was released, and of course – Mac OS X Snow Leopard Bundled With Malware Detector<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Back then the security tech bundled with Snow Leopard was incremental at best, there was nothing really new or anything that inspired confidence in us security chaps.<\/p>\n

With the latest version of Lion however Apple has put in some really good stuff like full address space layout randomization (ASLR) and even more sandboxing (always a good idea to trap malware<\/a> in userspace).<\/p>\n