Comments on: The three-year itch: Why Apple needs to do more to keep older systems secure

By: Derek

Derek — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:39:25 +0000

While I am not a fan of government overreach, this is an issue which has been bothering me for more than a decade. It is time for the electronics industry (not just the computer industry) to be required to provide both hardware and software support for a minimum of 10 years after a product is discontinued. This is similar to the automobile industry which offers a minimum 10 year support life. This will reduce the amount of electronic “trash” generated every year as consumers will be able to keep their systems operational for a longer period of time.

By: Some One

Some One — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:27:58 +0000

Jars and classes can be easily be filtered by the corporate proxy, and you can choose not to tell the proxy location to java webstart on the mac thereby limiting its view to the corporate intranet. In general nobody is using applets in the browser, even diehard java dudes, it is so nineties!

By: Adam Kehler

Adam Kehler — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:37:11 +0000

Good article Dave. Hopefully vulnerabilities such as this and recent trojans such as Flashback will help people get past the myth that their system is 100% secure simply because they are using a Mac. It is only after the user community pressures Apple, that Apple will take these risks seriously and unfortunately in order for the user community to take notice, there are going to have to be some high-publicity malware attacks. Flashback likely will only be the first of these.

As you noted, Microsoft learned these lessons years ago and this was simply in response to the wide-spread perception that Microsoft products are not secure (a well-earned perception at the time, mind you).

Users can no longer rest assured that their systems and information are not at risk simply because they are not using a Microsoft product. This will make standard security practices such as OS patching (when available), software patching, AntiVirus, and safe web browsing habits that much more necessary for MacOS users.