Apple Invites Kaspersky Lab to Consult on OS X Security Issues
Computing.co.uk reports on comments from the Chief Technology Officer of Russian security firm Kaspersky Lab, who claims that his firm has been invited by Apple to probe security issues on OS X and to assess the platform's vulnerabilities.Speaking exclusively to Computing, Kaspersky CTO Nikolai Grebennikov said his firm had recently begun the process of analysing the Mac OS platform at Apple's request.
"Mac OS is really vulnerable," he claimed, "and Apple recently invited us to improve its security. We've begun an analysis of its vulnerabilities, and the malware targeting it," said Grebennikov.Grebennikov believes that Apple "doesn't pay enough attention to security", citing the Java vulnerability that led to hundreds of thousands of Flashback malware infections. That vulnerability was patched by Oracle before the outbreak, but Apple did not issue its own update to close the hole in time.
Grebennikov also notes that it is only a matter of time before malware begins showing up on iOS devices, believing that such threats will appear within the next year or so. Apple's "walled garden" approach of restricting application installation to software available through the App Store has allowed the company to minimize such threats for the time being, but Grebennikov argues that malware creators will find their way in and that Apple needs outside security expertise to help manage those threats due to its relative inexperience in the field.
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http://www.macrumors.com/2012/05/14/apple-invites-kaspersky-lab-to-consult-on-os-x-security-issues/