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Editors Note: This morning I awoke in my well-secured hotel room to find a sticky note on my laptop that said, “The Securosis site is now under my control. Do not attempt to remove me our you will suffer my wrath. Best regards, The Macalope.” ComputerWorld has published an interesting opinion piece from Ira Winkler entitled “Man selling book writes incendiary Mac troll bait”. Oh, wait, that’s not the title! Ha-ha! That would be silly! What with it being so overly frank. No, the title is “It’s time for the FTC to investigate Mac security”. You might be confused about the clumsy phrasing because the FTC, of course, doesn’t investigate computer security, it investigates the veracity of advertising claims. What Winkler believes the FTC should investigate is whether Apple is violating trade laws by claiming in its commercials that Macs are less affected by viruses than Windows. Apple gives people the false impression that they don’t have to worry about security if they use a Mac. Really? The ads don’t say Macs are invulnerable. They say that Macs don’t have the same problem with exploits that Windows has. And it’s been the Macalope’s experience that people get that. The switchers he’s come into contact with seem to know exactly the score: more people use Windows so malicious coders have, to date, almost exclusively targeted Windows. Some people – many of them security professionals like WInkler – find this simple fact unfair. Sadly, life isn’t fair. Well, “sadly” for Windows users. Not so much for Mac users. We’re kind of enjoying it. And perhaps because the company is invested in fostering that impression, Apple is grossly negligent in fixing problems. The proof-of-concept code in this case is proof that Apple has not provided a fix for a vulnerability that was identified six months ago. There is no excuse for that. On this point, the Macalope and Winkler are in agreement. There is no excuse for that. The horny one thinks the company has been too lax on implementing a serious security policy and was one of many Mac bloggers to take the company to task for laughing off shipping infected iPods. He’s hopeful the recent hire of security architect Ivan Krstic signals a new era for the company. But let’s get back to Winkler’s call for an FTC investigation. Because that’s funnier. The current Mac commercials specifically imply that Windows PCs are vulnerable to viruses and Macs are not. Actually, no. What they say is that Windows PCs are plagued by viruses and Macs are not. I can’t disagree that PCs are frequent victims of viruses and other attacks… Ah, so we agree! …but so are Macs. Oops, no we don’t. The Macalope would really love to have seen a citation here because it would have been hilarious. In fact, the first viruses targeted Macs. So “frequent” in terms of the Mac here is more on a geologic time scale. Got it. Apple itself recommended in December 2008 that users buy antivirus software. It quickly recanted that statement, though, presumably for marketing purposes. OK, let’s set the story straight here because Winkler’s version reads like something from alt.microsoft.fanfic.net. The document in question was a minor technical note created in June of 2007 that got updated in December. The company did not “recant” the statement, it pulled the note after it got picked up by the BBC, the Washington Post and CNet as some kind of shocking double-faced technology industry scandal. By the way, did you know that Apple also markets Macs as easier to use, yet continues to sell books on how to use Macs in its stores? It’s true! But if it’s so easy to use, why all the books, Apple? Why? All? The? Books? A ZDNet summary of 2007 vulnerabilities showed that there were five times more vulnerabilities for Mac OS than for all types of Windows PC operating systems. No citation, but the Macalope knows what he’s talking about. He’s talking about this summary by George Ou. George loved to drag these stats out because they always made Apple look worse than Microsoft. But he neglected to mention the many problems with this comparison, most importantly that Secunia, the source of the data, expressly counseled against using it to compare the relative security of the products listed because they’re tracked differently. But buy Winkler’s book! The Macalope’s sure the rigor of the research in them is better than in this piece! How can Apple get away with this blatant disregard for security? How can Computerworld get away with printing unsourced accusations that were debunked a year and a half ago? Its advertising claims seem comparable to an automobile manufacturer implying that its cars are completely safe and its competitors’ cars are death traps, when we all know that all cars are inherently unsafe. That’s a really lousy analogy. But to work with it, it’s not that Apple’s saying its car is safer, it’s saying the roads in Macland are safer. Get out of that heavy city traffic and into the countryside. The mainstream press really doesn’t cover Mac vulnerabilities… The real mainstream press doesn’t cover vulnerabilities for any operating system. It covers attacks (even lame Mac attacks). The technology press, on the other hand, loves to cover Mac vulnerabilities, despite Winkler’s claim to the contrary, even though exploits of those vulnerabilities have never amounted to much. When I made a TV appearance to talk about the Conficker worm, I mentioned that there were five new Mac vulnerabilities announced the day before. Several people e-mailed the station to say that I was lying, since they had never heard of Macs having any problems. (By the way, the technical press isn’t much better in covering Mac vulnerabilities.) So, let’s get this straight. Winkler gets on TV and talks up Mac vulnerabilities in a segment about a Windows attack. But because he got five mean emails, the story we’re supposed to get is about how the coverage is all pro-Apple? Were

This is an off-topic post. It has a bit to do with Compliance, but nothing to do with Security, so read no further if you are offended by such things. I am surprised that we have not been reading more about the off balance sheet ‘assets’ that was brought to light last week. In a nutshell, over $900 billion in ‘assets’, spread across the 19 largest US banks, was not part of the normal 10K/10Q, and the SEC is telling banks they need to be brought back onto the balance sheets. This is an issue is because these ‘assets’ are mostly comprised of real estate and credit card debt owed to the banks. The change could result in about $900 billion in assets being brought onto the balance sheets of the 19 largest U.S. banks, according to federal regulators. The information was provided by Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and 17 other institutions during the government’s recent “stress tests,” which were designed to determine which banks would need more capital if the economy worsened. … In general, companies transfer assets from balance sheets to special purpose entities to insulate themselves from risk or to finance a large project. Given the accelerating rate at which credit card debt is going bad, and the fact that real estate values in states like Arizona have dropped as much as 70% since 2006, it’s likely we are looking at the majority of these ‘assets’ simply vanishing. Across the board, 12% of all homeowners are behind in payments or in foreclosure, and the remaining assets are worth far less than they were originally. It was ironic that I ran across an article about the need to repeal the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 on the very morning I saw this news item. There has been a methodical drumbeat for several years now about the need to repeal SOX, saying it makes it harder to fill out company boards of directors, going so far as to claim the reversal could help stimulate the economy. Of course corporate executives never liked SOX as there were additional costs associated with keeping accurate records, and it’s hard to balance the perception of financial performance with the potential for jail time as a consequence of rule violations. The scandals at Worldcom, Enron, Tyco, and others prompted this regulation to ensure the have accuracy and completeness in financial reporting which might enable us to avoid another similar fiasco. But we find ourselves in the same place we did in 2001, where many companies are in worse financial shape than was readily apparent – many of the same firms requesting more money from the government (taxpayer) to stay afloat. Section 302 was specifically about controls and procedures to ensure that financial statements are accurate, and it looks to me like moving hundreds of billions of dollars in high risk real estate & credit card loans “off balance sheet” would violate the spirit of the act. I would have thought that given the current economic situation, and with the motivating events for Sarbanes-Oxley still in recent memory, there would be greater outcry, but maybe people are just worried about keeping the roofs over their heads. But the call will come for additional regulation and controls over financial systems as more banks fail. Clearly there needs to be refinement and augmentation to the PCAOB guidelines on several accounting practices, but to what degree will not be determined for a long time. Will this mean new business for vendors who collect data and enforce policies in and around SOX? Nope. Instead it will underscore the core value that they cannot provide. Security and Compliance vendors who offer help with SOX policy enforcement cannot analyze a balance sheet. While there were a couple notable examples where internal auditors monitored accounting and database systems to show fraud, this is not a skill you can bottle up for sale. Collection of the raw data and simple policy enforcement can be provided, but there is no way any product vendors could have assisted in detecting the shuffling of balance sheet assets. Still, I bet we will see it in someone’s marketing collateral come RSA 2010! Share: