Applications are your biggest Security Risks
It's your unpatched applications, not your operating system, that probably puts your PC into the most danger.
According to the SANS Institute, a prominent computer security company, it's your applications, not your operating system, that's probably putting you and your PC into the most danger from being attacked.
In its latest report, The Top Cyber Security Risks, based on data from over 9-million systems protected by TippingPoint intrusion prevention system, its your unpatched PC software that's most likely to give your computer a bad case of malware. The biggest targets aren't, as you might think, Web browsers or e-mail clients that work directly with the Internet. No, it's the applications like Adobe Flash and PDF Reader, Apple QuickTime, and Microsoft Office, that your Web browser or e-mail client call on to read or play media from the Web that's currently the real problem.
Here, says SANS writes, is how it works: "Waves of targeted email attacks, often called spear phishing [E-mail messages that look like they're real message from a trusted sender], are exploiting client-side vulnerabilities in commonly used programs. ... This is currently the primary initial infection vector used to compromise computers that have Internet access. Those same client-side vulnerabilities are exploited by attackers when users visit infected Web sites. Because the visitors feel safe downloading documents from the trusted sites, they are easily fooled into opening documents and music and video that exploit client-side vulnerabilities. Some exploits do not even require the user to open documents. Simply accessing an infected website is all that is needed to compromise the client software."
As usual, while the unpatched applications are the immediate problem, this is more of a Windows problem than it is for any other operating system. On Windows, it's simply much easier for an application that's been fed an infected file to spread the malware of the day to the rest of the PC.
That said, if you can stop the bug from hitting in the first place, whether you're running Windows, a Mac or Linux won't matter. The problem, as SANS points out is that even "On average, major organizations take at least twice as long to patch client-side vulnerabilities as they take to patch operating system vulnerabilities. In other words the highest priority risk is getting less attention than the lower priority risk."
In part that's because Microsoft, like everyone else, makes it easier to patch the operating system than the applications. That means that you need to stand up and make sure your applications are patched.
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Same application different OS
So what about vulnerability in Firefox for instance. In most cases the vulnerability is ONLY in the Windows version, not Linux nor Mac version. This is also true for many other apps available for more than one OS.Users and usage is the biggest security risk
Though application vulnerabilities are problematic, the greatest and most likely cause of security issues arise from user behavior and general network use.Software or design vulnerabilities are weaknesses that, when tweaked by user/usage antics, are only one element in the equation. Also considering that there are numerous undocumented flaws in the wild that have NOT been the cause of problems, the conclusion is pretty clear. Applications, flaws and all, all by themselves are harmless. It's when users apply their force and will that brings about all matters of security breaches, compliance problems and productivity issues if not managed proactively.
Have a peachy day.
Source of Pain
The article is talking about two sources of pain.The first one is an injection attack using an overflow that runs machine code disguised as a picture. Those were popular for a while, but are now mostly patched up.
The second, as I have explained to some friends who don't understand computer, is actually the older technique. Visual Basic, ASP and .net all have automatic execution of code as a feature, and this feature is enabled by default in Windows and Office. Office won't run without it. (Sun came under fire a few years ago for doing something in Java that would have opened a similar hole. The Java sandbox was the fix.) So the system is set up for vulnerability by the manufacturer. Microsoft's architecture requires it for the updates to work. They spend a lot on avoiding any link to their name in industry reports on malware.
Most of the Apple viruses I have first hand knowledge of are on machines with MS Office installed. There were a few machines compromised by the code injection technique, but the fix was available within weeks. There are code development tools that look for the conditions that make code injection possible, so the publisher can fix it before it is ever released.