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Given Apple's marketing toward the young and thetrendy, you wouldn't expect the U.S. Army to be much of a customer.Lieutenant Colonel C.J. Wallington is hoping hackers won't expect iteither.
Wallington, a division chief in the Army's office ofenterprise information systems, says the military is quietly working tointegrate Macintosh computers into its systems to make them harder tohack. That's because fewer attacks have been designed to infiltrate Maccomputers, and adding more Macs to the military's computer mix makes ittougher to destabilize a group of military computers with a singleattack, Wallington says.
Forbes.com wrote:
TheArmy's push to use Macs to help protect its computing corps got itsstart in August 2005, when General Steve Boutelle, the Army's chiefinformation officer, gave a speech calling for more diversity in theArmy's computer vendors. He argued the approach would both increasecompetition among military contractors and strengthen its IT defenses.
Military procurement haslong been driven by cost and availability of additional software--twomeasures where Macintosh computers have typically come up short againstWindows-based PCs. Then there have been subtle but important barriers:For instance, Macintosh computers have long been incompatible with asecurity keycard-reading system known as Common Access Cards system, orCAC, which is heavily used by the military.
ThoughApple machines are still pricier than their Windows counterparts, theadded security they offer might be worth the cost, says Wallington. Hepoints out that Apple's X Serve servers, which are gradually becomingmore commonplace in Army data centers, are proving their mettle. "Thoseare some of the most attacked computers there are. But the attacks usedagainst them are designed for Windows-based machines, so they shrugthem off," he says.
Apple, which declined to comment, has longargued its hardware is less hackable than comparable PCs. JonathanBroskey, a former Apple employee who now heads the Army's Appleprogram, argues that the Unix core at the center of the Mac OSoperating system makes it easier to lock down a Mac than a Windowsplatform.
And Apple's smaller market share has long meant thatit didn't attract cybercriminals hoping to wreck the most havocpossible. "If you look at the numbers, you see that malicious softwarefor Macs is very limited," he says. "We used to sell Apples by sayingthey don't get viruses."
Of course, cyberspooks may be honingtheir Mac-attacking skills, too. An end-of-year report by Finnishsoftware security company F-Secure highlights the growing number ofhackers targeting Apple systems with malicious software, some of whichcould allow cybercriminals to steal security passwords. In the past twoyears, until this October, F-Secure found only a small handful ofmalicious programs targeting Macs. In the past two months, the companyhas found more than a hundred specimens of Mac-targeted malicious code.
Charlie Miller, a software researcher with Independent SecurityEvaluators, worries that the Army's diversification plan isn't enoughto thwart the bad guys. He sees a two-platform system as a "weakestlink" scenario, in which a determined cyber-intruder will seek out themore vulnerable of the two targets. "In the story of the three littlepigs, did diversifying their defenses help? Not for the pig in thestraw house," he says.
The marketing pitch that Apples areinherently more secure than PCs is also largely a myth, contendsMiller, who gained notoriety for remotely hacking the iPhonelast August. He points to data gathered by software security firmSecunia, which showed that Apple had to patch nearly five times as manysecurity flaws in its software over the past year as Microsofthad to patch in Windows. Apple's Quicktime player alone, he says, waspatched 34 times. "I love my Macs, but in terms of security, they'rebehind the curve, compared to Windows," Miller warns.
But theArmy's Jonathan Broskey stands by his claims of Apple's security: Hesays the high number of patches to Apple software is a goodsign--evidence of the large community of developers actively working totighten Unix programs and eliminate bugs. Nonetheless, like anyresponsible IT department, he says the Army's Apple program willclosely monitor security updates to Mac-specific programs. "The Army'sno different from any corporation," he says.
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