SNOW LEOPARD EATS YOUR DATA - APPLE OS 10.6 HAS SECURITY ISSUES

Snow Leopard is dangerous as it bites new errors that can hurt users of Apple computers.

Several Mac Users all over the world have experiences the largest fear lately. They have lost their personal documents. Their home files have been over written by an empty folder. This is the folder where the users store their documents, downloads, music, photos and so on.

If this was not all, they have gotten several settings defaulted to original factory settings, both on the system and on software installed on their computers.

The outcry has been large and users cry NOOOOOO! this should not happen to me - not on a Mac with the claimed safest operating system available on personal computers these days. According to Mac users that have experienced this nightmare the error comes when you log on as a guest and then afterwards log on as the administrator on the computer, the files are gone and only empty folders are left. The error is reported on those who have upgraded to Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6). Most of them have upgraded from Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5). On Mac forums all over the users are complaining that their files are gone, just like that. Apple has not been really communicative with the press around error messages around their operating system and just locks the jornalists out and normally do not comment any roumors about existing errors. International press services have not succeeded getting a message on this from Apple yet. However, they admitted to Cnet that Apple has a problem and told they are aware of the problems. They tell that these errors only occur in extremely rare cases and they work with a fix for this. However, this is an anonymous source from Apple, as it usually is the case when comments are given to the world outside Apple. If you have a Time Machine or other backup media running on your Apple computer, there is hope. For those without any backup or only have partial backups, they have a problem. Whatever the cause and how fast Apple can fix this problem with their newest prestige project OS X 10.6 or Snow Leopard, they have a reputation to defend, and they have got scratches in their paintwork with his case. Apple has published a massive upgrade package for their operating systems and software packages. All in all 58 weaknesses are to be patched up, and not since May 2009 has Apple given out so many upgrades and patches in one go. This is the sixth upgrade this year and has stopped support to Mac OS X 10.4 also known as Tiger. None of the upgrades this time were given to this version.

32 of the 58 vulnerabilities are indicated to be dangerous or critical by Apple. This means that these security holes could be used to run malicious codes to the operating system. 37 of the vulnerabilities was targeted directly to the operating system itself. Amongst the errors fixed were security holes in the AFP client, Apache Web server, Spotlight and Help Viewer. Other security holes were in software like Quicktime.
Several of the holes is related to components that are available in open source code. Apple has gotten critisism before to be to arrogant when it comes to patching of these codes. Andrew Storms in Ncircle Network Security says that Apple also this time is slow to react. He has looked at when the upgrades for these components came and when Apple put them out to users in their upgrade system and it shows a large delay from Apple's side. According to his discveries Apache was patched in June this year, Fetchmail, LibXML and Subversion was patched in august and PHP and RADIUS in September. First now, in November did Apple release their update to their users. If Apple distributes elements in open source code, they have to do better than this as some of these elements are very important to upgrade and patch up.
It remains to see how Apple will handle issues like this in the future, if they are to be seen as an Operating System of the Future, or just fall in the fold of Microsoft Windows where it just gets more and more critisism for their lack of upgrades/patches to secure their systems. Apple has a reputation to take care of, a reputation they can not afford to loose, as they are not the market leader in operating systems, and need to compete on security and stabliity. Both the errors deleting files for users, and the patch frequency and speed questions these elements just now. It remains to see how hurt Apple will be from these news surfacing now - and it remains to see if the Snow Leopard of Apple can bite back and fend of its attackers.