Which is less/more secure, Mac OS 10.4.11 or Mac OS 10.6.8?

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Level 1

15 points

Which is less/more secure, Mac OS 10.4.11 or Mac OS 10.6.8?

I understand that both Mac OS 10.4.11 and Mac OS 10.6.8 have security holes, and that 10.4.11 is no longer supported. If neither 10.4.11 nor 10.6.8 are supported, and if unpatched vulnerabilities in 10.6.8 are worse than those in 10.4.11, then I presume that, because fewer people use 10.4.11, nobody will attack it, whereas many people use 10.6.8 which makes it more attractive to hackers.

Therefore, my question is this: did 10.5.x and/or 10.6.x (and their respective Safari versions) introduce new security vulnerabilities that are not present in 10.4.11, or are all of Snow Leopard's (or Safari 5.1.10's) critical security vulnerabilities inherited from earlier versions such as Tiger?

Mac mini

Posted on Jan 26, 2015 10:07 AM

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Answer 1

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BDAqua

Level 10

239,477 points

Jan 26, 2015 10:56 AM in response to jonathandl92

Most people would likely disagree with me, & although higher versions of OSX got Security fixes, I think older is or can be made more secure.

TenFourFox for PPC & Firefox for Intel is a more advanced Browser than Safari in either version.

I consider Little Snitch essential for security also in 10.4.11 to 10.10.2

There are also some security fixes for 10.4, 10.5, 10.6 that you can apply yourself, here's a link to Bash fixes & maybe ntpd fixes...

For 10.4/10.5 PPC...

http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2014/09/bashing-bash-one-more-time-updated.html

For 10.6...

http://x704.net/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=7156&p=89620&hilit=bash#p89620

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Answer 2

rccharles

Level 6

12,957 points

Jan 26, 2015 11:58 AM in response to jonathandl92

I wouldn't sweat it.

-- congratulate yourself. You are not running Windows. Most attacks are against windows.

-- Phishing attacks are popular these days. Don't follow links from emails. Type in the address.

-- don't do banking on your computer. Talk with bank to limit yourself to read only.

-- don't store credit card numbers nor passwords on your computer.

How much you follow this advise depends on what you do with your computer and how concerned you are.

Robert

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