With OSX and Linux making large gains in the OS market people are asking the same question they’ve asked millions of times before. Would these OS’s be safer than Windows if they ever became mainstream?

Well let’s assume just for the purpose of this article that OSX, Linux and Windows suddenly all get a 33.3% market share over night. Which would be the most secure, both in the short term and the long term. Well in the short term I think OSX would the the one that’s most secure. After all it currently has no viruses and it has a very good security system requiring you to enter in your admin password to do anything that could affect the system. It also has another advantage in it’s file permissions, which are also used in Linux. These mean that it is almost impossible to wipe an entire disk clean.

And this is where OSX wins over Linux in the short term. The only thing that has the power to wipe an entire disk clean with ignoring permissions is the all mighty root (hail to root). Root has the power to create but also the power to destroy. Root can do anything. Luckily, it can also be disabled, which is where OSX has the advantage. By default, OSX ships with root disabled, meaning an instant increase in security due to the fact that it is a hell of a lot harder to wipe an entire HD. Granted, it’s still easy to wipe your Home folder.

So why does Windows lose so badly in the short term? Well… it’s current security model just sucks in comparison to OSX and Linux. Admin accounts in Windows are the equivalent to root on a *nix system. That sounds OK, cause it means that all OS’s have them, but where as OSX disables this huge power, Windows decides to give it to everyone, and so makes the default account on all new Windows systems an admin account. Oh dear...

So basically OSX is covering up the target with a cross, Linux is trying to hide it behind a small wall and Windows is putting it on display with big arrows pointing towards it saying “Come on, hit me!”

But what about the long term? Well, this is where things get interesting. In the long term there is no clear leader. Linux is always the fastest OS to get important security updates, because it’s open source, so anyone can fix it. OSX partly benefits from this, as Darwin is open source, but many other areas of OSX that are potential security threats aren’t. And Windows just gets a lot of money thrown at it, hoping that it will plug the holes. So over the course of time Linux isn’t going to be as badly hit, because as soon as a flaw is found it will have been fixed.

Windows security rests it’s fate on Longhorn. Longhorn will bring in a security system a lot like that of OSX, where you need to enter passwords to “bless” applications so they can perform admin functions. It will also have much more secure versions of applications such as Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. Basically Microsoft is realising that they have been going wrong all these years and instead of letting anyone do anything to your computer, they need to limit what people can do on it, unless you give them permission.

So, what about OSX in this future of equal market share? Well it stands there, still strong, but not invincible. It has spyware and trojans and adware. But these are much harder to get onto your system. It will still be one of the most secure OS’s you can buy but it won’t be as secure as we like to see it now. Though until then, let’s be glad that nobody cares enough about OSX to attack it.