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by SaltySolomon
3106 days ago
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OS X has a much smaller installerbase, and even they manage to screw it up. Chrome is a piece of software that is much less complex and has a much shorter cycle time than a PC. So you are pretty much comparing apples to oranges. |
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An OS connected to the Internet is secure given a good firewall that blocks all incoming traffic. Firewalls are a solved problem and ship with every mainstream desktop OS.
Browsers on the other hand are directly exposing the user to the web, being the primary attack vector for mallware and viruses. This issue is made much worse given that browsers download and execute JavaScript code locally, the potential for remote exploits being enormous. And historically speaking their attack surface has been much greater due to the proliferation of plugins, like Flash, Java or Adobe Acrobat, which have been exploited again and again — thankfully we've gotten rid of them.
The OS can help somewhat in securing the browser or any process of course, but it's never foolproof on mobile devices, as can be seen by the dozens of iOS exploits used to jailbreak it and it's a pretty weak protection for the desktop — a compromised browser on the desktop means you're pretty much screwed.
This is why the browser has to be the ultimate sandbox. Because it's directly exposed, because it executes code loaded from random locations on the web and because it's been abused by plugin makers, as everybody wants a piece of it.