What do you mean, you haven't figured out what you've going to be for Halloween yet? It's two days away, people! Everyone knows that you need at least six months to assemble a decent costume-- one that'll get Old Lady Devers to slip you one of those full-size Snickers bars she keeps for the really scary kids instead of the Necco Wafers she doles out to the uninspired masses. Now you're going to wind up wearing a sheet with a bunch of holes cut in it and saying "I got a rock" every time you look in your loot sack.

And don't think for a second that using any of those Forbes Billionaire Masks as noted by MacMinute will get you out of this bind. Sure, Steve Jobs as a pirate is cute and all, but it's not going to cut it if you want to run with the big boys. (If they had done a Ballmer mask, then maybe-- although we can certainly understand the position of Forbes's lawyers when they insisted on not allowing any masks capable of actually frightening small children into a coma.)

Okay, okay, don't panic-- we've got just the costume idea for you. You want a costume that'll strike terror into the hearts of all who behold you? One that'll send even the bravest of souls screaming into the night? One so scary that you could clean up (figuratively speaking) by purchasing stock in the major underwear companies prior to unleashing your vision of ultimate horror upon the world? Then your path is clear, Grasshopper: you need to go as a Mac OS X security advisory. AAIIIEIEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

Seriously, what could be scarier than Mac OS X leaking like a sieve-- or worse, like Windows? CNET reports that security firm @stake just issued three advisories describing flaws affecting Mac OS X-- flaws involving access to core files, buffer overflows, and the mishandling of file system permissions. Run! Run for your lives!

Okay, okay-- so the situation's really not all that scary after all. The core file advisory doesn't even apply to default Mac OS X installations, and the firm doesn't really know if the buffer overflow exploit is really as big a problem as it implies ("@stake has not fully investigated the extent that this attack can be exploited, but since it appears to be an overflow in the kernel the severity of 'possibly execute commands as root' is warranted"). The file permissions problem is the only one we consider to be a biggie, since it potentially allows attackers using a shared Mac to do things with more access than they've officially been granted-- but again, this is all a far cry from the weekly Windows flaws that "could allow hackers to seize control of a victim's Windows computer over the Internet, stealing data, deleting files or eavesdropping on emails." And yet CNET and other news sources pounced on these relatively innocuous Mac OS X flaws like hyperactive spaniels on a pile of Snausages.

Of course, we can't be blamed for being just the teensiest bit suspicious of @stake's motives for releasing these advisories in the first place. You might recall that @stake is the security firm that fired its Chief Technical Officer for contributing to a report stating that Microsoft's "near ubiquity in personal computing" (and its apparent inability to secure its products) has made most computer networks, including that of the U.S. government, vulnerable to "massive, cascading failures." See, @stake does a lot of business with Redmond-- such as, say, publishing a security analysis commissioned by Microsoft which just happens to conclude that Microsoft's .NET framework is-- astoundingly enough-- more secure than IBM's WebSphere! Now, granted, we know absolutely zero about WebSphere, but you have to admit that when a security firm takes money from Microsoft and subsequently proclaims any Microsoft product to be more secure than, well, anything else at all, there's a certain "hmmmmmmm" aspect to the whole situation.

Then again, since the Mac OS X vulnerabilities only affect "10.2.8 and below" and @stake's official recommendation is that people "Upgrade to Panther (Mac OS X 10.3)" (not exactly a bad thing for Apple), maybe it's all just a crazy coincidence. But with Microsoft itself having promoted Panther on its web site just days ago, this could still all be part of some grand nefarious plot by Redmond to subjugate the entire human race and sell it as cattle to the flesh-eating giant arthropods of the Crab Nebula-- a plot that somehow all begins with Mac users upgrading to Panther.

Say! Have you considered going as a flesh-eating giant arthropod? That's always good for a laugh...