But wasn't that Windows rebuilt from the ground up as Windows NT, which had more advanced security features out of the box than basic Unix/Linux (allow/deny ACLs vs octal permissions, SAM database vs /etc/passwd flatfile, SIDs vs manually assigned/reusable UIDs)?
(And some other cool design features that never got used, like POSIX/OS2 subsystems being on equal footing as the "regular" Windows32 subsystem.)
That was the 1990s. Windows security was transformed in the 2000s and then with Windows 10. I'm not sure it can be said to be more vulnerable than other OSes.
They didn't even have an ASLR implementation for way too long IIRC.
Does macOS have any form of MAC yet, or do they just rely on sandboxing?
Kind of. There is a set of permissions an application can request in order to access protected services and areas of the filesystem, but maybe that's what you meant with sandboxing?
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mchl211c911f/...
That tells us some things about MacOS security, but nothing about Windows.