Open Letter to a Digital World

jg21 writes "Exasperated after spending 5 hours removing spyware and trojans from his wife's Windows PC, sysadmin Chris Spencer has written an impassioned Open Letter to a Digital World. In the letter he reviews the 'elephants in the closet' - i.e. unfixed bugs and glaring security vulnerabilities - that Microsoft in his view hopes ordinary users will ignore, including some discussed in previous Slashdot stories."

I don't get it.

He has a CS degree, runs Linux himself and still let his wife surfing the web with IE? What went wrong? We all now that alternatives exist.

Re:I don't get it.

Not only that, I bet his wife belongs to the administrator group aswell. There are far too many people who have the wrong user rights.

Re:I don't get it.

I regret I don't have moderator points for parent.

He claims to be a "system administrator and have a degree in computer science", and he lets his wife run as admin.

More than that, with all that experience he is naive enough to believe that he can clean machine using the very same machine - have he ever heard of rootkits and stealth program? Maybe he is just an idiot?

Yeah, train your woman well.

It will take a distro out of the basket or it will get the hose again....

Re:I don't get it.

More than that, with all that experience he is naive enough to believe that he can clean machine using the very same machine - have he ever heard of rootkits and stealth program? Maybe he is just an idiot?

Doesn't that kind of prove his point? Joe Public wants to use the computer. The computer won't let him. Just run it as admin! That's the default, so it must be OK, right?

Now he's infested with spyware, trojans, viruses and the like. So, he installs SpyBot, AVG, ZoneAlarm, whatever. Nobody told him that wouldn't work because the processes are on the same box. Of course he has to go out and buy another machine for the sole purpose of disinfecting the first! (OK, he doesn't, but Joe Public won't understand the difference between 'installed on another hard drive' and 'another computer')

It just goes further to prove that to clean your PC of all these attacks the first thing to do is remove Windows and all its failings. Or buy a Mac.

Re:I don't get it.

It's one thing to have experience in secure computing; it's quite another to share that with someone else.

After securing my brother-in-law's household by setting up a specific administrator account for software installs, removing IE links where-ever I could find them and replacing them with Firefox, installing SP2, installing AdAware, installing a decent firewall and several other things, they are now constantly calling because such and such doesn't work properly.

The call is usually one of the following:
1) Such and such program that worked before you did the SP2 upgrade doesn't work anymore. Could you come over and figure out a way to fix it? I need to run it.
2) I can't use such and such website because it needs IE. (And no, the UserAgentSwitcher extension isn't working in this case). Please give me access to IE so I can circumvent all the security you've installed.
3) I really want to install known spyware/adware containing program, but I can't unless I get into the administrative account.
4) Why can't I just run as administrator? Aren't you a bit paranoid for putting all this security on our computer? Now I have to actually switch users in order to install stuff and the extra two or three clicks is really annoying.

Just for fun, I've given them an extra computer running KDE 3.3.0 on top of Linux with all the latest scanning, printing, image processing, instant messenging, browsing, cd-burning, dvd-watching software...but they won't use it because:
1) It looks different. They're deeply uncomfortable with that fact.
2) They try to download and install Windows programs, and of course, it doesn't work. This despite being given a compatibility list and where to get compiled binaries. (and an invitation for me to install things if they're really uncomfortable with nice GUI installer)
3) They want to buy software at Best Buy and install it on the computer and it won't run. Again, they tend to ignore the compatibility list.
4) Did I mention that it looks different than Windows?

The point is that you can educate users, but most simply don't want to be educated. They have gotten comfortable in their current paradigm (usually some mixture of the "freedom" of Windows 95/98 with the performance and "security" of windows XP) and don't want to change/learn anything different. Not only that, but remember that when it comes to family and friends, you can't set a policy like you can in a company. Telling the wife - NO - you cannot run that program that you love and have been using for ages because it is insecure is, in general a bad move.

In short, I've been where this guy has, and I'm totally sympathetic. Let's not take cheap shots and call the guy an idiot because he didn't go the next step and use a root kit.

Re:I don't get it.

(Big post to prove my point)

While I understand your recommendation of Dell, there are cheaper companies out there. There are also cheaper solutions.

As a for instance - a VERY simple TCO study without the algorithms involved:

Dell Computer = $1,002 (no monitor, windows installed)
Dell Monitor = 17 inch LCD bottom of the line $299
Initial Cost: $52,040 (40 computers)

HP/Compaq = $1,007 (w/ 19 inch LCD w/ Linux installed)
Initial Cost $40,280 (40 computers)

Sun Ray Thin client = $359 + server costs
Dell Monitor = 17 inch LCD bottom of the line $299
Initial Cost: $26,320 + server ($29,490) + seat licenses $3,960 (40 clients) = $59,770

Sounds simple based on initial price, right? Nope...

The dell's and compaq's use more power and put out more heat and are louder, so you have to account for that (power consumption, both normal consumption and "how big of a generator do we need to run X workstations in an emergency" and how badly it fights air conditioning as well as the general noise level in a call center).

You also have to account for extra staff to handle each computer related problem for the Dell/Compaq solution (2-3 people) vs 1 admin to handle the server and the thin clients (in their case, if its broke, you literally walk out to it, swap it out with a new one and you're done) for approx 1 large call center. Also, in a call center environment, hot desking (ability to switch desks at any time without losing any work) is something that is very important. You'd need more hardware (and licenses) to be able to do this on windows...

Reliability: Windows vs Linux = no brainer

Security: Windows vs Linux = again, no brainer

Support: Who answers fastest and who outsources. Yep, this means calling and waiting on hold. I'll save you the pain: Sun won with 2 mins of hold time before the rep answered (Dell, Compaq, etc = 17mins +)

Now granted, this is a very simplistic lesson without all the extra numbers to run, but its something for you to think over before assuming that one option is just magically better than another. Just the ability for 1 IT person doubling as an admin for the Thin Clients makes up for the difference in price. Add in the extras and its pretty clear which is the winner.

The same thing can be said for monitors, which you've assumed correctly. CRT's are initially cheaper, but in the long run LCD's are cheaper due to their footprint, heat output and power savings.

On a side note to be fair, we're considering both the Thin Clients for Customer Service and Technical Support staff and Dells/Compaq's that have Linux or FreeBSD for Managers, programmers, etc...

Feel free to argue, but until you've looked at the options and actually studied the effects of your decision, you won't know whats really going on. With my research, it looks like you'd be paying upwards of $60k more than me a year (and thats on your BEST year)... Yes, I know you're thinking "how on earth did you figure that out!" Do the research yourself... Now, the funny part is, I've figured most of this out in about 2 days worth of hard core research. 2 days worth of work to save $60k and up sounds worth "some stupid TCO study" to me...

Re:I don't get it.

Hear hear! I've had similar experiences with friends and family in the past. During the .com days I got calls all the time "can you come undo the stupid shit I did to my computer?" One of the biggest selling points of linux, to me, is that for four years I've not had to fix a single computer for software related issues. None of my computers has had any problems I didn't create myself (like accidentally deleting the home tree). The calls started tapering off real fast when I started saying "I don't use Windows, so I'm not up to date on what to do to fix it."

The sad part was realizing how many people were friends solely because I could fix their computers. Once I stopped being their free 24/7 tech support line they disappeared.

Re:I don't get it.

A good rootkit will only let you see what the rootkit wants you to see

That is why you use a Linux boot disk like Knoppix [knoppix.org] or even a Windows boot disk like Bart's Preinstalled Environment [nu2.nu].

'Let' his wife...???

Don't know how things work in your home but in my home, I have a computer (Mandrake) and my wife has a computer (XP home). I don't 'let' her do anything with her pc, she does what she damn well wants thank you very much and god help me if I start screwing with her setup and make something burp... and yes, I do have to clean up the mess when things go bad.

the good news is that her system is well patched, runs zone alarm, avg, mozilla, and I just switched her from aim to gaim. Step by step the migration to FLOSS goes forward.

Keep in mind that 'her' computer is for more than home and has to work at her place of employ (Windows and apple shop) so some of the 'hands off' has to do with not screwing up use of the system at work.

Anyway - bottom line, at home you are NOT a sys admin, you're a spouse with special skills.

dogu

Straw Man + Ad Hominem = +3 Insightful!

How do people get +3 Insightful for completely missing the point?

First, I don't know about anyone else, but it is an incredible pain trying to run Windows (2000, at least, in my experience) as anything but Administrator.

Second: what is this "Maybe he is just an idiot" crap? He could easily have a wife who, like anybody else, would prefer to have their computer how they want it and for others to leave it alone. I know plenty of people who get irritated if anyone changes things on their personal computers--much less use them. As for rootkits, etc., are 80% of Windows users (the people who have this problem) really going to have access to those things, the skills to use them, or even the dimmest knowledge of their existence? Of course not.

Jumping down this guy's throat over the state of his wife's computer is completely missing the point. His point is that there are millions of people just like her, and his weighing of the pros and cons makes Windows an absurd choice for a desktop OS. Address that. Stop grasping for ways to tear him down instead of his argument.

Re:I don't get it.

He has a CS degree, runs Linux himself and still let his wife surfing the web with IE?

Yeah, it's almost as if she has a mind of her own.

Re:I don't get it.

Yeah, it's almost as if she has a mind of her own.

Not only a foreign concept for many Slahsdotters when it comes to women apparently :) but also increasingly when it comes to posting/modding.

I've been lurking here a long time, and still wonder when exactly this fundamentalist turn happened. Suddenly everything is either black or white. Only One Way. And bias and fud (the thing we used to be against) is more important than facts. Bullshit (and I don't mean opinions but facts) are rated +5 informative just because it is pro-Linux and/or anti-MS, while facts correcting this are modded down.

I've been using both Linux and Windows for a long time, and both have strength and weaknesses. I can see a lot of reasons for choosing one or the other, that varies with situation, needs and what people want (yes, they can prioritize different than You without making them Wrong, or Joe Schmoes or whatever the popular derogative is for people daring to think and choose different than You...)

Sometimes I wonder if that sig someone had (no, not me :) saying "I see more xp ignorance in here than Linux ignorance in an AOL room" really is true, or if we just let it appear that way - so that facts don't mess up our world view, or something.

I guess for the young and righteous, this sounds like old people yapping about "the youth today" or "everything was better before". But I miss when it really was more News for nerds, and less religion for nerds.

Re:I don't get it.

I think it happened as more of us moved to linux and realised that EVERYWHERE on the web, it is completely against linux users. So we withdrew into our own fundamentalist community, shunning the outside, like those guys who recently emerged from the jungle and discovered the Korean war was over.

Re:I don't get it.

He has a CS degree, runs Linux himself and still let(sic) his wife surfing the web with IE? What went wrong? We all now that alternatives exist.

Let his wife? Let?!?!?! You sir, are obviously not married.

Besides, we still have to deal with IE only websites, which perhaps his wife has to use in her career? You've made a faulty assumption, friend.

The only fault I can find with the author is that he didn't realise what his wife was dealing with in the first place. She should be using Firefox for browsing, unless she needs an ActiveX control for a particular site for some reason.

We know Windows has these problems, so we should take whatever steps we can to mitigate the risks when we need to use that OS.

Soko

Re:I don't get it.

"You sir, are obviously not married."

Not married?

This is /. - he can't even get a date!

Date? He hasn't even been apprised of the fact that there are two sexes!

Oh, wait, yes he has - vi and emacs...

Re:I don't get it.

My wife has a mind of her own.

As does mine, thankfully.

Let me tell you this: if she runs IE, it's not my fault. It's her computer. If I don't realize what she's doing, it's my fault for not invading her privacy and that's where that ends.

Hunh? I discuss these things with my bride. Such a trivial thing should not ba a matter of privacy. My wife knows why Firefox is a better browser, why I removed WebShots and why the computer is mostly booted into Linux. She realises I'm the sysadmin, an expert in my field, and is willing to trust my judgement, seeing as we're married and all.

I respectfully submit that if you can't relate such a simple thing to your life partner, there's something of a communications issue there.

Thank $DEITY I have no such problems.

Soko

Re:I don't get it.

I agree with the parent poster.

My wife Was using Win98 and IE6.1 SP whatever up until six months ago. Her IE installation got so corrupted with spyware that it wouldn't even launch, so I installed Firefox and Thunderbird with my favorite extensions (AdBlock, TTLO, User Agent Switcher, etc.) and it took her all of 3 days to fall in love with it.

I then picked up a cut-price generic Athlon box, that was some 12 times as fast as her old machine at Fry's for about $200.00, installed Fedora Core 2 on it and gave it to her. To make her feel like she had a safety belt, I also got her "Linux for Non-Geeks" which she has barely opened. Her first question when the box booted up after the install was "where's Firefox?"

She now snipes at Windows almost as much as the most zealous penguinista at your local Junior High. She will occasionally run into content on the 'net that won't load, but when she asks me about it, it's usually something designed to exploit Windows' poor security model (like ActiveX controls and browser hijacks).

She's happy with her newer, faster machine and is learning to love the penguin, but I would NEVER have done it if she wasn't: 1) willing to learn, and 2) pre-conditioned by a few months' favorable experience with Firefox and Thunderbird.

Re:Chris is wrong.

Quoth the poster:

Grandma will still get emails like "Funnyshit.rpm" and the browser will ask if you want to install "super-search.xpi." These apps will hide themselves anywhere they can, just like they do in windows.

... which will be limited to Grandma's $HOME ... not a hard thing to search and clean.

You seem not to understand the difference in security models between *n?x and Windows applications, and the security implications of Microsoft's obsession with backward compatibility. Over the years lazy coders in Windows development shops have built up such a bank of apps that REQUIRE Admin privileges that Grandma must run as Administrator, or at least be a member of the Admin group, to do what she wants to do.

*n?x apps, OTOH, are designed to function properly under the "least privilege" model. They do not require Admin privileges because they will only store stuff in the use's $HOME and they don't require privileged access to the hardware. They don't require direct access to the kernel. In short, they are "secure by design." The few apps that DO require such access have their permissions set so that normal users can't run them.

I'd be tickled to death if OS X would topple Windows, but don't hold you breath. The price point just isn't right since one company controls both the hardware and the software. Additionally, I doubt that Apple has the marketing clout that IBM and Novell have in the corporate market. The home market is peanuts compared to the Enterprise, just ask Microsoft, they've been trying to get into the data center for YEARS.

preaching to the choir

Well, this is a nice letter and all, but I have a feeling the only people with the patience to read through the whole thing are already convinced of its content...

Oh, hey, Wow!

All this time, with all the antitrust lawsuits, and it turns out all Microsoft needed was a stern talking to. Man, wish I could think outside the box like that...

Re:Dear Sir,

Dear Mac user,
this is an automatic message from your ISP.

Due to the last batch of Viruses/Worms/Trojans affecting the Microsoft users that you so despise,
the network is congested, and you cannot reach Itunes stores and cannot download the Steve Jobs Picture of the day.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

5 hours!?

I've found a quicker way to get rid of those files, identify the executables through task manager and the "run" keys in the registry, then change filepermissions to block the system and user accounts on those files and/or directories, kill processes, remove registry entries, reboot, delete files. No more respawning webrebates etc..
And if you haven't set the filesystem to NTFS, you need to be slapped silly.

Re:5 hours!?

And if you haven't set the filesystem to NTFS, you need to be slapped silly. Or you run a dual boot system and need linux to read/write your win files

Re:5 hours!?

If you have a copy of an NT based OS, you can use captive [jankratochvil.net] to get read/write access to your NTFS filesystems.

You did a disservice to your wife

Not by letting her run IE, but by letting her run IE on a Windows box as full admin.

"... despite the anti-virus, regular Windows updates, having the good sense not to open attachments, using a firewall, and avoiding any type of seedy activities online..."

Let's see, it's 2004, XP is two years old, 2K is four years old, and your wife got spyware for one of two reasons:

* You let her run too old a version of Windows (98/ME) with no built in security, (Melissa got past anti-virus software remember) or
* You let her run 2K or XP with full admin or "power user" access.

You two only have yourselves to blame for choosing to run a machine insecurely. Yes, you. You could've stopped all of this before the fact if you ran a modern version of Windows as limited users, if you used a mail program Designed for XP and kept that up to date as well as the OS, if you treated the 'net like any other public place instead of trusting everyone by default.

You chose Windows, and you chose to run it insecurely. If you think running Linux is the cure, go right ahead. But if you run it as root, you don't deserve any sympathy from me. And if you run XP as a full admin, you deserve even less sympathy.

Take charge of your own computer security already, however you do it. Don't whine at Microsoft because you let it happen.

And damn my slashdot karma to Hell anyway. I'm sick of this whining: "Microsoft (this), Microsoft (that), Microsoft (whatever)." Lazy bastards. How come MY MOTHER doesn't get spyware or viruses or whatever when she's running only XP Service Pack 1? Without any AV software? Explain that.

Re:You did a disservice to your wife

Let's face it, Windows XP (and to a lesser extent Windows 2000) is designed to be run as an Administrator. They tell you in the documentation not to run the computer as an Administrator but the first user who logs into an XP Home machine is an Administrator by default. Several popular CD burning applications will not run correctly without Administrator priveleges. Hell, Diablo II won't run if the user is not an Administrator.

I have a heterogeneous network of a half-dozen computers here, some Windows, some Mac, some BSD, some Linux. Don't get me wrong, after it's been properly secured I don't mind running Windows but explaining to my mom why she couldn't burn CDs, install software, etc. was causing more headaches than it was worth. Other operating systems (notably Mac OS X) deal with this sort of thing fairly intelligently, why can't Windows?

So he calls himself a sysadmin?

Why didn't he setup a non-root account for his wife on the windows box? Why didn't he install THE browser, Firefox, on his wife computer? Why didn't he enable excessive auditing so he could track down which app installed what and when?

Oh, that's too hard? If that's too hard, you're not a sysadmin.

True, spyware can be almost viral these days, but there is one factor which enables it in the first place: the user. "Oh, this nice free tool from www.[the tool's name].com is so handy!", should ring a bell, a lot of bells, alarmbells to be exact. NO search bar comes for free, unless it's open source, to name an example.

First I thought, hmm could be a great article, but after a few paragraphs it was clear this article is not great, it's the frustration of a person who doesn't WANT to understand windows and blames the consequences of that to the OS. I mean, blaming IE and not having firefox installed should be enough to categorize this article as "ordinairy propaganda".

I get so tired by this kind of stuff

I run Windows. I didn't use to. Between 1993 and 2001 I ran Linux almost exclusively. When Windows 2000 was established I switched on the simple basis of that it was better.

I don't run anti-virus. I don't have a firewall. I don't run spyware-removals under normal circumstances. If I feel the computer is feeling odd I download and run F-Prot's free DOS version [f-secure.com] followed by running Adaware 6. On some single occasion I've run Norton Anti-virus just to be on the safe side

I'm not alone in using this computer, my not quite so computer-literate girlfriend does too. I often download shareware games and freeware programes, not to mention warez every now and then.

Despite all this - I have never (*knock on wood*) been virus-infected. I have never gotten any spyware.

So I have to ask myself, what to do all these people do to get their computers so messed up? Why isn't it happening to me, when I run the same Windows without any protection? Is it really Windows fault?

To all the astro-turfers &| geniune windows pe

Telling all the stories you like about how your (or your mothers/wives/SO's) machine has never had a virus/spyware attack even though you never run anti-virus software nor a spyware detection suite isn't going to mnean a lot.

The simple fact is that many of the people on this board have to work with windows (from 95 to 2003) everyday and can tell you horror stories about machines that have been secured, reside behind a natting firewall, etc etc but still they get slapped down by the newest virus which has snuck in through a vulnerability which was patched three months ago.

The other area you seem to be missing is the inate ability of users to fuck things up, no matter how secure you make it. All it takes is one innocent click on a link and all of a sudden you have spyware coming out your nose.

5 hours?!? (sigh)

It takes him no less than FIVE hours to clean all the spyware from a Windows PC? And he has a degree in computer science, RHCE, and ten years of system administration expirence?

You know, that's pretty funny if you ask me, because I can usually do it in about 30-60 minutes or less (give or take), and with no degrees and no professional training whatsoever.

Here's how you do it....

1. Run msconfig

2. Uncheck all startup entries that look suspicious

3. reboot

4. Update and run Lavasoft AdAware

5. Update and run Spybot Search and Destroy

6. If you have them, and you should, update and run your favorite antivirus scanner.

7. Make sure all the spyware leftovers and their folders, if any, are deleted.

8. Run msconfig again and reenable anything legitimate that you might have disabled

9. reboot

Now, why do you want to disable the suspicious shit with msconfig first? If you ever get really 'stubborn to remove' shit like Ebates Moe Money Maker and friends, they're practically impossible to remove just by spyware scanning alone. You have to stop them from loading in the first place before you can get rid of them.

Well, other than the fact that he's laughably inept at cleaning spyware, he's still got a very valid point about just how utterly shitty and insecure the Windows platform is. It's been woefully insecure for years, it's woefully insecure now, and it will be woefully insecure for the unforseeable future. That's not just my opinion, it's a well known fact that Windows has been full of holes since at least since Windows 95, and likely earlier.

So, here we have a company that doesn't give a shit about it's product, doesn't give a shit about it's customers, doesn't give a shit about the law, and still it abuses its monopoly after being convicted of such in court. And as much as I blame Micro$oft for all the ills of the computer world, I'm a lot more pissed off at the consuming public for being the lazy, complacent sheep that they are for tolerating this abuse upon society for as long as they have, and instead of sitting on their fat asses allicted with "Homer Simpson Syndrome", they ought to be complaining to their government enmass and threatening to vote out the whole of Congress itself if that's what it takes to get them to do something about Microsoft. Damn! It's almost like walking into a run down crime ridden neighborhood, and looking at the people in it acting as though it's all normal that the neighborhood is all run down, vagrants and junkies sprawled out on the streets, drug pushers on every block, and hearing the sounds of gunshots, security alarms, and police sirens all the time.

Total batshit insanity, man! Just total batshit! But I guess it's what the people want. They don't really want freedom or justice, they just want to sit on their ass, watch that braindead 'Survivor' or 'American Idol' bullshit and wait for the TV to reprogram them into wanting the latest 'excercise in a bottle' weight loss fad or the latest $50,000 SUV that gets 3 mpg, has a DVD, and increases your penis size a whole 5 inches! What an utter travestry!

Well, that's my rant. Probably won't do anything to change the world no more than that 'Open Letter to a Digital World' will, but who knows? It only takes a few angry and motivated people to get the ball rolling.

Windows Addiction is hard to....

...break.

There are several people whom I have cleaned their system from running IE on the internet. If its bad enough, where I have to do a fresh install, I set it up with a Linux partition, but in any case I install firefox as a default browser, etc...

90% of the time they go back to polluting their system.

Its frustrating, considering I'm doing the cleaning as a friend. But as soon as I find out they are contridicting my efforts, I tell them it up to them to clean it from now on.

Recent /. article about MS buying up a spyware removal company.... but heres the deal. MS sees things from a commercial basic limited view money making perspective and as such they understand the value of spyware and such... so of course they support it. They will never really work to remove it, but rather use it.

Yuck!

Call me crazy but I am having a hard time finding any truth in the "facts" as reported by Microsoft.

Damned karma whore!

Thin ice

I'm probably on thin ice saying this here, but oh well.

I run three OSs at home: OS X, Fedora Core 3, and Xp Pro. At work, I admin XP Pro and Red Hat.

My company has about 150 PCs running some form of Windows. In the last year, we've had one infection. One.

At home, I've never had any. Ever.

While I totally support GNU/Linux (including monetary donations and buying distros like SuSE at retail price), I also pay for and use XP Pro for various reasons. I agree that Windows is deficient in many ways, and I agree that Microsoft could do things differently and be better for it in the long run.

However, I find it very difficult to understand how so many people's computers get infected. Windows or not. I do nothing special at home...the only thing I've done is use a broadband router from Netgear (because I have more than one computer), make sure I keep my XP Pro machine updated, install anti-virus and keep it updated (automatic) and use Firefox.

This guy is a sys-admin, and his wife's computer gets infected? How? If it is "his wife's" computer, that implies he has multiple computers at home. This implies some sort of router...even a $20 router uses NAT and has basic firewalling built in.

Either this guy is a poor sys-admin, or his wife did something with the computer to get it infected. So, Windows and Microsoft flaws aside, what we're really talking about here is a user education issue. I, as a user, at home, am educated about security issues on my PC. The people at work are educated. I don't have problems at home, and neither do we have problems at work.

So, while his open letter is all well and good, maybe in his case he should focus on better education at home and spend the $50 required to get a decent NAT router with firewalling, instead of bleating about Windows.

Re:Don't get me wrong I like Linux (and dislike M$

There is. Firstly, Unix has been in use in university environments for nigh on a quarter-century now. Cracking systems has been a hobby for college comp-sci majors for as long as computer systems have been available to crack, and the operating-system-design classes in that major are often based around dissecting the actual source code of the very systems they're trying to crack which means they've far more detailed knowledge of Unix systems than of Windows. And yet, despite that, Unix remains relatively secure in that environment. Why should we assume this would change?

Secondly, track record. Apache on Linux is probably the most popular platform for Web servers based on NetCraft and other surveys. Apache on Unix of some sort definitely is not only more popular than any other option, it's more popular than all other options combined. Unix is the dominant OS there (and the traits that make Linux secure are simply the normal traits of any other Unix variant). Yet while we see regular compromises of Web servers, compromises of Apache on Unix are relatively rare. If it's not compromised often in an environment where it is the dominant platform, why would it be compromised often in another environment if it were the dominant platform?

80% Infected

80% of Windows users suffer from spyware

And the other 20% are unplugged.

Works great for families.

I have converted some 20 families to Linux. All of them complaign about not being able to run certain programs. But in every case, all the ones that they need run on Wine or have alternatives. In fact, several of these families were using works and love moving up to OpenOffice. The parents love the fact that they are no longer worried about the system (spyware, etc). In addition, I have set up squid guard for cntroling the kids access to the net. Works great. I have only a couple of big issues.

1. Quicken or MS Books is needed. Yeah, GnuCash, and the KDE alternatives are not cutting it. They want one of the 2 big alternatives. Intuit is making such a big mistake. MS (with books and some tax package) will probably port to Linux before Intuit just to help kill Intuit off.
2. Lack of downloadable Music. They all have kids that want to download mp3/ogg/etc. Itunes is doing what they can to prevent it. If one of the side ones really wanted to eat into ITunes, they would support Linux and own that desktop BEFORE any major got in there. It is normally the first that has the advantage. (if shawn gordon and his minddawn was smart, they would be doing hiphop and what the kids want to hear, rather than what the adults listen to; kids move quickly)

Respectfully, I disagree

I too hate the lack of security and the number of exploits that the typical Windows machine is exposed to. I feel that Microsoft has a responsibility to do something more than they are doing to fix the problem and sadly, I don't see them doing enough in the near future at least.

But I disagree that this is what it should take for people to migrate from Windows to Linux. People should make their choice for the right reasons and only one of those reasons is security. They also have to weigh things like user-friendlyness, support, cost, effort required to learn, availability of the applications that they require and probably a dozen other user variables.

Open Source in general and Linux in particular, has been making great progress in virtually every aspect that I can imagine. In many ways it is ready for "prime time." Yet to claim everyone should move to it, I can't quite accept that yet. In my business, you can't find particular applications (relating to "industrial formulation calculators" for instance) that are necessary for the operation of the business in open source (I've researched this).

While I am able to work my way around a Linux Desktop with KDE and be fairly comfortable with it, members of my family don't seem quite as capable and frankly, I don't want to spend the time teaching them.

Still, I spend close to fifty percent of my workday dealing with spyware (and another 1 or 2 percent dealing with viruses, worms, and trojans) and I hate it. I haven't found a single product out there that does an acceptable job of preventing it or cleaning it although on my home Windows machine the McAffee suite + AdAware + Yahoo Anti-Spy seems to mount a pretty good defense. The McAfee is always on and auto-updated, I run automated anti-virus scans every night. I run AdAware every couple of days, and right now, since it is new, I am running Yahoo Anti-spy every day. My ISP also filters my email with an anti-virus program and I practice all the common preventitive measures and am quite liberal at assigning "spam" tags on incoming emails.

Still, all of this amounts to a lot of work. I do think Microsoft shares the blame with the malware authors in the same way that car manufacturers used to carry part of the blame for car thefts (since cars were so easy to steal). Microsoft it would seem to me has the same kind of responsibility that car makers had, to develop a safer product. I am willing to share part of this expense (developing products costs money and that cost is passed on to customers - it is what for-profit companies have to do). I also hope we get help from legislators and from ISP's, and even hardware companies who each in their own way can develop things that would make malware harder to propogate.

I'd also like to challenge computer makers to provide us with additional choices, like packaged Linux boxes, better secured Windows boxes, and software that actually works that comes bundled with machines so that so many people don't download "free" spyware-laden products to do something they expected their computer to do out of the box (Dell, Sonic - do you hear me?).

These suggestions won't fix the spyware problem.

I hate these types of "letters". All they do is make Microsoft look bad, but they don't make Linux look very good. Most people I talk to that are frustrated with Microsoft look at linux (on the desktop) and say - OK, it's free, but it isn't as "nice" as windows.

Those same users really like OS X - but they don't want to buy an expensive computer to run it.

The reason spyware is not a problem for linux yet is two-fold:

1. Marketshare - if you are writing spyware, wouldn't you want to "spy" on the largest user base?

2. Application installation ease - most spyware does not install itself. Most spyware i've run into came from users directly downloading and double-clicking files. Installing apps on Linux is not nearly that easy - and that's why my sisters, neices and nephews don't like Linux. They can't double-click and install.

Sure, eventually Linux will HAVE to be that easy to get the marketshare that Microsoft has. Don't rattle off the excuse about being prompted for a password in OS X - i've seen users blindly type in an admin password every time the installation box pops up.

When *nix becomes easy (and popular), spyware will become a problem on *nix.

-ted

Re:We are so much smarter than the rest of the wor

I actually have exactly the opposite scenario. At my work, we have a fileserver running MS Windows 2000 Advanced Server, with a 2.4 TiB RAID NTFS filesystem. At home I run Gentoo on my box, w/ UATA/133 IDE drives using ext3fs. It takes slightly less time to _delete_ a 4 GiB file on the fileserver at work, than it took me to _move_ about 5.5 GiB from one drive to another in my box at home. The MFT for the NTFS filesystem on the fileserver at work is very very badly fragmented, drastically killing performance. Now, this is our fault for not keeping it defragmented (well, not mine, as it was already like this when I transferred to this department ;), but I've never defragged my box at home either, so...

Re:We are so much smarter than the rest of the wor

*sigh* let me guess: using Debian or Gentoo without knowing how to turn HD optimizations on? I do not have the same problem.