6 Months On, Vista Security Still Besting Linux 478
Martin writes "Great report on security vulnerabilities for MS/Linux/OS X. This is a revised version of the one Jeff Jones did back on March 21: Windows Vista — 90 Day Vulnerability Report. This time he did what the Linux community had asked. Everyone complained that he did the report based on a full Linux distro including optional components, not on just a base OS install. So this time he did both; Vista still came out on top. I was shocked that Apple was even on the list as I believed all those Mac commercials!"
Fine... (Score:5, Interesting)
What? Can't do that with Vista?
I'll take Linux, thank you.
Re:Fine... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fine... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fine... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Exploited verses exploits (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/security/m
The biggest bug in Windows is between the chair and keyboard. The item in question is gullable, has admin privilages, and can run widely dispensed Windows specific code. As a sample of this, just look at the members of any botnet and the OS in use.
Anything that doesn't run Windows code and has the default of not running admin is more secure than patched Windows in most cases.
Vista still runs Windows code, it's biggest fault, but it seems to be driving towards better system security and user permissions.
Count the botnets? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Count the botnets? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. The trouble is nobody wants to point fingers because they might get slapped. Read any of the news articles regarding the millions of bots in botnets. Every one of them I could find said "PCs". Not one article mentioned an operating system or version that was compromised. I searched Google, Yahoo, and anyplace else I could to find out if the bots had something in common such as Firefox, AIM, Flash 9, or a paticular OS. The details were sparse. If anything was mentioned it was Internet Explorer exploits and compromised websites. A search on the compromised websites gave the same generic results. About the only commonality was SQL with no mention of what flavor such as My-SQL or MS-SQL There was no mention of OS, web server or anything else. I hate thin articles when I am trying to avoid common exploits. If I can't use one SQL, can I use the other and which is which?
From the articles, I get the feeling I can't use a PC as a client with IM and I can't use an SQL enabled webserver. Other than that, there is very little hard data on botnets in the news.
Re:Count the botnets? (Score:4, Insightful)
When you are attacked by a bot-net, all you know is the packets you have received. Any application or OS information that these contain could easily be forged.
It *would* be nice to know. This doesn't mean that reliable knowledge is available.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Windows (older versions but common exploit) hides known extentions by default. Users are admins by default. Opening MyNakedWife.jpg.exe was an exploit that nailed many a Windows user. No warning of any kind was given, the software was installed.
Linux by default nobody runs as root. Ubuntu takes it up a notch. Even if the
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That doesn't explain why web server exploits hit IIS much more then apache which STILL has more installations. The widest net possible idea is less important then building your OS' security foundation on shifting sand. Windows has had terrible security because it was built on a foundation of sand. It has taken them years and years to go back and build a secure fo
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Re:Fine... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fine... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Fine... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, assuming both assumptions here are true (i.e. Windows has fewer vulnerabilities and you would fix all security problems brought to you in Linux), you would still rather _personally_ fix a lot of bugs over having a more secure platform (again, big assumption there)?
Re:Fine... (Score:5, Insightful)
https://209.34.241.68/user/Profile.aspx?UserID=780 3 [209.34.241.68]
No wonder Windows Vista is best in his review.
I am not convinced, next please Mr Jones.
Re:Fine... (Score:5, Informative)
It's a pretty contrived review.
The bulk of it has already been debunked here http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2007/Jun/0528.h tml [seclists.org]
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It's not the most professional writing I've seen, but I believe most of the points made are valid.
There's another commentary here. http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/security/mi crosoft_is_counting_bugs_again.html [microsoft-watch.com]
Re:Fine... (Score:5, Informative)
I am not convinced, next please Mr Jones.
Someone else didn't like the numbers either and provided this link;
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/security/m
There are more patches in a month than there are fixed patches in the count.
Re:Fine... (Score:5, Informative)
Fantastic sleuthing! here I was reading the article like a chump:
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Re:Fine... (Score:4, Funny)
"No user serviceable parts inside"
Sorry, I have to laugh. (Score:3, Interesting)
Its human nature. Its far easier to take an easy shot at someone else other than act. Oh sure I can say I will fix it, but fact is its easier to say so on some message board that take the action.
Look, with Vista they have a vested interest in correcting the bugs. For those in Linux I cannot overcome I can only hope someone else sees it as important enough to warrant a
Re:Fine... (Score:5, Funny)
Ha..hahaha...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
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Its a very old trick thats been on unix for years. you make an install shell script, you put a tag that signifies the end of it, then you appaend the tgz of the package you want to install.
Set this installer to executable and voila you have a self extracting installer - feel free to add gui's etc.
You might be familiar with the concept - pretty much every installer you use on windows employs this kind of system - its not exactly difficult to create or use.
Personally
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If you haven't noticed but there is only one "distro" of Windows, unless you want to count MCE, etc as another "distro".
I wish that was true. Good luck installing a random piece of software on Vista. It probably won't work. What about people who still use 98/ME, most software isn't compatible. Forget in
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Now, go the other way (XP -> 95 or 2.x.x -> 1.x.x). Neither will work very well. Something required will very likely be missing.
La
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as far as source code. so many people want to pick a package install and use in minutes , thats why we have broadband and binaries. e
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If you can get past the troll, the bad grammar, and the general idiocy, there lies one, and I mean just one, good point: While you and I may appreciate the command line's power, or the ease of apt-get, etc...how do most people install software on Windows? They download it and run the setup file from their desktop. That's how I do it. I don't think
Re:Fine... (Score:4, Interesting)
People do though, thats the thing.
I've spotted many security issues, and the fact that we see more reported every week is proof enough that people do look at the source. If nobody looked we'd have no new reports, right?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If this were true, we'd have no third-party reports on closed source software, but that's clearly not the case.
I acknowledge some people will look at the source, but finding a vulnerability and fixing it (and testing the fix) are two completely different things.
Re:Fine... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most end-users wouldn't recognise a security issue if it was walking in the middle of the street, naked, waving a huge vlag that had "Security Issue" printed in bold on it.
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I'd be willing to bet that OSS has a lot more competent eyes lo
Re:Fine... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Open source programs are typically not well-commented and searchable enough for a capable outsider to improve upon without significant investment of time.
Re:Fine... (Score:5, Insightful)
Goddammit, Sir, why did you have to post after I used all my mod points? You have provided, not only for the OSS world but developers in general, the single most important point when it comes to maintainability.
I run several servers and desktop systems. Some open, some closed. I have tons of source code, some for open systems, some for closed systems where I participate as a maintainer, developer, or reviewer. Much of the OSS stuff is unusuable except by the team that developed it. Yes, an outsider can come in, look at the code and study it but he/she is going to spend a ton of time "getting up to speed". The only batches of code that I've been able to instantly access and work with are those from projects/developers who decided that they would rather take 3 months to turn out well commented and tested code rather than take 3 weeks to churn and burn crap code that is only marginally better than old BASIC spaghetti code.
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Agreed, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
I would point out that if you are on a deadline for delivery, things get cut. Its just business. Managers fully support good documentation, well planned naming conventions, well structured code, etc... Just so long as it doesn't interfere with getting the product out the door on time.
And... FWIW... I also have tons of source (both open and closed source) to maintain, modify, w/e...
Re:Fine... (Score:4, Informative)
In addition to this, the truth is that at least 9 in 10 submissions which we did evaluate were rejected for various reasons, not the least of which were that many of the implementations were horribly ugly even when they did manage to pass all the other criteria. The people whose submissions got looked at most seriously were those who contributed regularly. My eventual development partner hounded me literally for months before I took him seriously (he was a pretty abrasive guy on the surface, with a lot of criticism for my work, and this turned me off to him at first).
The fact is that there's no way most OSS developers have the time to look at the submission of every Tom, Dick, and Harry. The way to get noticed is to provide features which are innovative, well coded, make sense (so many of our submissions were simply bad ideas), and to persevere. We want partners, not dump and run developers.
Re:Fine... (Score:5, Informative)
1) They wont accept outside contributions unless you sign their paperwork.
2) I have personally contributed, so I know that at least 1 person from outside has contibuted
Faulty Logic (Score:4, Interesting)
You also sweep away all of the *many* other ways to participate in a project to help it along.
Finally, nearly all OSS projects are driven by one or two people coding with other contributions (testing, bug reports, documentation, packaging, translations) kicking the projects into high-gear. There are a few that are so big the leaders code contribution is a small part, but that's the rare exception.
OT Rant: OO.org team: please move to GTK+.
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Find, publish, and fix a bug in Linux or an O/S app. Fine, thank you very much. Find and publish the existance of a bug in Windows (particularly if you are bound by any sort of source code NDA) and you risk getting sued. Forget about fixing it. Only
Re:Fine... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a fallacy? Shit. I guess that all these years that I have been working on open source software, fixing bugs, adding features, has actually been a big long dream. I'll wake up and finally see that I've been living in the Matrix, and finally see Bill G in his true Borg form hanging over me grinning...
Of course not EVERYONE looks at the source for every app, but collectively there are a HUGE number of people looking at and working with the source for just about every app out there. Unfortunately, not everyone working on open source is a qualified professional, and we do see some horrible code out there, but it's no worse than a lot of the commercial code I've seen over the years.
But back to the report. It's a shell game. Microsoft, having a closed development model, may have HUNDREDS of high threat level flaws that are UNDISCLOSED but may be known about by black-hat hackers. Open source by nature is ALWAYS disclosed. MS also has a habit of rating their flaws at a lower threat level than third party security researchers rated it. Yep, just goes to show that you can prove anything with statistics.
Here is a statistic for you... 99%+ of all the probing I get on the external side of the corp network are from windows boxes according to fingerprint analysis. Since most probing is done via compromised machines (botnet), and that windows has less than a 99% market share, that leaves me with one conclusion. The numbers are similar for spam.
How many vulnerabilities are known about and fixed in a certain time frame is meaningless. What would be meaningful, but an impossible statistic to gather, is exactly what percentage of installed Linux and Windows machines are currently compromised and being actively exploited (member of a botnet.) I've heard estimates that up to 50% of all windows machines are infected with serious malware of some sort or another...
obligatory humor (Score:5, Interesting)
obligatory Star Wars humor (Score:4, Funny)
fp (Score:5, Funny)
Jeff Jones ... This time he did what the Linux community had asked.
He went and f*cked himself?
Useless studies (Score:5, Insightful)
None
Microsoft only discloses what it has to and is often at odds with security researchers about problems only to be proven wrong later. One claim from a blog was that Vista shipped with 60,000 bugs. How many of those are documented for the public?
I can say that on my test certified Vista machine, brand new from Dell, I've already seen the network card totally disappear from the system only to reappear again an hour later. The Broadcom diagnostic tool reported no hardware issues. The Explorer shell still crashes/stalls frequently. Files get locked with no way aside from a reboot to unlock them. Wifi fails to reconnect to the same network it was previously connected to when sspi broadcast for that network is disabled. I just tried restoring a hibernated laptop, previously connected to a domain. Black screen & hard reboot.
Beyond that, on this brand new machine, specced for Vista. Vista is SLOW.
MS, concentrate on making Vista better instead of having people do useless studies. kthnxbye
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
OMG IT MUST BE TRUE ONE BLOG REPORTED IT OMG!!!!111!!!11
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Re:Useless studies (Score:5, Interesting)
But i'd still rather run Ubuntu. Anybody who thinks installing windows is easier than linux, hasn't installed feisty fawn. My last 4 windows installs have come up in 640x480 4bit because the video card wasn't recognized, the sound didn't work, and the network card didn't work. Not to mention it took forever to install. I boot ubuntu on the same machine (in minutes) and everything works perfectly. In fact, the feisty fawn install disk has become part of my windows install. I boot the live cd, download the drivers i need to my thumbdrive, reboot into windows and install them. Point being: Not only is Linux EASIER to install, it's made Windows EASIER to install too. now THATS a good operating system.
dead (Score:2)
Google cache version (Score:4, Informative)
Text only:
http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:l2ZWLi31QdIJ
Wrong cache link - full text here (Score:3, Informative)
Windows Vista - 6 Month Vulnerability Report
Submitted by Jeff Jones on Thu, 2007-06-21 11:53. Topic(s): | Client | Corporate Management | Information Security | Operating Systems
I was somewhat surprised (but pleased) at the level of interest back when I published my Windows Vista - 90 Day Vulnerability Report. It was about the earliest span of
Re:Wrong cache link - full text here (Score:5, Insightful)
So, how does he account for all the silent patching that Microsoft is doing? [zdnet.com]. (Link complements of Groklaw.)
More on Google [google.com].
Honestly, how can one really compare Windows against Linux when Microsoft is patching things silently? It's not a fair comparison to any vendor because you don't know what got fixed; let alone what was actually problematic. When you have one community disclosing every bug, and another disclosing only those that become high-profile for them - or likely to become high-profile since they were disclosed by others or something like that - you will not get a fair comparison.
So, if he really wants to do a fair comparison, he should get internal reports from Microsoft about their bugs, security and otherwise. Yes, CVE and similar hold the security vulnerability bugs; and you can do a comparison iff you get the security bugs that Microsoft found internally and didn't bother to report - then you would have a level set of reports.
What about the user experience? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Either the user is prompted about administrative tasks or he is not. Vista lets you toggle this option off if you desire, but I for one appreciate this burden. The average computer user doesn'
Re:What about the user experience? (Score:5, Funny)
"Ok, lets start up Excel and get to work..."
"excel.exe is trying to run, allow or deny?" "Allow"
"mssrv.exe is trying to run, allow or d..." "*heavy sigh* Allow..."
"trojan.exe is tryi..." "Allow already!"
"deleteallfiles.e...." "Dammit just let me at my spreadsheets already! ALLOW ALLOW ALLOW!"
Re:What about the user experience? (Score:4, Informative)
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Cluebat time. The "researcher" is a Microsoft employee. Is is basically PR from marketing. When you have a closed development model, you can't compare it with an open model like this. How many UNDISCLOSED flaws were there in Windows that have been silently fixed or are still waiting to be fixed? With statistics, I can "prove" that Windows causes brain damage and Erectile Dysfunctio
If Vista ever gets..... (Score:5, Funny)
Update. (Score:4, Informative)
Wakeup call (Score:2, Funny)
Greets
UbuntuBoy
Of course it will (Score:5, Insightful)
When i see a windows system and linux system that do exactly the same things have the same purpose software installed on them i can see the viability of the test.
Further, malware runs rampet in Windows, nearly 50% of Vista's vulns were not patched, where regardless of how many Linux has they get fixed when found. More secure? You tell me is a nightclub more secure when the bouncer only kicks out half the troublemakers whole a tougher and meaner club down the street deals with all of them?
Actually, he supposedly == them (Score:3, Insightful)
What is needed is for a Linux distro guy who has good knowledge of Windows (or perhaps somebody from wine) to re-do this report. And if it shows that MS did a better job on addressing security, I would suggest that the distro's need to get their act together. For the last 5 years, the windows fanboys have ran around saying that the #
This seems to (Score:2, Interesting)
Look! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing to see here, please move along...
lies, damned lies and... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:lies, damned lies and... (Score:4, Informative)
If an issue is found in open source software, it is typically published openly and patched. If the original author finds an issue, he will fix it and tell people about it so his end users can patch themselves.
By contrast, if a vulnerability is found internally to microsoft it will still get fixed, but the fix will be rolled in with other fixes. It won't get published, and microsoft won't admit to the vulnerability unless it's already public. A good example being the ASN.1 vulnerability from a couple of years back, there were actually 2 issues fixed in the same patch, but microsoft only admitted to one of them because the other wasnt public. It was found later by reverse engineering the update.
On the back of recent news (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes I see Open Source kicking itself in the face with all the transparency it offers, yet I'm overwhelmed with a sense of pride and happiness that communities can develop such a transparent process in the public eye.
Discovering problems and exploiting them in a closed source product is quite a daunting task - I'd say almost 4 times as much work as exploiting a system where you can compile debug symbols into the binary, and nothing short of 1000 times harder than if you had the source code. What these "reports" and discoveries show is that layers of obfuscation act to confuse people as to the actual level of vulnerability you're exposed to.
There are many vulnerability hunters out there, now, employed by governments across the world simply to "dive in" at a deepend of closed applications looking for exploitable code - closed source simply means that only wealthy, bigger teams will be successful. Open Source means that anyone can help thwart these hunters, makes vulnerability research fair game, and most importantly, accepts community involvement into the fixing and pre-emptive policy that makes OS software better software.
Matt
Security through obscurity? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, when Linux had fewer vulnerabilities, it was because it was obscure. When Vista has fewer vulnerabilities, it's because it's fundamentally more secure. I'm not trying to be sarcastic here - it may very well be *true*. It's just something to keep in mind as you watch the never-ending stream of these 'vulnerability/exploit' reports come out every few months.
No, still not a good comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
- The 'reduced feature set' used for the comparison still contains a lot of software not include with windows
- All information is based on what the company behind the software discloses. I believe that not all holes in Vista that MS knows about are disclosed. It is also not unlikely that what Microsoft calls 'critical' is not the same as what Canonical calls 'critical'. In any case, different measures are used for the different OS's, and you can't compare things that are measured in different ways.
- The usual 'less known holes != safer' discussion...
I personally don't know which OS is safer, but based on these numbers, I am not going to draw any conclusions.
Jan
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So, this is self-performance review. I'm guessing he's vying for a pay raise.
Selective use of facts I think... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a measure of how secure the OSes are - it's a measure of how secretive the makers of the OSes are.
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A few points (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Linux is easily available to all. Plus people identifying security holes are helping out, they do it to improve the product. They would do this for Windows too, but they don't have access to the code.
3. Mac OS uses a lot of open source tools, gcc, samba etc.. these have bugs and holes identified from time to time. So Apple naturally has to plug them.
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It's in use way more than is Linux:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid= 2 [hitslink.com]
Vista: 3.74%
Linux: 0.70%
And here are status for Germany, which would be more friendly to Linux than Vista:
http://www.webhits.de/we [webhits.de]
Yet another meaningless "study" (Score:3, Informative)
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My Linux "vendor" (and most of them, these days) doesn't even set up a firewall at all. Because they don't need to. Because with a default desktop install, there's nothing to firewall off - no listening network ports.
Sorry, Microsoft, but until you get to this point, you're going to be more vulnerable. It's only a matter of time before someone compromises a software firewall.
As someone who does not know that much about this (Score:5, Insightful)
But the survey listed also shows Windows XP as the second most secure operating system of the ones surveyed.
I can believe that Microsoft improved their security with Vista. But if they also tell me their security was great with Windows XP, I have to conclude that they're fudging the numbers.
Re:As someone who does not know that much about th (Score:4, Insightful)
Too many of these comparisons are apples and oranges things. If you run you Ubuntu box as root, you are heading for trouble. Running Windows as an administrator also exposes the user to significantly enhanced risk. If you are concerned with this risk, run as a normal user. I do. Your risk will be much lower. Vista makes it much easier to run as a normal user. My wife and kids have normal user accounts on our modern machine. I will be trying to "upgrade" my old XP box (an older Win ME box I upgraded to XP with an additional 512 MB of RAM 3 years ago) to Vista home basic for the improved security support.
Did I miss something (Score:5, Informative)
Rather than take his word for it why not just check at Secunia. [secunia.com]
Vista [secunia.com]
Ubuntu 6.06 [secunia.com]
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Market penetration (Score:4, Funny)
I'd just like to say I'm thrilled to be able to say this.
If Vista was a bigger percentage of the PC market, there would be more exploits for it.
Pay back's a bitch, ain't it?
Vista still running malware as root (Score:4, Informative)
Vista still encourages users to run with higher privileges than necessary, and the platform is still host to over 99% of the viruses and malware ever created. It is not even recommended to run Windows without third-party security enhancements such as anti-virus. Many will tell you to run it only in a virtualizer, not on bare hardware, so you can wipe the Windows "disk" every night and start fresh the next day. In fact, Microsoft will tell you to do that, it's what VirtualPC is for.
Anyone who believes this crap deserves Vista. Enjoy.
Re:Vista still running malware as root (Score:4, Insightful)
What the heck are you smoking? I'm running Vista with normal user rights (before Vista I did same with XP) and last time when I needed elevated rights was when I installed SQL Server 2005 Express some month ago. UAC prompted for administrator password, I entered it, installer continued and so on. In no way I was using higher privileges that I needed. Or do you have some magical way to install system wide components with normal user rights?
If Vista is asking admin password every other minute then you are doing some seriously wrong! There's no need for after initial configurations to elevate to admin privileges unless you are doing some system wide stuff. And if you turned off UAC go back to your Linux or whatever you like and have a nice day.
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Vista still encourages users to run with higher privileges than necessary
"Encourages"? How exactly does it do that? I don't even know how to enable the root account on Vista -- I think it involves gpedit -- it's certainly disabled by default. With the "administrator" account, you're running with a standard user token all the time except when you elevate, which is done on a task-by-task basis. How is this "encourag[ing] users to run with higher privileges than necessary"?
Article's Premise is Fatally Flawed (Score:5, Insightful)
The temporary absence of security issues with Vista means nothing because neither the scope nor the scale of exploits is known. That is commonly described by the phrase "security through obscurity."
History has shown that Microsoft's approach to security is to talk a good game. Period. While I do not doubt Microsoft has hired excellent security programmers, their contributions don't make it through the management gauntlet.
Another way to highlight my point:
When you buy a windows-equipped box will you:
1: Use email on win32 without an antivirus application?
2. Go on the internet on win32 without a firewall?
3. Run win32 without a NAT?
I propose the following experiment instead:
Computer 1: Linux desktop distro immediately after install with no firewall script.
Computer 2: Vista equipped PC straight out of the box with the windows supplied firewall disabled.
Computer 3: Mac OSX straight out of the box.
Run tripwire on all three machines and put them directly on the internet. (aka no NAT)
That might be a better way to compare default security of OS's.
I guess us Linux people got it all wrong (Score:4, Informative)
The *only* way to "measure" security is to "measure" breakins. You can talk about technological advances in architecture, but abstracting security to bug counting is goofy. Linux systems don't get broken into, because there simply aren't ways to get at them, particularly on the desktop. With things like AppArmor and SELinux your browser is isolated from other processes, every distro ships with the "desktop" version locked down (100% firewalled) by default, and samba, cups, and the other common network daemons (ntp? ssh?) are mature suites with excellent security histories.
I can't get the article to open, but I'm curious as to the vulnerabilities which he counted. How many of them actually have real world applications?
Here is how I would come up with a synthetic benchmark of security:
1. Admit that it will be synthetic, and is ultimately an exercise in mental masturbation
2. Count the bugs.
3. Remove all bugs that have no possibility to be exploited, and all "fixed" bugs.
4. Separate bugs into "server" and "desktop" bugs.
5. Multiple bugs by an index number between 0 and 1, with 0 being harmless bugs, and 1 being bugs that give you "root".
6. Total up bug indexes.
7. Now, count all fixed bugs (excluding impossible to exploit ones), multiple by a "damage index" (see #5), then multiple by (Time to fix bug, measured from release of software)/(Time software has been released). Add this to your result from #6.
8. Voila! You've now posted something that will most likely compete favorably with MS's bug number. It will also still be totally useless.
lets be fair... (Score:3, Interesting)
just remember there are 3 types of lies, "lies, damn lies and statistics".
Not that im claiming he's wrong mind you, just that history has proven to be a battle of seemingly erroneous statistics stacked on top of one another that seem to claim totally different things.
Is it going to make me switch to vista? no... But i cant say i really care either, probably the most insecure part of my home server is the code i've written for it!
Flaw in argument (Score:5, Insightful)
- He compares OS vulnerabilities of the first 90 days since first release. This doesn't tell us which OS is the most secure at this moment. Merely, it tells that more recent OS's have undergone more testing prior to release.
- He notes 125 known issues with RHEL prior to release compared to 0 for Windows Vista, but of course no vulnerabilities are known prior to release as Vista is closed source and has not been available for public scrutiny, while RHEL is built on available open source code.
But that's not all, differences in how bugs are classified may make some OS's appear more secure - it is known that Microsoft has classified vulnerabilities as bugs thus reducing the "official vulnerability number". Without a strictly uniform and independent classification scheme for bugs, there is simply no data to compare.
A reasonable comparison would compare the OS's vulnerability issues the past 90 days, that is with fully patched systems. Known issues that have not yet been patched should not be included as this simply is caused by the longer time for scrutiny of older OS's. Secondly, bugs must be classified in a coherent manner: Remote root, remote user, local root, local user, DOS etc...
This document is useless in the discussion of which OS is the most secure to run as of today. There is no way that a conclusion can me made in favour of any OS on the list.
It appears that OpenBSD remains the most secure system, and I bet FreeBSD is a strong contender.
Report is misleading (Score:3, Insightful)
Since the Linux effort is open, all issues are reported and fixed in the open, with an effort made to report and fix as much as possible, which ensures software quality. Since proprietary systems are not open, their issues are not reported and fixed in the open. As a matter fact, a fewer number of fixes does not in itself indicate a lesser number of problems, or better software quality. On the contrary, a lesser number of fixes may indicate a lesser percent of problems being found, reported and fixed, which implies a lesser quality of software. A fewer number of fixes can be as much due to failing to fix vulnerabilities due to not finding them, or not having them reported.
Therefore, data presented in this report indirectly suggests that the open-source process is better at ensuring software quality.
Reading closely... (Score:3, Interesting)
another study by microsoft, for microsoft (Score:3, Informative)
[2] "Jeffrey R. Jones, a self-described "security guy" who works at Microsoft's security division"
[3] "an overview of Microsoft's progress in improving security by Jeffrey R. Jones, Senior Director - Microsoft Security Business Unit."
[1] - http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-1035_11
[2] - http://www.boxxet.com/Windows_Vista/Windows_Vista
[3] - http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/secnews
Re:easier to use as well (cue the fanboys) (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, Linux is not entirely user friendly yet. No denying that. But maybe you mean 1%, as you said... It's not really a good troll your way.
And yes, apt-get is a -lot- easier. Why? Because you left the steps out on the Windows side where you search for some utility on the web and have to wade through search results that mean nothing and attempt to find what you want, or you could just apt-get install it. 1 step, not several.
As for your game installation example, maybe you should pick something actually made FOR Linux, instead of hacked onto it later. Darwinia, for example: http://www.darwinia.co.uk/downloads/demo_linux.ht
Check out those complicated instr... err, no. You just download and run the file. Okay, you have to make it executable first. Just a bit of security there. At least it didn't ask you 'cancel or allow?' about 5 times.
Including the steps to set up video properly is a bit disingenuous unless you include the steps for Windows as well. Including finding and downloading the proper drivers for sound, video, motherboard chipset, etc. Is it easier on Windows? A bit, yes. But the steps still exist.
Re:easier to use as well (cue the fanboys) (Score:4, Insightful)
Run whatever the fuck you want.
Re:easier to use as well (cue the fanboys) (Score:4, Interesting)
I installed quake 3 On my first day of Linux. Copied the files from the disk, ran the linux stuff for Id. IN all I had to use 3 maybe 4 commands total, and the only web site I went to was Ids site. It was basically the first thing I installed after doing my redhat installation. I never really got into using linux, but its not the quagmire you for believe it to be.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Great post!
Very few people can really do subtle humorous satire. I really enjoyed this. One hallmark of really good satire (a la Onion [theonion.com]) is that when you start reading it you think that the author is serious. As you continue you realize that it's satire.