On Monday 20 October 2003 09:41 pm, Cy Kurtz wrote: > > C'mon, I'll give you ten to one on the Windows box... ;-) > > no no no wait a minute! > > What happens when Linux becomes as popular as windows? Most people > writing virii are aiming at windows boxen, because they are more > numerous. People writing virii want to do as much damage as possible, so > they are going to go after the most popular OS.
Every time I see this comparison, I wince. Explain to me how you can compare a single OS built by a monolithic entity that controls all of the source code and releases only the information that puts them in the best possible light with an OS built by literally dozens of different teams, each to their own specifications that basically share a common kernel but have different directory structures, package managers, peripheral drivers, etc. As much as I think that Linux will become a bigger target eventually, I do NOT think that anyone can generalize and say that one virus that exploits a vulnerability on one distribution of Linux will automatically propagate to every distribution. Ever tried to get a package that was built to be portable to actually port over to a different distribution? And they are trying to make it portable and can include code specifically designed to do so. Viruses have to be small and compact. Linux is not the same as Windows and comparisons of this nature only serve to make people forget WHY MS products have a tendency to be compromised more often and it has a lot to do with the unified environment, the same thing that MS is quick to take credit for when it works in their favor, and anxious to make people forget when you point out that it also works against them. I would not go so far as to say that Linux can not be compromised but given the age of the system, the fact that a lot more businesses run Linux which makes it a more attractive target for ego purposes, and the fact that with open source, MS could have been publishing exploits on Linux, if they were there, instead of funding dubious analyst research on ROI that nobody pays attention to, I feel pretty confident that Linux is much more secure than average Windows. The fact is that it is MUCH easier to write viruses for Linux, (something that these "journalists" often overlook) because of the fact that the source code is published so that virus writers can go through line by line and look for vulnerabilities. With Windows, they have to decompile and reverse engineer to find weak points that may end up being dead ends. Given the different nature of open source, we should be seeing many more viruses written for Linux than for Windows, if only because it is so much easier to do it. As for social engineering, based on my own experience, I would trust a Linux user to do the smart thing well before trusting the average Windows user, but hey, that might be just me. -- Bryan Phinney Software Test Engineer
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