James Knott wrote:
Bob Estes wrote:
Those are all good points. It's my understanding that Unix started
out in the mainframe environment. Is that correct? The philosophy is
obviously different, but at this time, I'm not convinced that any OS
is really secure from a determined attack. The idiots that write this
malware are not stupid. At least when it comes to writing computer
code. Unix/Linux may be a bigger challenge than Windows, but for some
of them, that just makes it a bigger high when they are successful.
Actually, Unix started out on a mini-computer, the DEC PDP-7.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-7
I've never claimed any OS is invulnerable, but Linux & Unix are far more
difficult to attack, for a wide variety of reasons. You may recall, not
too long ago, when it was possible to get a virus in Windows, simply by
receiving it as an attachment. The way Windows was set up, by default,
Outlook would automatically run an executable, including a virus. Then,
if the user had admin rights, as is common, the entire system is at
risk. In Linux, you'd have to save the virus to disk, change the
permissions to make it executable and then run it. Even then, since
most users don't run as root, the damage is limited to whatever user has
permission to write to. So, when you take all the differences into
consideration, Windows is simply a far easier target than Linux or Unix.
Interesting. That's nice to know. Thanks.
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