Recently been playing with Ubuntu. One thing that really surprised me
(which shows how wide eyed naive I am) is how with the Ubuntu boot disk
my supposedly secured files in XP are wide open. I can take an external
hard drive and copy them over - no problem!
I was both pleased and displeased by this having foolishly reinstalled
Windows XP Pro over the old without first unencrypting my user folder -
voila! they were all there but no longer accessible. I had a backup of
the stuff but the user folders were taking up space and I couldn't
delete them so before reinstalling/erasing them I just wanted to make
sure I had indeed gotten everything. Recalling my surprise over the
Ubuntu DVD boot disk I decided to try it and yes I could see everything
and copy it over. But I could not delete the NTFS files. Still, having
secured my files onto the external hard drive, I reinstalled deleting
prior junk. So mission accomplished but many security worries flowed
from that.
More recently, I heard about Red Hat/Fedora having had servers
compromised. Here are the relevant advisories:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00012.html
http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2008-0855.html
http://www.redhat.com/security/data/openssh-blacklist.html
Perhaps I'm burying the lead here but it seems that Linux has grown up
to have its own issues. I recall years ago on "The Computer Guys" how
John Gilroy argued that once Mac or Linux gained a share of the market
they would become targets and would have more security concerns. Tom
Piwowar countered with the inherent flaws in Microsoft's os which he
deemed the straw stirring the drink. Now Linux has gained a foothold in
the server world and Mac is increasing at the desktop level. Would be
interested to know others' thoughts on these security areas especially
as the three operating systems begin to permit more cross platform
accessibility. I also remember a quip by Tom that Linux was a great
tool to show PC users what it's like to be a Mac user trying to use a
PC. "You mean it doesn't do this automatically?!!!"
Cheers,
JL
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