On Friday 06 March 2009 00:26, Rony Bill wrote: Neat. Minor suggestions for a new round.
> Dear Sir, > > With reference to your article in HT on netbook security. The first > impression one gets from it is that it is aimed at hitting the > netbook sales. If the authors really had a proper understanding of > operating systems and security issues related to them they would > have never posted such an article. Neither the bigger notebooks nor > the smaller netbooks come pre-installed with any firewalls or > anti-virus software. The anti-virus that is pre-installed on some > notebooks that have an operating system pre-installed is only a > trial version which will expire anyway. Antivirus software slows > down any system and the problem is not limited to netbooks only. By > the way the netbook has a 1.6 GHz. processor and a 1 GB RAM and a > 100+ GB hard disk, which is quite sufficient for a normal > anti-virus software. These note books btw are more capable than machines commonly sold only last year. An antivirus software running on top of an insecure OS is like sitting in a inflatable placed in a boat which is full of holes. > I happen to use one with an anti-virus > installed. What about the expensive business cell phones that are > fully net enabled and are used to surf the web, check mails, blog > and chat? Is there any scope for putting any of the standard > antivirus software in them? > > The most important point missed out by the authors is that security > issues arise from faulty operating systems that are breeding > grounds for software viruses. Since these operating systems are > closed and do not allow any security audit of their program code by > outsiders, there is no way one can know their inherent flaws and > predict as well as prevent future security problems. In order to > overcome this limitation of closed code software, there are > Free(dom) software operating systems that are openly audited by > experts outside the core developer group and the general public. > This enhances the immunity level of these operating systems to such > an extent that they do not require any antivirus software. They > come preloaded with security measures in various stages that > prevent virus files from executing in the system or propagating to > other computers on the network. The good news is that these > Free(dom) operating systems can now be installed on the netbooks > too and users can make full utilisation of the hardware resources > for their own work. > > I sincerely hope HT will let its readers know more about these > secure Free(dom) operating systems like Debian, Kubuntu, Ubuntu, > Fedora, Mandriva etc. -- Rgds JTD -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
