On Sunday 22 August 2004 06:45 pm, Vincent Voois wrote: > In this way you have a dedicated virus that does not depend upon a fixed IP > address but wether it's host offers access to the plain internet. But it > does require the virusmaker knowledge of networking and how the OS > structure looks like and is being linked. For Windows this is pretty easy, > for Linux i don't know. At least not one of the daily scriptkiddy actions i > guess.
Which was my original point. > Ever asked Jeeves' opinion? (There's more than google) > IRC can also be quite informative once in a while... just join the known > channels, lurk and log. I've had some trick-files to do some flag-busting > in VAX/VMS en SCO, but that was still when the SU command was exploitable > (and a simple sysadmsh could be invoked) I'm really way out too long. I work in the Software development field as a QA engineer. I really don't need to check on the web to find out which OS is safer, there are a lot of reasons why Linux is safer than Windows. > > Quite true. You said: "It's because Windows still dominates the most of > > the current user- and business-market that most people don't bother > > themselves in hacking Linux." This implies that the only reason that > > Linux is safer than Windows is that it people don't bother themselves in > > hacking Linux. > > Hmmz, am i not giving examples enough to show that the above is not the > only thing why Linux is safer? It's one of the reasons making virusses for > Windows seems more popular to me, but there are for sure many more. It's > just more fun bringing down windows because it's so easy. I would probably say that it is easier so more people tend to do it. Targeting Linux requires doing a lot of research and hoping that you find a vulnerability before someone else does and also means that you need to exploit it quietly to make sure that others don't find out and close the hole. This does not tend to be something that the script-kiddie community gets into. Too much work, too little hype. > > is based on comparitive percentages of machines in the market, not hard > > numbers that can be attributed to market share. > > Windows machines still seem to be more attacked IMHO, dunno if it's really > because it's easier, or funnier or because there are so many people that > hate Bill Gates which might be a reason enough for some quirks to write > viruses for MS. But most news i see about viruses and exploits are only for > Windows. The question is still:why windows? Because you can find one exploit and can hit literally thousands and thousands of machines because they all have the same OS and vulnerability and it will remain there for an extended period of time. Couple that with all of the possible vulnerabilties and the ease of exploiting them and you have all the reason that you need to explain it. > There's also something called > MacOS and OSX. (Also Mac ofcourse) and i hardly read anything about that > either. Don't tell me the Mac is that safe too. OSX is built on BSD which makes it a unix clone and many of the same security features are available on that platform. MacOS was tied to the hardware so closely that it was difficult to target that platform, however, I can look up a wide record of Mac viruses from before the switch to OSX and remember running AV software to protect Macs where I did support. So, Mac is also attacked, although I don't know if it is at the same level. My guess would be since there is no singular OS platform that extends to both servers and workstations for Macs, they would not be targeted as much. If you have vulnerabilities that extend to both server and desktop OS, as you would have for MS, Linux, etc., you would tend to see more of that type of activity as the same vulnerabilities can exploit both types of boxes. > Jups, but i don't favor closed source, it has other advantages too > (specially in speed of development and quality). It will disappear > eventually as you can see it happening already also at MS. Open Source is just as fast (with the same money spent) and has higher quality than closed source. About the only thing that closed source has going for it is a revenue stream for the developer. From a consumer point of view, closed source is alltogether worse. > You talk about the rpmi method probably? urpmi, rpm, or ./configure, ./make, ./make install. Again your choice. -- Bryan Phinney
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