James Knott wrote:
Bob Estes wrote:
Lisi Reisz wrote:
On Monday 18 February 2008 08:57, Bob Estes wrote:
The vet I take my pets to doesn't accept email, because of all the
viruses etc., he was always getting. He doesn't seem to realize that
running Windows is the cause of the problem and he wouldn't have to
worry about that, if he ran Linux.
That's because Linux only has a very small segment of the market.
If Linux
gains a larger market share, then the idiots that write viruses will
begin
to write viruses for Linux.
So how come there are so few viruses that attack Unix based servers
and so many that attack Windows based servers, although Unix and its
descendants are in the majority and Windows servers in the minority?
Could it just be that the OSs are intrinsically more secure?
Lisi
Possibly. It could also be that the virus writers just have not
targeted Unix based servers.
I suggest you do some reading on the security vulnerabilities that occur
in Windows and how it is so hard for the same vulnerabilities to occur
in Linux or Unix. It's a whole different philosophy. Unix was built
from the ground up as a multiuser environment. It is also where
networking originated, so it has a lot of mechanisms built into the
kernel to enhance security. On the other hand, Windows evolved in a
single user, stand alone role, where security was not such a concern.
Much of the security in Windows comes from after the fact patching,
rather than bottom up design. Then add in idiotic corporate decisions,
as I mentioned in another note and you have another source of
vulnerability. Add to that the fact many users have to run with admin
rights, instead of as only a user, and malware can now attack the entire
systems, instead of only the user's area. It is not simply a case of
"Windows is the bigger target". It is a result of a long list of
technical factors.
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.
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