Bob Estes wrote:
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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No, actually a mini. It started life on a DEC PDP-8 and was then
rewritten for the PDP-11.
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