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UN Advised on Wireless Insecurity
otisaardvark writes "There's an article on the BBC about how the UN is being briefed on the problems of wireless networks. Predictable conclusions - security is mainly compromised through human, not technological factors."
If this post is modded down! Then the moderator cant take the truth!
Linux is now offically the most insecure OS! (not offtopic)
Insert Microsoft jokes here
Theres another intresting article about security here
note: what follows may be off-topic, but relevant and important insights on what lies ahead for USA and the world.
from CNN.com
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. James Jeffords -- the Vermont independent who stripped control of the Senate from Republicans last year when he bolted the party -- slammed the administration's record on the environment and said President Bush was "undoing his father's legacy."
"This year the power industry is getting a nice Christmas gift: the biggest weakening of the Clean Air Act in history," Jeffords said Saturday in the Democrats' weekly radio address, becoming the first independent to deliver that speech.
"Last week, the Bush administration announced devastating new regulations that will gut clean air laws -- allowing power plants to avoid installing simple anti-pollution equipment when they modernize," said Jeffords, the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
The Bush administration has said the changes will provide more flexibility to plants and, as a result, encourage reductions in emissions.
But Jeffords scoffed at that idea. The senator said he had been "proud to work with the first President Bush on the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990."
"Now this President Bush insists on moving us backward," he said, "undoing his father's legacy and weakening our nation's environmental laws."
Jeffords also criticized what he described as the White House's neglect of a rule to reduce sewage in lakes, rivers and streams, and said Superfund, the program charged with cleaning the nation's toxic waste sites, was woefully underfunded.
"Just this week, the administration announced new plans to allow new oil and gas drilling on national lands," the senator said. "And at the same time the administration is rolling back environmental protection laws, it is ensuring that the public knows little about what is happening in their own communities."
Jeffords cited a secrecy provision in the law creating a Homeland Security Department that he said would "make it more difficult for the public to get information about dangerous chemicals that may exist near their homes." Bush signed legislation creating that department Monday. (Full story)
"The administration has curtailed public access to that information which has been available to us for years," Jeffords said.
Jeffords caucuses with Democrats in the Senate. A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office said Jeffords, a longtime advocate of environmental issues, was "the logical person to carry the message" on the environment.
Jeffords cost the GOP its majority in the Senate when he quit the party in May 2001. But the Republicans will again control both houses when the 108th Congress convenes in January.
Jeffords said he hoped "moderates in both parties can do what we've done before: Stand up to block these anti-environmental initiatives and instead pursue policies that protect and respect our environment."
When he was a Republican, Jeffords delivered one of the opposition's weekly counterpoints during former President Bill Clinton's administration, discussing health care December 25, 1999.
According to a new Aberdeen Group report, open-source solution Linux has surpassed Windows as the most vulnerable OS, contrary to the high-profile press Microsoft's security woes receive. Furthermore, the Aberdeen Group reports that more than 50 percent of all security advisories that CERT issued in the first 10 months of 2002 were for Linux and other open-source software solutions. The report muddles the argument that proprietary software such as Windows is inherently less secure than open solutions. And here's another blow to the status quo: Proprietary UNIX solutions were responsible for just as many security advisories as Linux in the same time period. Could Windows be the most secure mainstream OS available today?
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"Open-source software, commonly used in many versions of Linux, UNIX, and network routing equipment, is now the major source of elevated security vulnerabilities for IT buyers," the report reads. "Security advisories for open-source and Linux software accounted for 16 out of the 29 security advisories--about one of every two advisories--published for the first 10 months of 2002. During this same time, vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft products numbered seven, or about one in four of all advisories."
The stunning report makes several claims that seem to fly in the face of widely accepted beliefs. First, the Aberdeen Group says that Windows-based Trojan horse attacks peaked in 2001, when CERT released six such advisories, then bottomed out this year, when CERT didn't issue any alerts. However, Trojan horse-based attacks on Linux, UNIX, and open-source projects jumped from one in 2001 to two in 2002. The Aberdeen Group says this information proves that Linux and UNIX are just as prone to Trojan horse attacks as any other OS, despite press reports to the contrary, and that Mac OS X, which is based on UNIX, is also vulnerable to such attacks. Even more troubling, perhaps, is the use of open-source software in routers, Web servers, firewalls, and other Internet-connected solutions. The Aberdeen Group says that this situation sets up these devices and software products to be "infectious carriers" that intruders can easily usurp.
According to the Aberdeen Group, the open-source community's claim that it can fix security vulnerabilities more quickly than proprietary developers can means little. The group says that the open-source software and hardware solutions need more rigorous security testing before they're released to customers. This statement is particularly problematic because many Linux distributions lack the sophisticated automatic-update technologies modern Windows versions contain.
We can rail against Microsoft and its security policies, but far more people and systems use Microsoft's software than the competition's software. I believe that we'll never know how secure Linux is, compared with Windows, until a comparable number of people and systems use Linux. But despite the fact that Linux isn't as prevalent as Windows, we're still seeing a dramatic increase in Linux security advisories today. I think the conclusion is obvious.
The mods are CENSORING this information! Please mod this up and show this info to the world!