Slashdot Mirror
Windows Virus Takes Out Gov't Agencies in MD, PA
Zolzar writes "Looks like the Md. State Motor Vehicles Administration is the first government agency reporting a failure of their systems due to the recent virus." This is a more specific story about the outage. And the city of Philadelphia has suffered as well.
Don't try and defend this with Microsoft-bashing. What he's done is illegal and dangerous. Mod me down, fascists.
I mean... who on Earth would expose a Windows machine to the internet...
Troll or not... it seems to be just common sense with 8 years of data to back it up.
I fail to see how issues like this show that windows is fundamentally insecure.
- The patch came out a month ago.
- They have 90% of the marketshare, so one would assume that 90% of the viruses created are written to target exploits on Windows.
- They have 90% of the marketshare, so one would assume that people who spend their time looking for security holes will spend 90% looking at Windows.
If Linux had 90% marketshare and was used mostly by people who don't patch, like Windows is, I fail to see how architectually Linux would be more immune to this type of attack than Windows is. The reason this doesn't happen with Linux is not because it's oh so superior to Windows software wise but because it's used by less people (less rate of infection, less motivation for hackers to write viruses), and the people who use it are competent enough with computers to make sure their stuff is patched and healthy.
The people who run Linux at home or in the office didn't get this virus because their Windows machines were patched. Why do you think that is?
--