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Is Linux as Secure as We'd Like to Think?
man_of_mr_e asks: "With all the recent brouhaha about Blaster and Sobig, there's been a lot of talk about how poor Windows security is, especially compared to the Linux we all know and love. But is this really true? The website defacement archive at Zone-h shows that Linux accounts for 61% of the defacements in the last 24 hours (note, this figure changes, so it might be different when you view it). An analysis of the last few weeks of their archive shows a similar percentage of exploited Linux systems. Note also that the 'Unknown' category is rather high, and certainly contains at least some Linux systems, further increasing the percentage. Why is this? Are we just deluding ourselves about our own security? Could there be a Linux 'Blaster' just waiting to happen?" While "defacements" don't necessarily mean "root level break-in", sometimes getting your foot in the door is enough. If this happens, wouldn't Linux then be just as exploitable as Windows? Are there other reasons why the likelihood of a "Sobig" or an "ILUVYOU" would be lower for Linux than Windows?
Yes, I've ran into hobbyists running IIS for fun--by which I mean I discovered his CodeRed infected box on my network--but the cost of a Windows Server license is prohibitive of amateur use, even if plenty of people just pirate it. So in the end, the inexperienced users with no time to spend securing their boxes turn to RedHat with Apache and Sendmail. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. If I had to choose between Linux or Windows for which to leave alone without regular maintanance, the choice is pretty clear.
Unix is simply designed and developed much more with security and securability in mind.
From an old fart, I gotta take exception to that.
The design is from Multics, which is arguably secure, down to something that is doable on a departmental minicomputer. The design doesn't preclude some degree of security but all the emphasis is on getting something useful done. That said, Unix probably does manage to get the most useable security out of the fewest bits theoretically possible. I suspect that Unix is as simple as it can be and have any pretense to security.
NT does have security "features". It has lots of them, and they take lots of bits. They are stuck in strange places. If I have a lot of files to manage, I will not be using those features. I do a DIR. I see date and time and file size. No security information whatever. Must not be important.
Unix, if I do just an ls, just gives back the file names. If I do an ls -l to see dates and file sizes, back comes a mess of x's and hyphens. Must be important. Further, these are in my face every time I'm looking at files.
Multics was designed to be secure.
Unix wasn't.
Windows was designed to be able to claim the most "features"
Copy a directory from one place to another, where you don't have permission to read some of the files or write some of the targets.
Windows will give a pop-up and die when it runs into trouble.
Unix will copy what it can and give you the error messages with it dying breath.
Windows security. Even a little bit can be too much.
Unix security. I haven't seen it get in the way, and I haven't really got into groups yet. (Big gripe. I can't have NT users and groups with the same name. Stupid.)