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CCIA Urges Dept. of Homeland Security to Avoid Microsoft
An anonymous reader writes "The Inquirer has posted an article reporting that the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) has urged the US Department of Homeland Security, in an open letter to Tom Ridge, secretary of the department, to avoid using Microsoft software because Microsoft's software is 'riddled with obvious and easily exploited vulnerabilities.'"
Things are never that cut&dry.
Linux has more market share than Windows in the server market, yet Windows has a disproportionally higher frequency of reported critical OS flaws.
A quick look at About CCIA lists the following:
Our member companies range from Sun Microsystems, Fujitsu, Nokia, Nortel Networks, Tantivy, Time Domain, and Vion to AT&T, Verizon, NTT USA, Oracle, Intuit, Yahoo!, Sabre, and AOL
Its the who's who of MS competition.
This line--that Windows has the largest market share in worms and viruses because Windows has the largest market share--was trotted out in the last few weeks during the peak of the Sobig and Blaster activity, and routinely shot down. The problem is inherent design flaws, not market share. Many have pointed out that unix-type OSes run the majority of critical Internet services, and by the market-share argument, these services should be the subject of continual attack. And yet they are not.
In short, this argument that greater adoption of unix-type OSes by the masses will result in more unix-type worms and viruses is nothing short of FUD.
Have a look at Mac's Immunity to Recent Virus Attacks which came about in response to an article posted on MacCentral on this topic. In sum, some columnist repeated the assertion that "Macs have "no more inherent security" than their PC counterparts, it's just that they've failed "to capture interest" among the creators of these viruses." This post is fairly representative of many, and makes clear the vulnerabilities of Windows are real, stem from technical reasons, and not just market share.
Mac OS X is the subject of the links above because that is where my interests lie, but the jist of the arguements could apply to any unix-type OS
To reduce crime, make fewer things against the law.
"Besides, if anyone truly believes that more security-related bugs are found in windows than in linux, they must not be subscribed to the debian-security mailing list. 23 new announcements in august alone."
All bugs in Linux, whether exploitable or not, whether severe or merely cosmetic, whether dangerous or merely annoying (or just plain non-optimal), are publicly announced and fixed at the time they are found.
Microsoft publicly announces only a small fraction of the known bugs and security problems found in its products. If Microsoft were to be as thorough in its security announcements and fixes, you would be inundated with 8 new announcements, if not more, per hour, every day, for the rest of your life.