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Linux Most Attacked Server?
Anonymous guy who can't remember his login sent in a story from the Globe And Mail that says "During August, 67 per cent of all successful and verifiable digital attacks against on-line servers targeted Linux, followed by Microsoft Windows at 23.2 per cent. A total of 12,892 Linux on-line servers running e-business and information sites were successfully breached in that month, followed by 4,626 Windows servers."
It's ironic that Microsoft provides that service for free, whereas Linux requires paying money. But it's good because at least here there's a clear way to make money off Free Software and keep programmers like me from going hungry.
John.
But think of how many more linux servers are out there than windows servers.......
The ratio of Windows workstations to Linux workstations has never stopped us from divining that the reason there are more viruses for Windows because of its ubiquity, not necessarily its security record.
Why should this be any different?
NO CARRIER
They claim a database of 280,000 attacks since 1995. They claim there were at least 18,000 attacks in August alone, or 6.5% of the total of 1% of their sample. Also, these numbers are meaningless without knowing the total population of each type of server. Oy!
I think it's time to break the statistics down application by application at that point. Show me some Apache vs. IIS numbers or MySQL vs. SQL Server numbers or exclude third party applications altogether please. For the record, I run both Windows and Linux for clients and servers and am pretty neutral in the whole OS wars thing. Each has their merits and uses, both need regular security maintenance and I am pretty much happy with both for very different reasons. I'm not a Linux zealot, but I know bad numbers when I smell them. And then...
So MS is shoring up third party applications then? They even go on to cite Sobig and MSBlast as the reasons for the high MS numbers. This is shifting over to a very FUD-like smell now.US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
So we can rail against MS for having an insecure operating system and flaunt Linux's proliferation in the market, and then dismiss that its because of Linux's dominance that more Linux systems are getting hacked. We should instead try to foster a more security mindeded friendly community to educate the Linux sysadmins out there. This is a problem, that should not be lightly dismissed. If there was a larger percentage of windows boxes out there would anyone say 'But think of how many more windows servers are out there than linux servers.......
Folks who have traditionally been Microsoft users, who have recently installed Linux on an old machine at home or maybe as dual-boot, who have little to no real experience or training with Unix-like systems or with particular open source servers, are going into to the business IT environment and installing Linux-based systems on the hype.
Sure they can get Apache webserver serving pages, they can get Tomcat doing "something", and they can certainly run XMMS quite well on their workstation, but they really have no clue how to properly use these technologies in a production environment.
They see switching to Linux-based systems as being a simple fix.
They aren't willing to extensively review their configuration or product documentation. They aren't willing to put in the significant amount of time that is in fact required to become experts with the technologies.
Yes, they certainly do get a kick out of telling their friends that they have "Linux boxes running their shop", but security suffers due to their naive incompetence.
These techs should be fired.
Open source development may be a "we'll get that feature done when we feel like it" affair, but deploying Linux-based systems in a production environment must not be.
If anything, effectively and securely deploying Linux-based solutions requires more training and knowledge than does deploying Microsoft.
Let's stop pretending otherwise.
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
"We should instead try to foster a more security mindeded friendly community to educate the Linux sysadmins out there. This is a problem, that should not be lightly dismissed."
You are right. I've read a lot of anti-MS babble here that has me a little spooked. Evidently, when Linux is more secure than Microsoft, the impression is generated that you can install a Linux based webserver and you're instantly secured. That's what I did. Being a Linux newb, I set up a Redhat/Apache server and within 2 weeks it was rooted. We had to have our sysadmin build us a new one. (It was a project for me to grow...)
It only takes one exploit to destroy your server. Vigilance is absolutely necessary on either platform. Maybe it's time to end the anti-MS pissing contest and focus on good practices in general for whatever OS you're using.
"Derp de derp."
Those are four facts leading to interesting quesitons :
Those probabilities should be pondered by the frequency of default installations, frequency of having an expert rather than a novice as the administrator, etc.
Thus, could someone not knowing which one to choose, and not knowing whether he is hiring an expert or not, rely on those statistics ?
From MI2g website:
So if a single ISP box gets hacked, they may count that as 100 linux sites hacked because of virtual hosting.
But even more important than their actual counting methods are where they get their data. Again, according to the same paper:
mi2g is principally reliant on data for SIPS and EVEDA from a number of sources:
reinsurance industry in Europe, North America and Asia. We have been involved in
pioneering cyber liability insurance cover for Lloyd's of London syndicates which has
given us access to case history since the late 1990s.
hackers who we use for penetration testing and developing our bespoke security
architecture that feed digital risk information through to us on a continuous basis
including vulnerabilities, exploits and the latest serious attacks they are aware of.
hacker groups.
So their highly informed executive manager friends seem to know when their linux systems get hacked versus their windows systems, they browse the web, looking at defacement sites and they converse with script kiddies via email. Umm, does anyone else see an issue with their data collection methods besides me?
If you don't yet, then let me give you a simple example. Let's say that I wanted to bias the results. Mmm
You can show me analyst reports by people like this all day long. In the end, this report bears no relation to what I see day to day in the real world.
Come on, where do they get these figures? In August alone:
From NetworkWoldFusion
The Blaster worm - also known as MSBlast or LoveSAN - has spread rapidly since it was first noticed on Monday. It has infected an estimated 188,000 systems running Microsoft operating systems, including Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 2003 and NT, that are unpatched for the so-called RPC vulnerability discovered last month, according to a security firm tracking the worm.
They didn't count them. Why? Most of them aren't servers, right? Well how did they differentiate Linux servers then? I bet they didn't -- did they check and only record RH Advanced Server and disregard all the RH Workstation. I doubt it. This is pure FUD by a place that has trouble with math.
I'm curious, was Slashdot afraid to put "Linux Most Breached Server?" in the headline? The stats were about most breached. The point wasn't who was most attacked. I guess that one word needed to be changed to soften the blow...
"Sufferin' succotash."