The World's Safest Operating System

fredrikr writes "UK-based security firm mi2g has analyzed 17,074 successful digital attacks against servers and networks. The results are a bit surprising. The BSD OSes (including FreeBSD and Mac OS X) proved to be the systems least likely to be successfully cracked, while Linux servers were the most vulnerable. Linux machines suffered 13,654 successful attacks, or 80 percent of the survey total. Windows based servers enjoyed a sharp decline in successful breaches, with only 2,005 attacks."

Comments

AHAHAHAHHA LIN0X SUCX

[Debillitatus]

Ok, the title is a flame, but I think there is something to be recognized here. Linux is, in some ways, a vulnerable OS. I have worked in a couple of difference environments where Linux was the norm. In different situations, the level of adminstration was of different quality. And it seemed to me that our systems were actually quite vulnerable when the administration was bad. (not to mention stability and ease-of-use)

So, I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Linux is horribly inconsistent, and can be much worse than Windows, at its worst.

Did they figure in the "stupid factor" ?

[pair-a-noyd]

Company executive chairman DK Matai said: "The swift adoption of Linux last year within the online government and non-government server community, coupled with inadequate training and knowledge on how to keep that environment secure when running vulnerable third party applications, has contributed to a consistently higher proportion of compromised Linux servers. Migration to Open Source can be fool's gold without adequate training and understanding of the impact that third party applications have on overall safety and security."

Well, let's see here.

1. Government. Stupid is as stupid does.
2. Inadequate training.
3. Inadequate knowledge.

Three strikes and you're out. The VAST majority of government workers are NOT highly educated people, and as a matter of fact, most of them are former welfare workers placed into government jobs to get them off the welfare log books.

When you factor in all these things you should expect the results they came up with.

But I say this, you put a GOOD, trained, educated, and skilled sys admin behind those same Linux systems and those numbers will flip.

Come on!

[chadruva]

They didn't take in count all the popular windows viruses out there, this is not quite objetive.

If you expose a Linux machine to the internet, is unlikly that it will get cracked, and this can be better if you keep up to date all important software and don't run stupid things as ROOT or have running unecesary services.

Now if you put a Windows Machine on the internet, is likly that it will get a virus or will crash. Tought if you keep your machine updated it can be safe for a while, until the new exploit gets out, or M$ locks your machine for ever.

The problem for the masses is not hackers (i don't think there is enough hackers to crack all the servers out there one by one), but viruses and other exploits out there, this is where windows is very vulnerable, anyone remember the RPC problem? it will shutdown your windows box and you don't even need to touch it.

Re:What if Windows were found most vulnerable?

[jedidiah]

Linux may have it's problems. However, it is still more secure than WinDOS. A cabal of liars that masquerade as "researchers" does not alter the facts.

Claiming that FreeBSD is more secure than Linux is simply not news.

Claiming that Win32 is more secure than Linux is simply absurd.

Re:Linux != single OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, yet another brain-damaged Linux apologist. Face it, Open Source Software is not as secure as you people would like to think it is. There is nothing wrong with admitting your product needs work. We won't think any less of you for it. Now if developers spent as much time writing software as they did extolling the virtues of OSS and trying to become whores to the mainstream, they would have a more secure product on their hands.

You people are fucking morons when comes to securi

[0xfc]

really now, unless u found a bug in linux in the last year or two why not shut your pie hole? You have no opinion that counts. You cannot write exploit code, you borrow it.

Oh yea well i admin this and that. So fucking what? You dont hack. plain and simple. you dont know how except for what others publish.

Slashdot, meaning 99% of you, shut the fuck up.

security is so meaningless now days. when people like you spout such nonsense about it.

bias?

[ShadowRage]

funny seeing this kind of article...

as I recall, windows has been slammed with more junk and exploited in the past few months, how accurate is this survey?
are they counting from day one or the past year?

honestly to me, seeing this coming from a mac site, where most mac fanboys are heavily biased, and biased against whatever is going to be their next rival, it wouldnt surprise me if this article was a le, though I bet the linux stats arent far off because there are so many n00bs that go over to linux, run a box, dont secure it because linux zealots tell them it's secure, giving them an impression that they dont have to do shit to secure it, or they run everything as root, and say "well, no one will hack me." it's the matter of the windows users who didnt secure windows, not securing linux, and running all the "cool" server stuff.

however, I question the merit of that study.
noting how linux recently topped apple's marketshare on the desktop front, now linux is a threat, and since it has muscle, why not make it look really bad compared to windows and "befriend" windows a bit in this study?

I'm theorizing, but I think more distros need to add firewalling security policies (ones a normal user can understand) and asked what kind of system they'll be running on the install (desktop and entertainment or server or both) on the more newbie friendly systems, not to mention they didnt name a specific distro, another classic case of someone not understanding linux.they assume it's just an operating system like windows or mac.
which distros did they look at or test? redhat? mandrake? systems that dont put good security up for a public server in the first place? (which most new users like using?)

gimme a damn break.

My server is secure...

[ToadMan8]

I run Apache under Win 95 - It's so easy to crack it's no fun so no one bothers.

Seriously though I'm glad the gist of the comments around here are "fun with statistics" and the like; that is certainly correct.

Linux for what? They are all theives.

[John Seminal]

Most Linux folks are asshole, people who can not balance a checkbook but can figure out how the orbit of jupiter affects the earth. Some are good people, but most are jerks cause they never hit the pussy, like a confused nigger learning algebra. The pain, oh god the pain! It must suck to be 30something and know more about the computer box than a real box. What? RTFM? Oh, the MAN pages you never got in your subscription to hustler? Lemme guess i+1 = creamed panties? Instead, lets make it as hard as possible. At least Gates got laid, and made an easy system that a monkey could set up out of the box. Just imagine how much of an asshole he would have turned out if he never got laid. For all we know, he could be sitting in his momma' basement writing viruses. Pussies, your all a bunch of faggot pussies. Get a life. Cause I am doing my part. Whenever I see a nerd in daylight I kick the shit out of em. Nerds, don't let the sun set before you get out of town.

HOW DO YOU DO? MY NAME IS SUE. NOW YOU GONNA DIE!!!