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.

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.