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Security Statistics and Operating System Conventional Wisdom
kev0153 writes "Microsoft Windows is more secure than you think, and Mac OS X is worse than you ever imagined. That is according to statistics published for the first time this week by Danish security firm Secunia. "Secunia is now displaying security statistics that will open many eyes, and for some it might be very disturbing news," said Secunia chief executive Niels Henrik Rasmussen. "The myth that Mac OS X is secure, for example, has been exposed." "
...where MS wants you to use Firefox and Mac OS X is less secure than Windows!
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
We would all like to thank the millions of dollars Microsoft invested in our research to bring it to the successful conclusion.
It took us a couple of tries to get the results so that they would give us the right answer, but eventually we figured out a way. Microsoft kept funding us all along the way.
Thank you!
If you trace the money, there wont be much suprise in who it leads back too.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Until LanManager authentication is totally removed (not just turned off) from Windows, Windows will not be secure. There are just too many exploits involving LM authentication to take Windows seriously.
right?
Stand clear of the doors. The doors are now closing.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find that this "Secunia" derives funding from a common source with SCO.
Would be nice to see how many of these *potential* exploits resulted in actual malware/hackers using them.
Just because the potential is there doesn't mean these holes have exploits running in the wild.
It's a risk thing...Windows exploits are *more* likely to be exploited than Solaris ones, but that doesn't mean the Solaris ones won't be exploited (cf a couple of super computer centers getting hacked!)
...and everyone says that Microsoft is paying Secunia to do this, etc. (like with AdTI, though AdTI really is getting funding from MSFT, different story), read this: http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/32370.html
It seems that it was Secunia which released lots of IE bugs, and that Microsoft has had scuffles with them before. Unless someone here has evidence that they got funding from MSFT since then, don't say that.
The Mac and Linux communities need to accept the fact that Windows, however much you might HATE Microsoft, is more secure.
How many independent reports have we seen that come to the same conclusion? 10? 20? The head in the sand approach won't work. The "Microsoft Shill" theory doesn't hold water.
No, it is time for the Linux community to address these issues and bring Linux back up to the level of Windows.
And by the way, I'm a cybersecurity consultant, so I know what I'm talking about.
Each product is broken down into pie charts demonstrating how many, what type and how significant security holes have been in each.
FINALLY, someone who knows about pie charts, its so clear now, absolutlely no fud can be present in pie charts..
Lets be positive. I'm trying to rtfa but I keep having to do my 'chants' to get over the fud-ish language.
Maybe there's something in this,.. when I find some actually 'stuff' I'll get back to you.
from the article: "The Micorsoft Windows application is more secure than you think..."
...everybody can fuck around with her, while paying.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Looking at my email inbox, I see a ton of junk generated by the Windows virus/worm of the week. Looking at my firewall logs, I see very little probing for any of the Unix exploits.
When the difference in use of exploits is an order of magnitude or two higher for the 'doze stuff, it's hard to see how a mere "count of vulerabilities fixed" means much at all. The basic design differences between unix and 'doze are profound, which is why the 'doze exploits do so well.
If a sysadmin is lazy and security unaware, he will ALWAYS be cracked into and exploited regardless of the OS system used, Windows Linux whatever. At the same time if he is vigulant and security aware he will unlikely to be seriously cracked and his systems will be stable, again regardless of the OS involved.
What I have found is that managing Linux properly is a lot easier and cheaper than managing the Windows OS's properly due to the better OS design in philosophy and security, and attitude of the OS maintainers.
THAT to me is what is relevant.
Web Sig: Eddy Currents
The facts are hard to look at, yet we all know that Linux, despite opinions to the contrary, has suffered from system holes. And to be quite frank, the fact that Mac OSX is leaking like a swiss cheeze should not come as a surprise to anyone.
Linux is fallaible, but at least with open source we can find bugs and get rid of them quick, without waiting for patches. Windows is not as bad as OS X in this regard either.
I find the statement Linux suppliers took longer to release patches. Is that true? I know security consious admins will patch themselves but is it true that vendors will igorne minoe bugs?
Perhaps this is what the MS reps meant when they said Linux was becoming morew like windows.
May the Maths Be with you!
I can't see it metnioned in the article, and neither can I find the relevant stuff at secunia.com, but this is the first question I want to answered before I spend another 10 seconds on this: do the numbers actually compare Windows with RedHat/SuSE stripped down to what a plain Windows install does, or do they yet again include all the security advisories for the 3.000 (or whatever) packages included with the distros?
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Mac OS X does not stand out as particularly more secure than the competition, according to Secunia.
The proportion of critical bugs was also comparable with other software - 33% of the OS X vulnerabilities were "highly" or "extremely" critical by Secunia's reckoning, compared with 30% for XP Professional and 27% for SLES 8 and just 12% for Advanced Server 3. OS X had the highest proportion of "extremely critical" bugs at 19%.
Oh, okay, well, by MY reckoning, none of the OS X vulnerabilities were "highly" or "extremely" critical, therefore by MY reckoning, OS X is the most secure of them all!
These studies analyze the statistics of the security advisories and attempt to draw conclusions. I don't see the value of it.
Here's what I do: I just *assume* that all operating systems and software is insecure (unless djb wrote it, heh). After all, I'm constantly updating FreeBSD, Gentoo, and Windows, all the time, anyway.
Since it only takes ONE show-stopper bug to let in an attacker, it really doesn't matter to me how *many* bugs each OS has.
In my experience, the easiest OS to upgrade is OS X. However I don't manage any production OS X servers, just my own computers, so take that with a grain of salt.
Next easiest is Gentoo. You can upgrade just the components you need, BUT it's a little hard to separate the security fixes from the non-security fixes (they are working on that though).
Next is FreeBSD. Like Gentoo, it's hard to pick out just the security updates, but they are working on that too. Rebuilding the base OS is time-consuming and risky, so FreeBSD gets a mark for that.
Next is Windows. Too GUI-oriented, and service packs are too complex and cause breakage.
However we do manage to keep all machines up to date and implement layered security (firewall, network IDS, host IDS [tripwire], remote syslog, log monitoring.......)
Use VMS!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
These are the statistics that really matter:
Secunia Virus Statistics
Of course you'll notice the common Win32. in front of all of them.
This research tells you nothing about how secure an OS is. The number of security advisories has a lot to do with how diligent the OS manufacturer is in informing the public about security problems. For all we know Apple could just be a lot better about airing its dirty laundry than microsoft. I would assume that due to the open source model, the statistcs on SUSE were fairly accurate.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
One problem with counting only advisories is simply that there are different levels of transparency to users and developers among Windows XP, Linux, Solaris, and Mac OS X. One thing the study doesn't mention (which is unknowable, so they conveniently brush it off as unimportant) is how many covered-up or known-only-by-crackers vulnerabilities exist in each platform.
Also, why didn't the study mention OpenBSD? What about default configurations? Where the documented vulnerabilities always relevant or were they very obscure (e.g., service X used by three people in Greenland)?
I think this article smells biased.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
That OS X doesn't have any network service running when first installed!!.. Nothing, nada, zilch, zippo.. In order to get exploited you need to have something running that accepts connections.. The default install of the Mac OS X doesn't have a thing. Where as Windows has way too much enabled and exposed.. Most linux systems now days, while they may have some things running, most are only listenting to the internal host (not accessible outside the computer) and they default enable the firewall.
Somebody explain to me how this article supports the claims that have been based on it.
``Windows XP Professional saw 46 advisories in 2003-2004, with 48% of vulnerabilities allowing remote attacks and 46% enabling system access, Secunia said.
<snip>
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 8 had 48 advisories in the same period, with 58% of the holes exploitable remotely and 37% enabling system access.
<snip>
Mac OS X does not stand out as particularly more secure than the competition, according to Secunia.
Of the 36 advisories issued in 2003-2004, 61% could be exploited across the internet and 32% enabled attackers to take over the system.''
So, Windows XP and SLES had about the same number of vulnerabilities, but SLES manages to keep them out of the vital parts better. Mac OS X has had significantly (about 30%) fewer vulnerabilities, with the percentage of vulnerabilities leading to system level access on par with SLES.
What this says to me is that _if_ the detection ratio for all systems is the same (which I don't believe, but without this assumption, you can't say anything), WinXP is the worst, and OS X the most secure. This is exactly opposite to what is claimed.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Statistics don't change the facts that after running Mac OS X since it's inception, I've not had one OS X virus, or any of these exploits used against my machines. And the stats don't take into account not just how quickly a patch is released, but how quickly the users of that OS patch it.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
Secunia, IMHO, is a respectable security source.
I admonish the following:
Security databases are largely fed with information from people working on open source code. It is much easier to find a logic fault in source code than to notice a bug and reverse engineer its origin in proprietary code. When I mangle entries for security databases the majority are for open source code. By and large the security databases are weighted in such a fashion that makes open source code look less secure.
When I last looked at my Windows Update history on my machine at work, there were no fewer than 10 security patches and, going to the MS website, each one patched several security holes in this/that/the other. None of these will ever be documented in databases like Secunia because MS doesn't release the technical information. Secunia only lists the exploits which users in the field have found and submitted.
So relax, people. The article may be inflammatory and perhaps the head of Secunia should be shoulder-checked for 3 hours straight on the soccer field, but the Linux OS is still outperforming the competition.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
as a Mac OSX user I have to defend my lil OS that could.
This poll does not take into affect the time to resolution, effect of exploit, and how hard it was to actually perform the exploit. Honestly, all software has bugs, all software has exploits it is the result of those exploits that I am more concerned with. Quite often Apple finds and fixes exploits before their are programs in the wild to exploit them. The same goes for Open-Source software which I am sure that some of the OSX advisories were a result of given Apples embrace of OSS.
Ask an Apple user how many Viruses, pop-ups, and unexplained daemons they have had on their system. The number will almost always be 0.
The study compares security alerts between OSes, but one problem with that is that at least under Linux vendors not only release alerts for the core OS, but for applications as well.
If The Gimp has a security issue a Linux vendor will issue an alert for it.
If Photoshop has a security issue, MS won't inform you.
Also most alerts I see for Linux are pro-active, someone finding a bug that may be exploitable. Most alerts I see for MS are reactive, pluging a hole that has been exploited. That's the primary difference between open and closed source software. Not the number of bugs found, but when they're found and how fast they get fixed.
I would be far more interested to hear, on the MacOs example for instance, how Apple responded to its security holes and how that compared to those of Microsoft or the Linux community.
Oxford Dictionaries Online
90% of security is the administrator. So it really doesnt matter how secure the 'system' is as a good admin can make most anything secure.
That said, most 'windows admins' are home users ( by percentage ) that have NO clue what they are doing...
Home *nix admins tend to have more clue..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They're just counting bug fixes. And counting how many are labeled critical. Well, that still doesn't factor in, at all, how easy it is to exploit. Fact is, if you try to run a system level program on Mac OSX, it STILL will ask for admin password. So a program can't be run on your machine in kernel space without your knowledge. Windows seems to have been made for just this purpose. This study is laughable. It's just a count the bug fixes garbage. Linux has more fixes and updates because open source is more honest. How often have we heard of M$ waiting six months to release fixes that they knew about? How many holes are there that the public doesn't know about?
Once again, we have someone comparing Windows with RedHat, while not taking into account that RedHat is comprised of many many additional applications that don't have equivalents in the Windows install. Not to mention many server applications (Apache, bind, sendmail, rsync, etc.) that enable the remote access that many of the security vulnerabilities use. I would wager that OS X is in a similar situation (when compared with Windows).
Let's have one of these companies do a real test. Where they take a Windows install, and then a RedHat (or SuSE) install crafted to match it as closely as possible. No servers, Mozilla installed on the Linux system. Just the basics. Then count the vulnerabilities. It will tell a much different story.
-Todd
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
In research, it's vital to differentiate between correlation and mechanism. Stating that Linux and Mac OS/X are less secure than Windows based on kindergarten-level integer comparison is correlation: i.e. following/duplicating superficial attributes of known objects in hope of getting the same results in other objects. This is almost always baseless and useless. It's more important to undertand the underlying hidden reasons, or mechanisms: Windows security problems stem from awful designs in OS, such as integration of all sorts of applications into kernel space for speed acceleration. Whilst Linux and Mac OS/X security problems are mostly from mis-configurations.
Different suppliers report vulnerabilities differently. Consider every "cumulative update" you've seen, and every "multiple vulnerabilities in $product" advisory from CERT. A supplier which is more honest and meticulous about vulnerability reporting may have more advisories but better security -- while one which batches up several bugs in a single advisory will underreport.
A system which includes more software may have more advisories, even though most advisories do not affect most computers running that system. In Windows, a database server is a separate product whose advisories would not be counted against "Windows". Many Linux systems include at least two database servers, but they are not turned on by default. If a hole in MS SQL doesn't count against Windows, should one in mySQL count against Red Hat?
Unpatched vulnerabilities may go for months without the release of an official advisory. For instance, a number of holes in Internet Explorer have been known and discussed within the security community well in advance of any official advisory from Microsoft.
Systems which have better default system-wide security settings (e.g. packet filtering, services turned off by default) may have all kinds of "vulnerabilities" that can't actually be exploited. For instance, Mac OS X includes OpenSSH, but it's turned off until the user asks for it. A hole in OpenSSH cannot be exploited on a default-install Mac system.
Leaving it up to the supplier to decide if something is a "vulnerability" or a "feature" leads to underreporting. Take CD autorun, for instance, which allows the installation of spyware when a (mostly-)audio CD is inserted into a Windows PC. A security-conscious user regards this as a vulnerability, but the supplier regards it as a beneficial feature.
Some of the most common attacks -- such as viruses -- rely on social engineering, and on "features" that are not classed as "vulnerabilities". However, these attacks are also more prominent on some systems than on others. Any comparative assessment of security which discounts the most common attacks blinds itself to a wide segment of the security landscape.
This came up on OSNews a while back.
They count security patches from MS as 1 when they were actually patching 14 vulnerabilities.
They also didn't include the vulnerabilities in IE - which alone had nearly as many as OS X.
Their conclusion would be very different if they actually knew how to count.
It is nothing more than FUD dressed up as research.
Peace
Friends, it's clear from Secunia's own data that we should all switch back to MacOS 9, since Secunia knows of only one security issue for that OS.
Friends, you just can't argue with pie charts.
Secunia is simply saying this to "show" that they are not "anti-Windows zealots." I haven't heard much about OS X servers being cracked, and the only viruses created for OS X have been non-replicating proofs of concept. Moreover, no OS X program can screw up your system unless YOU GIVE IT YOUR ADMIN PASSWORD-- and hopefully you have your personal data backed up anyhow, as hardware failure hits when you least expect it.
Even on an administrator account, you can't screw up the operating system without a chance to bail out at a password prompt. Try that on Windows.
Browsing through Secunia's Site doesn't reveal too much regarding the report mentioned in the article. The links to the vendor's security pages do show that Apple, Suse, and others list vulnerabilities and security issues for products not developed by the particular company. Apple lists Apache, OpenSSH, rsync, and others. Since most Linux and BSD operating systems report security vulnerabilities in third party applications. Thus listing Suse and Redhat as having 48 and 50 vulnerabilities respectively 57 of them are probably the same vulnerabilities.
In my experience Microsoft only lists security vulnerabilities for their own products. With the methods used in these statistics vulnerabilities and the open source community are probably overcounted many many times over.
Secunia is probably just trying to get attention.
From the products page of the Secunia web-site:
All modern OS's suck from a security standpoint. Why? Because we've only really GIVEN A FUCK about security for the last half a decade or so. Before that 99% of the worlds PCs were by
I don't know just where you were living, but Unix and Linux grew up on networked systems where multiple college students shared the same machines (well, Linux less than Unix here) because they were too expensive. Actually, Linux is almost an accidental beneficiary here. Linux used Unix as a role-model, and Unix grew up being attacked by hackers who wanted to play Space-Invaders or Cave or Hunt the Wumpus when their school accounts wouldn't cover it. And by Phd candidates trying for a few more runs on their thesis project. It's true these weren't *remote* exploits. They were local ones...where the attacker didn't have priviledged access. But that's the basis of all security. Once you do that, all you have to do is make remote connections a special case of local access.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
XP Professional: 46 advisories in 2003-2004
48% remote attack
46% granting system access
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 8 had 48 advisories in the same period,
58% remote attack
37% granting system access
Red Hat's Advanced Server 3 had 50 advisories in the same period - despite the fact that counting only began in November of last year.
66% remote attack
25% granting system access
Mac OS X 36 advisories
61% remote attackers
32% granting system access
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Emphasis mine.
Were not talking solid numbers, but numbers made by personal opinion. What is 'critical'?
MS can butter up the numbers so none of their holes are 'critical' if they so desire. So can anyone else.
how many exploitable vulnerabilities have been discovered in their kernel in the last 12 months?
No one needs to exploit the Windows kernel because, typically, the user running the application has sufficient priveleges to accomplish the goal of the attacker. In that sense the Windows kernel just lets them right on in.
This would work just as well under any *NIX system that had vulnerable applications
I don't allow non-root users to execute sendmail. They can't modify my firewall rules or change network settings. Normal users can't add routes or change gateways. Normal users cannot see system configuration files or add network shares with executable code which can modify system data. These are all things that the Linux system has which Windows doesn't.
And I'm going to remind you what my earlier post said: Secunia and other security databases are stocked primarily with vulns from the open source community because Microsoft does not give Secunia the technical details behind every MS security patch. Check your installed update history on any Win2k/ME machine. There should be, by no, no fewer than ten "security patches". Each one of those patches fixes three to five vulns each. Yet not a single one of those security patches is listed in Secunia's database because MS isn't kind enough to provide the world with the details.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
But if you want to have as much security by default as is possible, there's always OpenBSD.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Firstly, this article is a summary of some other set of statistics. These summaries are usually horrible since the writers really don't understand statistics. Things never add up to 100%, and one quote often refers to a slightly different way of calculating things than another.
I don't know tons about security, so I read this with an open mind. But I KNOW some things are wrong:
I haven't read Forrester's research, so I would like to see it. (anybody know a link?) OSS is definitely faster at releasing patches. We see that time and time again. Perhaps they were comparing how long it took for the vendors like Red Hat to ship product updates for Apache, or put them on their web sites? But if I installed Apache, I don't look to Suse or Red Hat or Mandrake for my updates, I look to apt-get or apache.org. Of course, MS claims that all exploits come from MS patches anyway. (Which is proven not to be true on a weekly basis).
Lastly, the article rebuff's itself in the final quote:
Even though that is the basis for the article's comparisons. lol!Telnetd is removed from all modern Linux distribution default installs. Also, telnet doesn't have much exploits as such, it's just that it is not encrypted.
Clearly, the article is simply saying that all the OSes are equally insecure.
But the article doesn't mention that Secunia is stocked primarily with vuln information which comes from the open source sector. Vuln information from the proprietary sector is reliant on the proprietary company releasing all of the properly arranged information to make a proper entry in Secunia's database. In the OSS community, every single vuln in every single patch which you got from Windowsupdate would receive a separate entry. It doesn't because MS doesn't collaborate to create these entries. By default the Secunia database is light on actual vulns for MS-Windows. Primarily the vulnerabilities in Secunia's database which are relevent to Windows will focus on third-party software manufacturers.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Unrepentant Mac Apologism time! It seems that there are some "statistics" flying around that can be interpreted to mean that Mac OS X is, practically speaking, no more secure than Windows, and we certainly can't let that sort of stuff go unchecked, now, can we? Whether it's true or not, we mean. So we feel it's our sworn duty to cast all sorts of aspersions on the reliability of said stats and on the character and competence of those who compiled them. Of course, you'll have to keep in mind that absolutely nothing we say on the subject carries any weight whatsoever, since, far from being experts on computer security, our real expertise is in the field of making vegetables out of Play-Doh. (Corn on the cob is our specialty. We can get it all bumpy and everything.) However, while we're not security experts, we've seen one on TV; surely that counts for something.
Anyway, it's like this: faithful viewer C. J. Corbett tipped us off to a Techworld article last week with the ominous title of "Mac OS X security myth exposed" which leads off with this oh-so-fair-and-balanced sentence: "Windows is more secure than you think, and Mac OS X is worse than you ever imagined." See, security firm Secunia claims to have compiled some honest-to-goodness statistics proving once and for all that choosing Mac OS X over Windows is your surest path to having some scary 'net dude invade your system, swipe your financial data, and start leering at digital photos of your family members in an... unsavory manner.
How is this possible? Well, numbers don't lie, and while Windows XP Professional clocked "46 advisories in 2003-2004, with 48 percent of vulnerabilities allowing remote attacks and 46 percent enabling system access," Mac OS X racked up 36 such advisories, with 61 percent remotely exploitable and 32 percent allowing the takeover of the system. See? Worse than you ever imagined. It's like a wedge of Swiss cheese with a shotgun blast through the middle or something. Meanwhile, Windows users will no doubt be thrilled to hear that their virus-ridden, spyware-loaded, worm-propagating systems are more secure than they think. Good for them.
There are just a few problems with this argument, however. The first is the claim that Mac OS X isn't much better than Windows XP Professional because it had 36 security advisories compared to Windows's 46. Maybe we're fresh off the turnip truck or something, but 22% fewer advisories sounds quite a bit better to us. Also, if you actually look at the data to which Techworld refers, it's not 36 advisories for Mac OS X at all; it's 33. (Apparently Techworld decided to go back to 2002 to fetch its reported number.) Granted, the Windows number is also 45 instead of 46-- yeesh, Techworld; fact-check much?-- but even so, now we're talking about nearly 27% fewer security advisories for Mac OS X than for Windows XP Professional.
Now take a look at the advisories themselves, and notice how no fewer than eleven of those 33 advisories (that's a third, for the mathematically inept) are titled "Mac OS X Security Update Fixes Multiple Vulnerabilities" or something similar. Yes, in its advisory count, Secunia is including those advisories it generated just to report that Apple had fixed something. Does anyone else find it a little odd that Secunia penalizes Apple for fixing problems, including ones that were fixed so quickly that Secunia had never found out about them in the first place? (While they may describe a flaw and immediately note the presence of a patch, none of the Windows advisories appears to exist simply to announce that Redmond had fixed a bunch of holes.)
Notice also that Secunia yaps on about how, for Mac OS X, "of the 36 advisories issued in 2003-2004, 61 percent could be exploited across the Internet and 32 percent enabled attackers to take over the system"-- but never mentions how many could be exploited across the Internet to enable attackers to take over the system. Personally, we aren't much concerned about exploits that require local access to a Mac, because if any
In the Forrester report referenced in that article, they only STARTED counting from the time Microsoft PUBLICLY admitted to a problem.
x .h tml
.rpm 24 hours later...
Which, in many cases, was when Microsoft had a patch ready.
But www.eeye.com had reported security holes to Microsoft for MONTHS before a patch was made available.
In other words, if Microsoft NEVER admitted PUBLICLY to a security hole, that security hole would NEVER be counted in the Forrester report.
http://www.eeye.com/html/research/upcoming/inde
For the current listing.
With Open Source software, the vulnerability is usually discussed on the mailing list.
So, if a hole is discovered in Linux, and discussed on the mailing list and a patch is released 48 hours later.....
And then Red Hat releases a
Forrester would count that as a 3 day delay.
You take the medium threat from www.eeye.com that is 49 days overdue (actually informed 109 days ago) and Microsoft releases a patch the same day Microsoft admits to the hole....
Forrester would count that a 1 day or less delay.
This article is complete garbage. Comparing proportions means nothing - particularly since they always add up to 100%! What matters is the actual number of exploits, and how likely they are to occur. The parent is absolutely right.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Just looking at the number of critical issues for an operating system is absurd. What about default configuration? OS X by default does not listen on any network ports. Scan a Windows XP system and you'll see MANY ports, including 137, 138, 139, and 445 - the NetBIOS services that are typically exploited by attackers. With those services you can launch remote password guessing and other attacks against the base system.
On anoter note, how about we tally the number of viruses and trojans for the different operating systems? This is one of the most important security problems facing businesses today. Gee, I think we'll see a MUCH different ratio for OS X vs. Windows XP.
I can't stand it when a security company comes up with skewed statistics in an effort to get press and web hits. The comparison of only the number and type of vendor bulletins is not an effective measurement of OS security.
Interesting time to publish this - right between last week's IIS/IE multiple exploits and this week's Evaman Worm outbreak.
Now that CERT and the Dept. of Homeland Security both recommend consumers abandon Intenet Explorer, can we get them to recommend dropping Outlook Express?
I wondet what would be the Secunia diagnosis in this case:
Patient A's clinical history:
Headache
Influenza
A small scar in his hace
A broken arm
Patient B:
Stomach cancer
Which of the two patients is in a worse state? According to Secunia, patient A would be really bad, he has three lines in his medical record!!!!
Amazing, indeed
I haven't seen it mentioned yet but it should be pointed out that virtually everything in Unix or Mac OS X "could be exploited across the internet". A temporary file bug in gzip could be exploited across the internet. A bug in automake could be exploited across the internet.
How many of these "over the network" holes can be done by somebody without an account? If the number of those in both OS X and Linux combined, covering the range of software that comes with Windows, is more than two or three then that would be a newsworth story. What this story is really saying is that even though you can't do squat remotely in Windows there's still a huge number of remote exploits.
Somehow, the rest of your post does not support, and seems to contradict, your initial statement.
A "respectable security source" that knowingly mis-counts vulnerabilities and then publishes an inflammatory "report" based upon such?
That sounds like the opposite of "respectable" to me.
I was looking at Secunia's Virus Info Page .. right under the graph it says "Based on Information delivered by BullGuard".
That set off a few bells... Know what BullGuard is? It's spyware that happens to come bundled with Kazaa. Amusingly, you can see BullGuard on Kazaa's *cough* No Spyware Policy Page, where they try to pretend that their bundled software isn't spyware.
http://cltracker.net -- powerful craigslist multi-city search
There are two major things wrong with this article, which have been touched on by other posters. One is that the number of vulnerabilities is different than the number of advisories, because advisories can cover multiple vulnerabilities.
The second is that (as other posters have covered) Linux distributors post advisories and bug fixes for all software bundled with their distribution, not just the kernel and core libraries. Looking at the list of MS Windows XP advisories, all I see are the core components, with the glaring omission of Internet Explorer (which these days is in fact a core component of the operating system).
For those of you still on a Microsoft platform: I've heard that L0phtcrack works wonders reversing an LM hash on modern hardware.
I've used LC and you're right, it works pretty well. It's also ungodly expensive and the serial number is tied to your hardware, so using it on another machine requires tech support "blessing". LC5 is licensed in truly bizarre ways, and did I mention that it's ungodly expensive?
For the same or better brute forcing speed, lower cost, no hassles moving to another machine, and generally a more polite program, try SamInside Best $40 LM hash cracker around.
Now for a "free" instant password cracker, use Rainbow Tables, a db of password/hashes that does all the brute forcing up front. For details, check out my journal. I'm soliciting participants to help generate the 128GB of data needed. Other than the pain of generating and storing all that data, it's free and extremely fast.
How many of OSX's exploits were still exploitable when behind a firewall?
The problem with Windows is exploits in IE and Outlook/Outlook Express.
In the XP stats they show one advisory for IE. But looking at the exploits statistics on the same website you find that the one Microsoft application by itself has about as many exploits as other competing operating systems and all their applications combined:
secunia.com/product/11/
Sorry Windows lovers, its time to face the facts, your OS of choice and associated applications are a haven for worms and viruses not because there are so many of you, its because the software is crap.
burnin
b) All Linux distros ship far more software than Microsoft does with Windows, and rarely will all of it be installed and running on a given system. If a vulnerable package isn't installed on a given system, then that system isn't vulnerable. To compare like with like, you'd need to take Windows' stats and add them to IIS, Exchange, Mozilla, Office/OpenOffice.org, Cygwin/SFU, SQL server, a bunch of free and shareware IRC clients and so on.
If folks are going to play these silly pissing contests, then the only fair way to do it is to take account of the period of vulnerability and base comparisons on "role profiles" (e.g. PHP web server, anti-spam MTA, static web server, graphical desktop).
--
as with other flawed "surveys," this one doesn't seem to account for features that are disabled by default, or that can't be exploited if the vunerable package isn't installed.
I know what you need to do when you want a file server, use File Exchange! Sure, it is exploitable (can be crashed, vulnerable to DoS, possibly allows access to every file on the server to anybody) but heck, I haven't had the time to issue advisories yet! And if I had, the leaks are years old already! And if they hadn't, it would be only three advisories!
:-P
And sure it runs on Windows, but what OS has been "proven" to be the safest by Secunia
The point is that PRACTICALLY, Microsoft is the most insecure operating system because you cannot hook a default install up to the internet without getting 20 worms by the time you patch it up.
In THEORY, you are correct that it is all about exploits and there are possibly exploitable holes just as much in Linux or Mac. Difference? In the real world, they are exploited much less on the latter two. Also, critical issues are fixed MUCH faster in the latter two leading to a less vulnerable system.
MOREOVER, these assclowns count a vulnerability in every piece of free software as a Linux vulnerability and only count core vulnerabilities in Microsoft. Similarly for Mac probably. So yes, exploits are what matters, but in the REAL WORLD there are more exploits for Windows and more boxes constantly being exploited, so your point is moot.
The fact that they continue to hold such a low market share makes it really unnecessary for a virus writer to target them, when they can infect 100000 times the amount of machines on a Windows OS.
There's the market share argument again!
Look, I won't bore you with the usual Apache has over 2/3 of the web server market share and all that. No, luckily (in this case?!), we can now highlight Mozilla as a product which still has a low market share in the browser market - as we all know - you see, recently we've seen malware target this particular browser, trying to trick users to installing a malicious extension via XPI.
Mind you, this is not a bug being exploited, but the usual "let's hope the gullible user clicks the 'OK'-button" type of trick. It will not install without user intervention!
Anyway, the bottom-line is that the market share argument is getting old, IMHO. But more importantly, this problem has been handled excellently by the Mozilla developer and user communinity. Blocking of onload-activated XPI installations has been implemented promtly as well as an extension website whitelist (though this one is not activated by default as of yet).
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Until telnetd is totally removed (not just turned off) from Linux, Linux will not be secure. There are just too many exploits involving telnet to take Linux seriously.
Bad example. There's a telnet service in Windows too.
When was the last time telnet was exploitable? telnet is sniffable. Big deal, so is imap, pop3, smtp, http, you name it. Sniffing should not count against an OS - its a problem with the protocol, which is inherint to all internet based OSes. Heck, lets just say anything that uses TCP/IP is too insecure for internet access.
Here's an example:
RHSA-2004:174-09
Fix: utempter local exploit.
Ok. A local exploit. Granted, an exploit, but still, its a local exploit. This is what these so called "secuity" groups need to realize - webservers on the DMZ typically don't have local access for joebob to login to. Typically, they have ports 80,443, and maybe 22 open. So now, all of those 60+ exploits attributed to Red Hat become 0 (thats Zero, with a 0). True, Red Hat had more published advisories than Windows did in the same time period, but Windows didn't ship with nearly the amount of software Red Hat did, and no "sysadmin" is going to put a box on the DMZ, running every service on the box, with no firewall. It just doesn't happen.
So all of these so called security groups can shove it, because thats not real world security. Why don't they do a study on how many linux/unix sys admins patch their boxes diligently vs how many windows admins bothered to patch their boxes with patches available months before code red and other internet problems plagued the internet?
PS: On Windows, it'd be port 3389 (remote desktop), not port 22... And BOTH services (ssh and rdp) have had remote exploits available, so you can't retort with the "ssh is insecure" BS.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
See, I said that not upgrading my Apple Lisa would pay off in the end.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!A ! ...UAHAHAHAHA! (etc.)
BWUAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
*GASP!*
*wipes tears from eyes*
I'll buy into the Linux isn't the heaven of security thing and also that we'll have some stuff heading our way once Unix desktops (Mac OS X and Linux) are mainstream and that there'll be some stuff to get sorted out. One being the ridance of the allmighty root.
But good heavens, what a load of bullcrap this article is.
Give me a break. Windows XP is evidently the most insecure OS on the Inet ever! You can probably even root the damn thing through it's media player using a pipe organ emulating modem tones. Every Idiot on this entire planet can write a Outlook-compatible VBScript twoliner that formats your HD, blows your UPC, floods the Net with "Bigger Dick NOW!" E-Mails and Sasser rippoffs and shuts down the power grid on your entire block.
And now these silly f*ckers through about with statistics listing the amount of security warnings and using them to rate the secureness of an OS? Give me a f*ckin' break, man. These people probably just got some Mickeysoft gold partner contract shoved up their behind and now wanna play nice with the dark side.
What a truckload of nonsense. I can't believe this makes it onto a IT webzine nowadays.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The Windows XP Pro list includes:
- Microsoft Windows 14 Vulnerabilities
- Microsoft Windows RPC/DCOM Multiple Vulnerabilities
- Microsoft Windows ASN.1 Library Integer Overflow Vulnerabilities
- Microsoft Windows RPCSS Service DCOM Interface Vulnerabilities
contain 14 + 4 + 2 + 3 = 23 vulnerabilities but Secunia only count 4 advisories. So the count is now 65 acknowledged vulnerabilities for XP Pro. Not including those silently fixed, nor the 38 vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer 6 alone.Actually, Secunia tend to publish alerts based the vendor bulletins. There are better sources for collated vulnerability information, such as Sintelli (free) or TruSecure (fee) which have far higher totals.
Andrew Yeomans
What complete crap. Let's look at their statistics without being completely brain dead.
To get the reported "36 advisories" for Mac OS X, they have to count 2002, 2003, and 2004. See for yourself: . Yet to get the reported "46 advisories" for Windows XP Professional, they have to count only 2003 and 2004. They left out an entire year. Count Windows over the same years as they're counting Mac OS X, and Windows XP Professional has 61 advisories.
They lump together all versions of Mac OS X, including Server. For example, the sendmail bug only affects 10.2.x and 10.1.x, not 10.3.x, which does not ship with sendmail. And the Apache 2 bug only affects Mac OS X Server. Yet they only consider one version of Windows, Windows XP Professional. It would take too long to figure out all the bugs they left out on Windows, but one category is easy: Microsoft IIS, their equivalent to Apache (which they considered on the Mac), has ten advisories listed over 2002-2003-2004. So that brings the total to 71.
They throw in Quicktime bugs for the Mac, but leave out Windows Media Player on Windows. That's 2 more for Windows, bringing its total up to 73.
And it gets a lot worse. They happily throw in the Safari bugs into the Mac OS X list, but they only throw in one IE bug into the Windows list. Go to the IE 6 page and see for yourself. There's 54 bugs listed on their Internet Explorer 6 page for 2002-2003-2004; their web browser alone is more vulnerable than all of Mac OS X put together. That brings the Windows total up to 127, more than three and a half times the Mac OS X.
If they scrutinized Windows the same way they did the Mac, it wouldn't look so "surprising" at all. It would just confirm what we've all known: the Mac isn't perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than Windows.
I find it interesting that they creatively left out the count of actual security holes found on Windows XP and only reported the percentage. I'm betting that the amount of critical flaws in Windows XP is actually a lot higher (in count, not percentage) to any of the other operating systems compared.
Did anyone else notice this creative trick to NOT display the statistics for Windows XP?
I dunno about you guys... but to me, it isn't the "percentage" of bugs that allow system comprimise, but how many, period. =P I love it how people can bend statistics to make their favorite (or their sponsor) company look better.
Anyone know the missing statistic from the article?
From Secunia Virus Statistics web page:
Indicates the percentage of scans that resulted in a found infection (e.g. 1% means that in 10.000 virus scans, 1.000 of these scans resulted in found infections).
They did this twice, too. So does 1% equal one percent of machines infected, or ten percent?
(I refer to this as "Oakland School Administration math" because a high administrator of the Oakland California schools, while testifying before the state legislature, cited the percentages of black teachers in Oakland schools vs. black people in the US population, with the percentage far lower for the teachers. But in the same testimony she gave the actual numbers of black teachers and total teachers, and in fact the percentage of black teachers in their schools was far HIGHER than blacks in the general population. She'd blown the percentage computation. Doubly funny, since she was testifying about how the new teacher certification tests were unfair because they required far too much arithmetic.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way