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Study Finds Windows More Secure Than Linux
cfelde writes "A Windows Web server is more secure than a similarly set-up Linux server, according to a study presented yesterday by two Florida researchers." In addition to the Seattle Times article, there is also coverage on VNUnet. From the article: "The researchers, appearing at the RSA Conference of computer-security professionals, discussed the findings in an event, 'Security Showdown: Windows vs. Linux.' One of them, a Linux fan, runs an open-source server at home; the other is a Microsoft enthusiast. They wanted to cut through the near-religious arguments about which system is better from a security standpoint."
... another pissing match.
Before any liberals are tempted to mod up one of my comments, a word of warning: I'm actually making fun of you.
I don't get it. I guess I need to read the article.
A webserver needs port 80 and maybe 443 open. Any webserver can be secured.
Where's the news?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Interesting. Some relevant snippets:
.
A Linux enthusiast at the RSA Conference in San Francisco has reluctantly concluded that Microsoft produces more secure code than its open source rivals.
In an academic study due to be released next month Dr Richard Ford, from the Florida Institute of Technology, and Dr Herbert Thompson, from application security firm Security Innovation, analysed vulnerabilities and patching and were forced to conclude that Windows Server 2003 is more secure than Red Hat Linux.
Now, I'll concede that Dr. Ford and Dr. Thompson do sound reputable, but one is an admitted Windows enthusiast and while the other one is a Linux fan who changed his minds, this hardly sounds like a study
It's an interesting question, and I'm sure there is no clear cut answer, but a more systematic study (with more parties, rather than just two scientists) is going to be needed to answer this sort of question before the 'results' are trumpetted. I'm sure Microsoft will pick this one up and run with it, however.. more of those annoying ads that seem peppered throughout Slashdot.
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
"Their criteria included the number of reported vulnerabilities and their severity, as well as the number of patches issued and days of risk -- the period from when a vulnerability is first reported to when a patch is issued."
So Windows is more secure than Red Hat because Microsoft chooses to report less vulnerabilities and release less patches? Hmmm...
(Move along, nothing new to see here.)
Until the report is released this is a non-story, just fuel for the FUD machine. Unfortunately we will have to wait for a month to actually discuss what this means so I don't even no why I am bothering to post to this!
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Now let the flaming begin, so you can all argue about the number of patches/updates required for each system, how long it takes for Linux/Windows to respond to problems, and all that good stuff. We all know that's the only reason this kind of story shows up on Slashdot is to start a good flame/troll war!
"...Ford said the idea was to represent what an average system administrator may do, as opposed to a "wizard" who could take extra steps to provide plenty of security on a Linux setup, for instance." By his own admission the Linux administrator is a "Wizard" compared to the average MS Systems Admin. Well, that just about says it all doesn't it?
"Sheep just follow the easiest path and run from scary noises and intimidating creatures." - Me
No matter how fast a patch is issued, you still have to install it for it to work.
Doesn't Microsoft encourage delaying announcing vulnerabilities until a patch is available?
Did you notice that this was a study aimed at IT administrators, not home users?
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This was a hardly a study. I don't see any data presented here, and certainly no methodology used to gather the data. Sorry, but the scientific method always wins.
Sorry, but this "study" is not a study.
Why was this even posted?
That they actually admit in the article that they set up the linux server as the absolute default change no security settings leave it just as it comes right out of the box... As they specifically state they left minimum configuration in place and linux users might do more. Basically implying the study is a pile of sh*t since no company in there right mind would opt for a total linux solution and then leave the webservers running without changing any settings...
~~ Please keep your arms, legs, and outright stupidity inside the ride at all times. Thank You ~~
OpenBSD runs chroot() Apache. Does IIS have similar capability?
The chroot() patch was never taken up, but it would probably not be that difficult to install on Linux.
I would be disinclined to run any other way at this point.
A Linux enthusiast at the RSA Conference in San Francisco has reluctantly concluded that Microsoft produces more secure code than its open source rivals.
Umm, so MS showed him their source code? I find that a little hard to believe.
If he can't see the source, how can he make any determination at all?
I wish they'd post some info about the tests themselves. At least what kind of setups they user, where they got the info about vulnerabilities and patches, and so forth..
A "Linux fan" and "Microsoft enthusiast" trying to cut through the near-religious arguments?
I'll take a nice report by computer scientists and security experts about overall system design over crap papers like this any day.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Neither article defined "days of risk" to my satisfaction. Is it "days since the vulnerability was published" or "days since the vendor was informed of the vulnerability"? I suspect that Microsoft is more likely to hear things privately early. ASN.1 library anyone? It was discovered in July 2003, and announced and patched in February 2004. Was that six months of risk or one day?
Secondly, there's no discussion of how the criticality of a vulnerability was weighed. If every "day of risk" for Windows was "critical," and every "day of risk" for RedHat was "moderate," then I'd differ with their conclusions. Further, there was no mention of whether they considered actual exploits in the wild.
What I say does not represent the views of my employers, my friends, my cats, or myself.
from the article
Their criteria included the number of reported vulnerabilities and their severity, as well as the number of patches issued and days of risk -- the period from when a vulnerability is first reported to when a patch is issued.
I hoped for a deeper analysis, like the security model used or how it behaves in networks. But it just back to counting vulnerabilities.
--Nothing to see here, move on.
Typical.
A study comes out saying Linux is better than Windows? Praise it to high heavens! We knew it all along!
A study comes out saying Windows is better than Linux? Question the results, Impugn the source and dig as deep as it takes to find some political or financial affiliation between them and Microsoft, no matter how assinine or inconsequential.
Directly from the article:
"The pair examined the number of vulnerabilities reported in both systems and the actual and average time it took to issue patches. In all three cases Windows Server 2003 came out ahead, with an average of 30 "days of risk" between a vulnerability being identified and patched compared to 71 from Red Hat."
There is nothing said about the severity of the vulnerabilities. This article would never make it in a peer reviewed publication.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
With all of these studies is they typically work on the assumption you are just throwing a server, regardless of OS, on the net. That means there is no load balancer in front, no filtering at the border routers, no firewalls and nothing is ever blocked.
If a company or individual is actually doing this how on Earth can they possibly attest to the security of their server?
--- I do not moderate.
This study appears to be a clear example of redifining terms and using statistics to muddle an issue. While the conclusion of the study might be valid given the assumptions, I challenge the assumption.
I challenge the assumption that Redhat vulnerabilities are equal to Microsoft vulnerabilities.
Given the history of malware, they clearly are not.
This study is nothing more than a more formalized version of a certain form of trolling once popular on COLA.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I wonder if Security Innovations provides security consulting and training services for Microsoft?
This should be disclosed in any report that is critical or praises a particular Microsoft product.
How many people run Red Hat Enterprise 3 at home? Did you bother to read the article?
I would think that a Windows box set up by a MS Certified Professional and a Linux Box set up by some kind of Linux Certified Professional would be a much better comparison than one between a "Linux Fan" and a "Microsoft Enthusiast."
"There are some people who are sceptical [of the results]," said Dr Thompson. "We would encourage them to replicate this type of study. If you see flaws please tell us."
Are they joking? Their metric (reported vulnerabilities) is absurd for a number of reasons.
1) Microsoft reports only a fraction of its vulnerabilities. Remember when Win2000 had over 65000 known (to Microsoft) flaws? No more than a handful were ever reported. Microsoft reports flaws only after bearing enormous public humiliation. Of course Microsoft's flaw count is going to be low. Microsoft hides them all until forced to disclose.
2) Linux vendors report every hair out of place. It doesn't matter if the flaw causes a D to look like an O on the third day of the Summer Solstice, but only if that day matches the 4th digit of PI, and only if the computer has calculated the cure for cancer at exactly 15 milliseconds after the user's orgasm.
3) Seriousness of vulnerabilities. Due to the nature of full disclosure under Linux, it will -always- have higher reported flaw counts than Windows. The vast majority of reported Linux flaws, however, are relatively benign, while the vast majority of reported Windows flaws hand over complete control of your computer to some third party.
4) Widespread Propagation. Windows, by its intended design, makes propagating exploits to these vulnerabilities trivially easy (automatic, actually), while this has yet to be accomplished on Linux (and likely won't be).
Sorry, but this "study" is complete nonsense.
One datapoint makes a terrible graph.
... and squint your eyes, you'll see the 'clear' results.
The researchers used reported vulnerabilites as their guideline, and 'days of risk;' quote: "the period from when a vulnerability is first reported to when a patch is issued."
Windows Server 2003 had 30 days of risk, Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Server 3) 71 days.
But which reports of vulns are they considering? Microsoft often provides their own reports, which are released WITH THE PATCH. I wouldn't give those reports the same weight, since the vuln could have been there (and unofficially known) for MONTHS.
I fully expect Linux to have MORE vulns in any case, since Linux ultimately is a collection of separate programs working together, each of which has their own potential insecurities. But, a vuln in sendmail is NOT going to affect my webserver, because I'm going to turn that OFF (if I'm a smart admin).
In fact, the researchers only used a "hypothetical" system to show "what an average system administrator may do." I'm sorry, but if an admin is using anything like a default setup he is BELOW average.
In conclusion, this really sounds like a comparison of how vulnerable the respective systems with a 'default' install. Wake me up when they go head-to-head with OpenBSD.
P.S. Hey researchers- RED HAT IS NOT LINUX.
The study posts the "days of risk" defined as the time between announcement of a vulnerability and the availability of a patch. But this definition misses two big factors. First, there will be some number of days between the discovery of the vulnerability and the announcement of it. Second, there will be some number of days between the patch being available and the downloading of it. Both factors increase the days of risk and mean that a quickly-patch OS with lots of holes has higher practical risk than an slowly-patched OS with few holes.
I don't know which OS has more risks, has a greater delay between discovery and announcement, or has a greater delay between patch availability and patch application. Does MS or Linux get more slack from vulnerability finders? Do MS or Linux admins patch faster? DOes MS or Linux get more vulnerabilities? These data points would help evaluate the true risk.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
The correct answer is the one with the better administrator. You can have a Linux box locked down tight, and a Windows box wide open. You can also have the inverse. Probe around, and you will find boxes of all those flavors out there. It all depends on the competence of the guys running it. The competence of the administrator at running the system he is running has a much larger effect on overall security than which OS is chosen.
I wish I could mod you up, bonch. I've experiened the head-in-the-sand Linux mentality too, and it is scary. It misses the whole point of linux.
Linux is awesome, this study doesn't change that but we always need to work to make it better and easier to secure. Critics of Linux are our best friends, because they do the work of finding out where we need to improve for free.
The best thing about linux is that when people have a legitimate complaint, it's well within our power to fix it! If Linux is temporarily less secure, so what? After reading this, everyone will adapt their linux distros to render the complaints moot.
This is part of why we love open source, right?
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
is that an average windoze SA or an average Linux SA?
These researchers mention they are not "wizards" and I think this illustrates an important difference between Open Software and Windows. Linux is great if you know what you're doing. There are lots of resources out there to help you properly configure your system, and if done right you will have minimal issues.
And you're going to need those resources if you're not a "wizard". Open Source software is not as easy to use as most MS products, and in many cases the documentation isn't very good either.
Sure doesn't sound like it's aimed at IT admins. If your IT department doesn't have anyone who's competent to secure and maintain the system(s) you use, it's the fault of management, not the software (nor the admin).
Hey, my plywood outhouse is more secure than Fort Knox.. as long as the outhouse has a padlock and Fort Knox is unlocked and unoccupied. Putting one competent gaurd in front of the entrance to each highlights the real defendability of both.
A crayon is ready to use right out of the box - a pencil has to be sharpened. Strangely, we use more pencils than crayons in the workplace. Why? Because it's better. Someday, a PHB will touch the obelisk, and stand upright. Until then, we're stuck with cray^H^H^H^H windows.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
...is too hard to handle for most:
An OS is only as secure as it's admin is competent. This will NEVER change no matter what platform you are dealing with.
If you give some RedHat CDs to a complete goof off and have them install it on a system that is going to be directly exposed to the internet, that box is going to get rooted eventually. It might take longer to get rooted than a Windows box, but it will be cracked.
If you give Windows 2003 Server to a knowledgable admin, he will secure the box and make certain that the likelihood of it getting cracked is fairly low. He will know not to put the box on the internet until he's applied all SPs and critical updates. He will know to use an internal SUS or WUS to make sure that the box is updated without exposure to the internet.
If you give a complete moron who *thinks* he knows all about [insert platform] any installation media, you're going to have an insecure box.
It's been my experience that the best people to set up an internet exposed box using any OS are people who are most familiar with all OSes and have a good understanding of how to secure each one. It's not that hard to hit the main security points and still keep on top of all OSes. However, since egos aer so intrinsically tied to how secure a box is, people point the finger at the OS distributor. Sure, they are to blame in many cases, but the implementor is usually far more guilty of being lax. That's the hard truth and it cannot be refuted.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Funny thing that seems to be missing in the discussion so far: I don't see anyone pointing out that this is a "sample of one" study. So any generalization at all about which system (or admin ;-) is more secure is laughable at best.
It is useful as an anecdotal example. Especially in the area of security, where real security tends to mean knowing a lot of very specific examples of how things can go wrong. Documenting how these guys could have inadvertently left holes open would be useful. Then we need several hundred more such paired tests, with a more extensive report listing all the ways that admins of both systems can get it wrong.
But concluding that, because two guys didn't get it right in a single test, therefore one of the systems is more or less secure than the other, shows little other than a total lack of understanding what security is all about.
That, or intentional FUD on the part of either or both.
I'd go with the lack of understanding. People are really good at generalizing from a single case with no statistical significance.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I, too, would like to see a more involved, academic analysis of the security of each platform. But even as a quick quantitative analysis, this technique for deciding how secure a system is falls on its face. Instead of counting vulnerabilities, I would be interested in counting number of viruses and script kiddie tools that take advantage of those vulnerabilities. Just counting known vulnerabilities and numer of patches, etc, has a few issues. One is that I honestly believe that a Windows vulnerability is much less likely to be announced once it is discovered than a Linux vulnerability - it's a questionn of culture.
Another is that just counting vulnerabilities gives you a worst-case scenario. However, my practical experience suggests that if there aren't any script kiddie tools or viruses out there that take advantage of said vulnerability, your chances of getting compromised through it are exceedingly small.
I'd also like to see some weighting for the likelihood of an attack succeeding through a given vulnerability. I'm going to be a lot more scared of the exploit that works every time than I am the buffer-overflow that lets you run arbitrary code, but only works once in a blue moon.
Granted, these studies will never have that info; they aren't meant to mean anything, they are just mindcandy for the PHBs put together by industry pundits looking for a quick paycheck or some attention. If I were really looking for a security analysis or comparison that included an open source server that ran on x86 hardware, I would expect OpenBSD to be one of the operating systems tested.
It's unfortunate RedHat has acquired Windows' weak security posture in it's effort to attract Windows server market share. I've personally had to administer 3 compromised Redhat boxes, and this after converting that client over from Windows due to a compromise.
But, RH isn't Linux. Linux is many distributions, some good, some not so good, but if you take the pool of Linux administrators against the pool of Windows administrators, you'll find Linux administrators are more knowledgeable about their systems and do smarter things in securing them. This isn't as true as it was a few years ago before the reluctant Windows administrative masses took refuge in RedHat, but you won't see _any_, not even one Linux defector to Windows. Perhaps BSD, but definitely _not_ Windows!
I've never seen one of my Slackware servers (running sendmail, _even_ and FrontPage extensions with PHP on the Apache server) compromised. It's never happened in the 10 years I've been using them.
I've been wasting a lot of time lately poring through logs for a new project and it's ludicrous how much additional coding I've had to put into my Perl scripts to make allowances for compromised Windows boxes that have inundated my web server with traffic during their Code Red and Slammer compromises, not to mention all the other little oddities Windows clients do when downloading mp3s from the server, such as client caching and sending 32k+ search strings in the URL. It creates work to have these obnoxiously configured client machines on the Internet.
I'm not going to complain too loudly since without all these Windows users on the Internet surfing my site, there wouldn't be much of interest to process in these logs, but to assert Windows as more secure than Linux?! Really....
Could someone please post the name of which Micro$oft C?O's budget backed this study, so we can move on to a more interesting and valid discussion?
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
A Windows Web server is more secure than a similarly set-up Linux server
I would have to agree. Windows IIS servers are insecure, if you set up an Apache server similarly (insecure), it will also be insecure.
Keep in mind that most admins are lazy, and that while we can yell and scream that a default setup is not secure nor is it a good indication of being secure, it still should be somewhat secure out of the box. If it's not, then we have a problem and we're supplying the ammunition to the FUD machine that is MS.
Who is John Galt?
"Days of risk" reminds me of the logic one of my friends used to use while driving: "The faster we go, the less time we spend exposed to danger!"
Their contention was that for lower skill admins, Windows was more secure. Now, assuming the research was done correctly and the data does indeed support the conclusion, it's a good thing to know. That's something ot try and improve in Linux, espically since less competent admins are the real problem.
It's not all that useful to research how tight a competent admin can lock down a box because the answer for almost any OS is "very well". You get a good admin that knows their OS and is on top of things, they can keep anything secure, even Windows. So it's not of much use to say a compentent Linux admin can make a secure system, we already knew that.
It is useful, however, to know that a less competent admin will have trouble. More useful would be to know what specificly need to be done to fix it, but just knowing that it's a problem is a start. If Linux continues to gain in popularity, more people that are not as competent will be running it. While you can never truly protect someone from themselves, there are things you can do to make things more secure for those that don't know what they are doing, and that's a good thing for Linux developers to be looking in to.
Their criteria included the number of reported vulnerabilities and their severity, as well as the number of patches issued and days of risk -- the period from when a vulnerability is first reported to when a patch is issued.
Actually, this tells us most of what we need to know. If we want our system to be considered secure, the way to do it is: 1) Don't report vulnerabilities; 2) Don't issue security patches.
Linux pretty much has to lose a contest that is judged this way.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
As someone said, "extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence". In a lot of peoples' opinion, the claim that Windows is more secure than Linux is just that, an extraordinary claim.
How would the authors of their study reconcile it with something like this one, which showed that a default installation of Windows got infected with a virus within 20 minutes?
From TFA:That sounds good. A real comparision of real services running on real servers.
But wait!They aren't real setups.
And it gets worse.Hmmmm, I wonder if they included the info from www.eeye.com http://www.eeye.com/html/research/advisories/AD20
So, a "study" that doesn't test any real world criteria is somehow valid?
Oh, it's not that the study is not valid, it's that pointing out the flaws in the study shows the groupthink on
And pointing out that perceived groupthink gets you mod'ed up as "insightful".
A study comes out saying Linux is better than Windows? Praise it to high heavens! We knew it all along!
A study comes out saying Windows is better than Linux? Question the results, Impugn the source and dig as deep as it takes to find some political or financial affiliation between them and Microsoft, no matter how assinine or inconsequential.
Hear hear. This absolute black and white "conviction" and group rage is ruining more for the credibility of "the community" than most people imagine. We just look like crazy fundamentalists.
If you want to see which car is safer than another, you would do things like controlled crash tests and use crash test dummies.
You would NOT factor in how many crashes they had both been in. One moron who keeps hitting telephone poles would alter the stats too much.
The material in TFA does NOT show them comparing the security models or even the patch severity. One bug in a seldom used perl module that lagged on the fix could result in very bad stats for Red Hat.
That's a critical difference. So many people pour over the Apache source code that most vulnerabilities are discovered prior to when they actually become "in the wild" exploits. The same cannot be said about MS IIS. Worse, the odds are very good that many the IIS exploits were in the wild prior to when they were first publicly reported, while most of the Apache exploits were, in all likelihood, patched prior to the first exploit.
When viewed from that perspective, the Windows/IIS server was likely vulnerable to exploit for many, many more weeks than the Linux/Apache server. And that assumes that half the vulnerabilities are ever even reported. With a closed source product, there could be tons of security holes being subtly exploited by clever crackers every day and there would be no way to find out about it.
No, this article is pure and unadulterated FUD.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
---Benjamin Disraeli
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Apache 39821368 68.43 40681140 68.83 0.40
...
Microsoft 12137446 20.86 12322111 20.85 -0.01
Sun 1830008 3.14 1835718 3.11 -0.03
Zeus 690193 1.19 618599 1.05 -0.14
Given those statistics (source - netcraft) why is it then, that we dont see malware attacking apache on such a grand scale as we do IIS? If its possible for an operating system with such a small percentage of the (server)market to suffer from such virulent malware attacks - then why do we not see these problems on linux which has a comparatively small share of the desktop market?
I call bullshit!
I've been seeing this coming for a while though as people find new and exciting FUD campaigns. Does anyone know who funded this report ? need I even ask that question?
Nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Their analysis was based on number of patches and time it took to get patched from the time it was publically released. Microsoft stays quiet about most vulnerabilities until a patch is ready and will ship it some time that month, thus the average 30 days. In addition to this, there are still IE holes unpatched from last july. This didn't make the report because its a server. Also, Linux comes with *much* more software by default and much more functionality. They said that these were default setups. That means that if they were using a distro like Red Hat, every single program gets updated as necessary over 2000 programs judging from one of my boxes). Far fewer programs get updated from Windows Update (usually only core programs and utilities... or things that Microsoft deems necessary).
Also, many OSS exploits are theoretical in nature... if a strcpy() passes an unchecked ptr and some coder sees this... whether or not that code could have been exploited... he fixes it and out goes the patch. Its a patch for something that may have never been even able to be taken advantage of. That would never happen in a commercial project. All this study shows is that these researchers define security as the ability to hide security problems as long as possible until a patch is ready and if the patch never gets ready, just never tell anyone about the problem. Following the two above stated rules would easily make any software company "secure" by their standards. As stated previously, their criteria was # of patches and time to release. Time to release is shortened by waiting until the patch is ready (which Microsoft does) and # of patches is shortened by simply not releasing non-major patches and just rolling them out with the next version. The criteria these guys used was meaningless and if anything shows that linux is doing something right if they are updating several times more programs with only twice the delay (which i really doubt is the true delay time). One other thing worth noting, the Ford guy has been paid by Microsoft several times to do studies and release them in favor of MS, I'd hardly call him a true linux fan. Maybe this time they just covered it up better... you wouldn't want to bite the hand that feeds you.
Regards,
Steve
Without knowing the study in detail it is exremely difficult to comment, but from what I could read in the news article, there could be a crucial and severe flaw in the study: simply counting vulnerabilites won't tell anything about how critical they are, how easy they can be exploited etc. With opensource apps there is a tendency that many vulnerabilities get reported which are low risk while the number of real vulnerabilites in closed source systems is probably only known to core developers and a few hackers, who won't tell us.
The irony of the posts I'm reading here make me laugh. I'm reading posts talking about poor analysis and bias written by people who are critiquing a study before it even comes out.
Folks, it's hard to maintain credibility if you heap praise on one study that agrees with you and then critique another sight unseen.
Wait for the study to be published, examine its assumptions, and try to reproduce it. I know it's not as exciting, but that's the only way anyone is going to get to the truth.
sigs are a waste of space
Security is a process, not a product. A hardware firewall is useless if it's firmware can't be updated and a vulnerability is found. But software, in the right hands, due to it being more configurable, is generally safer.
-Myke
myke@compassionatecoalition.org
http://www.compassionatecoalition.org
I'd have to disagree with the position that religions caused "practically every war that we know of". Hitler/Stalin/Pol Pot et al were all secular leaders and they've taken an unimaginable number of lives.
As far as the European Imperial era, Christianity was often abused by the governments a front to support the looting and plundering of the rest of the world, rather than a primary cause.
Broad generalizations make us no better than these reports we keep complaining about.