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Is Your OS Tough Enough?

Posted by timothy on from the mepis-seems-to-do-alright dept.

LE UI Guy writes "A Denver Post article examines the Internet 'horrors' Windows, Mac and Linux users face simply being connected to the Internet with only an out-of-box configuration. Over the course of a single week the machines were scanned 46,255 times. The test didn't look into additional security threats caused by surfing the web or reading e-mail, just the connection itself."

6 of 597 comments (clear)

  1. Survival of the fittest? by Sheetrock · · Score: -1, Troll
    I always think of these things as an interesting colloqualism for the larger picture. The survival of unpatched operating systems on the Internet is not unlike the relative longitivity of the many different types of critters in the jungle.

    I suspect that, like with these critters, the conundrum of irreducible complexity strikes operating systems -- they did not evolve from a 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD" program but were intelligently designed by a programmer to meet our needs.

    Similarly, I believe that we are on the cusp of discovering the same about the animals in the wild and, ultimately, ourselves. Perhaps these sort of experiments will offer the degree of irrefutable proof that will finally breech the almost religious adherence to the current theory of evolution, or start computer scientists on a quest to design their own life in turn.

    --

    Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
    -- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.




  2. redhat 9 super secure? by MasterB(G)ates · · Score: 0, Troll

    rh9 not receiving any attacks is curious. It kinda insinuates rh9 is the most secure when any OS can be attacked. It is how the OS handles being attacked is how we judge its security capabilities. Maybe this distro has a smaller attack surface with less server processes running?

    or maybe they forgot to plug in the network cable.

    --
    In the Slashdot moderating system, humourless based offenses are considered especially heinous.
  3. idiot... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    you are an idiot, did you even read the entire thing before making some novice response? Just because it received direct attacks doesn't mean it was hacked! Windows XP with SP2 wasn't hacked. It's been out for 8 months, if you aren't upgraded, you deserved to be hacked.

  4. Re:Are you all retarded? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    You are a pawn... I've known sa's who have run 10000 box windows networks and these guys were good sa's, whom have had major virus and worm infections - so take your holier than thou crap attitude and stick it where the sun don't shine. Windows is insecure - period. TAKE THAT DOG FOOD AND EAT IT.

  5. OSX by skingers6894 · · Score: 0, Troll

    "OSX is more secure"

    "That's only because they have no market share and no one bothers to write viruses for them"

    "So their market share is going to overtake Windows soon!"

    "No chance, I don't care how many iPods they sell they'll be lucky to hit 4% in your lifetime"

    "So... OSX is more secure"

  6. Re:Of course by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Blaster was first discovered 8/11/2003. The patch for the vulnerability that Blaster exploits was released on 7/16/2003.

    So, the hole was fixed before the exploit? Then no one ever got Blaster, right?