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Microsoft Silently Backs Favorable Presentation at RSA
lildogie writes "Two researchers, from the Florida Institute of Technology and Boston-based Security Innovation Inc., 'surprised the audience at a computer-security convention last month with their finding that a version of Microsoft Windows was more secure than a competing Linux operating system' according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. 'This week, the researchers released their finished report, and it included another surprise: Microsoft was funding the project all along.' When will they ever learn?"
Okay, who didn't see this coming?
One lose scientific credibility, one does not.
They had to create a new "never before used" metric just to get the results they wanted, and the metric is stupid to boot.
These people make me sick. It's stories like this that make me realize why Microsoft is the object of so much hate. It's not because of their products, it's all about how they deal with competition.
I like Active Directory and a few other Microsoft creations, and I even have an MCSE. Hell, Exchange has a good feature-set; if it would just stay up and be easier to manage it'd be a great product too.
What I can't abide is being told that IIS is superior to Apache, and that Windows is more secure than "Linux". They send out these teams of spin-doctors with big bankrolls and try and take over the world using FUD. It's total crap.
When do you see Linus doing this? Steve Jobs? Not very often. There are occasional comments, but nothing like this steady stream of trash that comes out of Redmond. I grow tired of it, and my reasons for disliking the company have never been more clear.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
"They say they had "complete editorial control over all research and analysis" involved in the project."
It was later learned that Microsoft "had complete financial control over all employees involved in the project."
Anyway, is Microsoft trying to develop a pattern here? Every time windows beats linux it's from a source microsoft paid.
"Our own requirement for the methodology was that it had to be very open and transparent." "However, during their Feb. 16 presentation at the RSA Conference, Thompson and fellow researcher Richard Ford of the Florida Institute of Technology did not mention that one of the subjects of their research was the one funding the project." Huh. As noted already, this reeks of bias. Even if the results are perfectly accurate (and the FUD surrounding the notion that "Linux" is insecure rather than a specific distro means that they aren't) suspicions are aroused irrespectively.
How to use coral cache: http://slashdot.org.nyud.net:8090/~oscartheduck
Do Microsoft not realise that if they were to fund a project properly, take the criticism constructively and make Windows better as a result of it we would have a lot more respect for them? I don't think it really matters that Windows is insecure, it is the fact that they aren't trying to fix it, just cover it up that I find concerning.
...and what a bad move. Anyone with half a brain would have looked for independent funding, separate from both sides to put their methodology beyond doubt. Instead they sold their concept to Microsoft, unbelievable naivette.
But the proof of the pudding should be in the eating: apply their methodology. Does it pan out for other Linux distributions/XP upgrades? If the methodology stands, it will be a great service to the debate.
It's just a damn shame the politics of the situation mean that probably won't happen.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
...but I wouldn't put it past them to test ten and use the one that makes them look best.
When will they ever learn?
When will who learn? Microsoft? They already did. They learned that funding reasearch groups is a great way to portray themselfs as they see fit and at the say time spread FUD about linux and other competitors.
Failing to learn from history dooms you to repeat it.
So has anyone allready taken this to the test ?
As long as there is no counterevidence (besides the obvious evidence from everyday use of both OS's), why allready pass a judgement? (Ok, this -is- Slashdot, I'm not -too- new here)
Allthough I find it dubious, to say the least, to have MS funding this research ; I still think that they should at least try to reproduce the results , and investigate what might have been left out (on purpose) to skew the outcome.
The point is that many people who matter will see this paper, they are busy people they will read the headlines and the conclusions, they won't even notice that there is something about funding. These peole are IT directors and the like.
Yes: we geeks say that the report is a joke because of the way that it is funded; learn that the joke is on us since we dismiss this paper as irrelevant when it is opinion forming.
If you really take as gospel truth everything you believe about Linux, without demanding proof, why are you worrying about whatever trick makes the Windows numbers look good?
These sell outs always surprise me. Your reputation is the most valuable thing you "have". Once that's gone, you are nothing more than some guy who lives in a van down by the river.
If you are going to derive your research from presupposed conclusions it helps to AT LEAST choose a plausible sounding conclusion.
As a genuine security researcher , I don't think anyone knowledgeable in the field believes that Microsoft has a more secure OS than a hardened version of Linux.
Speaking as an academic, it is somewhat disappointing to see this kind of spin besmirch the ivory tower of a university institution.
The conclusion has to be that selling IT snake oil is an even better bet than becoming an aromatherapist or an urban shaman. No-one is likely to be able to prove you wrong, and you can continue to be paid by your vendor of choice secure in the knowledge that most publications will not print anything that upsets their biggest advertisers, and that even if a few minority interests notice the connection between your conclusions and your paycheck, the wider world probably won't notice.
The system will only fall apart if academic institutions get together and pass some suitably tough rules on the ethics of product comparisons - and history suggests that that the first one under the new rules will be a study of the aerodynamics of different breeds of pigs.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I'm a researcher and on the editorial board of an academic journal. The cardinal rule is you disclose your funding or any conflict of interest *every* time and *any* time you make a presentation or write a paper. Such disclosures are essential in allowing others to evaluate the possibility of bias and are accepted practice.
Academia requires funding, and researchers are usually funded. Funding agencies always have a perspective (even when you're funded by the NIH or NSF or other federal agencies). The agreement that the researcher has intellectual control of the research process, data, and the right to publish is key, especially with commercial sponsors (e.g., MS, pharma companies).
These folks may well have had an agreement ensuring them that they could find what they found and freely report it. And if they reported it, others can appraise the quality of their methods. I haven't read the study, so I don't know if the comparison was fair. Did their support from MS include someone sending them specially-configured systems, for example?
But I do know that they should have known better than not to disclose the funding source in their first talk.
It's remarkably stupid of Microsoft to continue to fund studies slamming Linux. The choice between operating systems is not one that people make on the basis of slight opinion. They follow trends, and technological trends are influenced by people who understand the impact of their choices.
Linux has been the choice of the leading edge for several years, it is well-established as the choice for the early adopter, and it's now starting to become a serious option for the mass market.
The mass market listens to the early adopters, the early adopters listen to the pioneers. That's the way it goes with technology, and that's why marketing only helps when products are otherwise equal.
Microsoft should work on the real problem - the low quality of their products, and the real gap between their outdated expensive proprietary software and the commodity alternatives - rather than try to influence the market with propaganda. Unless, of course, they have come to the realisation that they cannot fix the problems.
It will be newsworthy when a study finds that Microsoft has made a better product than the community, and when the study is both independent and accurate.
If Apple can do it, why can't you guys at Microsoft? It's just software... infinitely plastic, and you are so smart, so rich...
Nope. They won't do it. They just don't get it. They will continue to bitch and bluster and bluff until it's too late.
It's a shame. All that talent, all that money, and all they can do is pay people to lie.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
And since they're claiming that this is a "Linux vs. Windows" research paper, the fact that they're looking at using the boxes as web servers makes it seem more like they're comparing Apache/PHP/MySQL to IIS/ASP/SQL...
I'm rather new to the Linux world, but isn't that like looking at the engine of a car, and saying the doors don't work?
- Jack
They're talking about "Linux", and its a kernel. RedHat, Fedora, Debian, Slack, Suse... these are OSes!
So, if you get a sloppy distro (wont cite any names to avoid flames) and compare it to Windows, you can say that distro is more insecure than Windows. But you cant say "Linux is more insecure than Windows"!
If they really want to compare Linux to Windows, well... then lets compare the kernels, Linux X NT! Witch one is more secure? Has more bugs? Heh, that's something I'd like to see.
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
Sure, their products suck. But on its own, that wouldn't be a problem, because people would be free to choose the best product for the job. MS would be under the same commercial imperatives as anyone else: make good products, or die.
But their business practices suck too. Because of that, the market isn't free to pick the best products.
They pay people (individuals, dealers, companies, governments) to use their sucky products, by offering discounts and other incentives -- even giving them away if necessary. They pay competitors not to make competing products, by buying them off. They pay masses in marketing to make their products seem less sucky. They pay lawyers to find ways to prevent competitors making better products. They pay dealers and distributors not to bundle competitors' products. They pay lawmakers to prevent competitors being able to compete fairly. They pay training companies to ensure that there's more expertise for their products. They pay their own developers to break competing products in various underhand ways. They pay anything they can to support their products.
And so, ultimately, we all pay...
In short, it's their immoral and illegal business practices which make their dodgy products popular. Prevent those, and their products wouldn't be a problem.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
When those "researchers" (I'd rather call them hacks) presented their methology to Microsoft and asked for funding, it was pretty much a no-brainer for MS to do so, as the metrics were clearly in their favour. Take the number of security reports, for example. The number of errors reported does not only depend on the number of errors in the system, it also depends on how available the means for finding these errors are. Compared to the number of people being able to do so witht he Linux sources, fewer people have access to Windows Server 2003 source code. That'd be one factor. To that you should add that Microsoft can decide whether or not they want to make a security problem public. It would not surprise me at all if they didn't fix a few of those holes silently with their updates.
Also, the compared systems are not equal in scope. Redhat's Enterprise Linux offers a whole lot more software than a 'naked' Windows Server 2003, and thus a lot more potential for security problems. If you coompared Windows Server 2003 with a rather bare Linux setup with no frills that offers similar functionality, then you could compare those systems.
In other words, the results of the study were already clear before the "researchers" started it. MS had nothing to lose because they could very much assume the results would be favourable to them. They didn't even need to put any pressure at all on those "researchers".
Computer science like their report does not have peer review. Which is disappointing, because proper computer science research is so much more repeatable than natural science. I'd like to see the ACM take a stand, and aggressively demand that published research either cite a peer review process upon publication, or publish auditable records of the publisher's finances. Of course, anyone can publish anything, and anyone is free to believe it. But computer science is too important not to distinguish accountable research from PR.
--
make install -not war
and not owning a PC, I used to really dig this kind of stuff. I still don't own a PC, but my two roommates do, and the more I see these kinds of things on /. the more it reads like sour grapes from the linux community.
When one of my roommates got a Dell recently, I took a look at his XP before connecting to the internet. A few clicks and the firewall was on. A few more clicks and his anti-virus software was up and running. After connecting to our LAN I downloaded Firefox, and for the past month and a half he has had no problems with any security issues on his machine. No, Windows is inherently not as secure as linux, but if you know what you are doing, you will be able to set up your Wintel box to be decently safe and hacker-free.
The downside is, of course, that Microsoft could do a lot more to make Windows more secure out of the box. But Linux (and the Linux community) has a long way to go before the average wal-sumer will feel comfortable using Linux machines, much less knowing how to run them.
http://www.walkingtaco.com
Thompson said he and Ford developed the methodology on their own and submitted a proposal to Microsoft last year. He declined to say how much Microsoft paid to fund the research, but he said the company didn't have a say in the methodology.
I'm surprised that this kind of research would get so much attention . . . reading between the lines, the research proposal was written to attract money from Microsoft. This implies an immediate conflict of interest . . . the research proposal and methodology were very possibly skewed in favor of Microsoft from the very beginning to garner Microsoft's favor and money.
This is like writing a research proposal on the effects of smoking to get money from Phillip Morris. Of course such a proposal won't be written is such a way as to build a link between smoking and cancer . . . it would likely be written to imply that the research may refute the link between smoking and cancer. Skew the proposal in favor of the benefactor and one is more likely to get money . . .
The whole process needs to be more transparent . . and all of the facts need to be issued before presenting . . . otherwise this is just irresponsible research.
C'mon now... We found faults with the methodology to begin with. The metrics they're using are completely useless for determining the relative security of an OS- they're using time to release fixes for reported exploits.
Now...
1) Microsoft waits until they actually have a fix or is forced to report/acknowledge an exploit when someone else makes an issue of it.
2) Microsoft doesn't report any other exploits that they know about and doesn't go auditing for potential issues either.
3) The Open Source community as a whole is rather paranoid compared to Microsoft when it comes to overall security so they report anything that might be a potential problem.
Given the above items, that isn't a terribly good metric for determining overall security, nor is determining how secure the OS is by the reported issues. Overall security is a measure of how many issues, how severe, how exploitable, and how well they get fixed. Microsoft consistently flunks in the overall issues (they have more than we do, we just don't find out about them until after the fact...), severity, and fixing arenas.
Combine this all with the facts that Microsoft maintained editorial AND financial control of the entire "study" and it all becomes a farce and worthy of the derision we're all heaping up on it.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The numbers are correct, however as they say, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
The problems with the study:
1. The researchers were dealing with vendor-supplied patches of RHEL3.0 and Windows 2003 Server only. If a Linux vulnerability was released, and then patched by the author on the same day, but Red Had didn't release an update until 7 days later, this would be counted as a week. (Which may or may not be the correct way to view it - it's an 'apples-to-apples' comparison of a distinct 'apples-to-oranges' problem.)
2. the researchers didn't take into account the severity of the vulnerabilities. A local DOS vulnerability was given the same weight as one that offered remote administrative priveleges. The RHEL vulnerabilities were typically not as severe as the Windows ones.
3. the researchers didn't take into account whether the vulnerabilities were theoretical or not. A vulnerability that was theoretical was given the same weight as one which was proven real. All of the vulnerabilities in Windows were real, while the same is not true of RHEL.
4. The researchers didn't take into account the fact that RHEL has *much* more software included with it than Windows Server 2003. More software == more vulnerabilities.
5. The study dealt with "public disclosures" - security researchers typically work with the vendors, giving them some period of time to produce a fix before releasing the advisory; again, as the "vendor" in OSS is the program author, and not Red Hat, MS has a distinct advantage in "number of days to fix", as they can have a fix ready before the advisory is released, while Red Hat usually cannot. (This ties back into point #1 above.)
Windows Server benefited in part from Microsoft's reduction of security vulnerabilities in the latest version of the software -- with 52 reported vulnerabilities for the year, compared with 132 vulnerabilities for the Linux version, according to the report. The researchers also calculated an average of about 31 days of risk for the Windows software in 2004, compared with an average of about 70 days of risk for the Linux version.
Yeah but how many people get to review M$ code and discover new vulnerabilities? Did they account for that in their bug count methodology?
It's all about limiting the avenues of attack.
I run Ubuntu, you cannot crack my machine with any worm because it does not have any ports open to you.
I can put that machine on a DSL connection and read
You believe that no matter how much care is put into designing an app, security holes will magically appear once enough people start using it.Nope. That's usually a sign of a "buffer overflow".Nice. You keep confusing software that crashes with security holes.
Whatever.And no mention of Browser Helper Objects of how IE runs with unreasonably high access rights.Well, you certainly can't argue with that "logic".
All I can do is to point out that all security issues are not the same.
#1. Remote exploit that gives root/admin rights.
#2. Remote exploit that gives non-root access.
#3. Local exploit that gives root/admin rights.
Way way way down the list is "Exploit that crashes the app". The worst you can get from that is a DoS attack.
But to you, all issues are the same. If FireFox crashes, that's just as bad as the sasser worm on Windows.
Sure, it may be impossible TODAY for someone to crack my Ubuntu desktop
#1. They didn't even evaluate the risk of each item they were counting AS IT PERTAINED TO THEIR DEFAUL INSTALL.
... NOT the days until a fix was publicly available.
.pdf reader that goes unpatched for a year (after being posted on public mailing list) is (by their calculations) WORSE than a remote root attack against the web server that is open on port 80 but which has a patch from Red Hat within a week (and a publicly available patch posted with the vulnerability announcment).
#2. They ONLY counted the days until Red Hat had a fix
So, a local exploit in a
WTF?!?
Or, rather, Microsoft can SIT on a vulnerability notification for YEARS and release the patch the SAME DAY they publicly admit the vulnerability and they will STILL get a better rating than the Apache vulnerability in the previous example.
There was NO research done for this "study". It is pure bullshit. Counting patches is MEANINGLESS when it comes to security.
By their "logic", MS-DOS 6.2 is even more secure than Win2003.
If magical elves decided to hide bad code in Linux and if they had CVS access and if they wrote it right and if no one noticed
HOW is someone going to get that data into my OO.o document? Hmmmmmm?
Magic? I don't think so.
Why don't you skip the "if"s and start focusing on the "How"s?
Security doesn't rely upon "if". It relies upon "how".
Faith, from Latin fides, trust or loyalty, need not be blind. The authors of this study seemed to be keeping faith with the principles of honest analysis, they worked with universities and stated their biases (one Windows practitioner and the other a Linux expert) up front. I have a Linux bias, so an apparently honest analysis that challenged my presumption was intriguing.
They neglected to mention that they were funded by Microsoft, which betrayed the faith I had put in their honesty. I do not have time to carry out a rigorous analysis comparing Linux and Windows security, I have to rely on shortcuts of reputation and apparent honesty. Studies that show Linux is more secure generally state their biases up front, studies showing a Microsoft advantage go against my experience and unfailingly turn out to have been covertly funded by Microsoft. So my standard of proof is much higher for studies that support Microsoft.
We get long discussions about TCO and security and others but never about what we are allowed to do with the software.
The problem with freedom is that it's difficult to explain to people that never experienced it. As the old joke goes when the american explained to the russian that in the USA you can criticize the president as much as you like the russian replied: you can criticize the american president in Soviet Russia as well, there's no restrictions on that.