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The NYT on the Proliferation of Botnets
ThinkComp writes "The New York Times has a up a story on the proliferation of botnets. The article cites a number of security researchers who paint a depressing picture of the state of internet security, and concludes with the suggestion that for home users, buying a new 'updated' PC may be the only real solution. Unfortunately, as most of us know, given the number of outstanding flaws in software and the ingenuity of malicious software authors, that might not even help."
That's right. No GNAA for you.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
I never said that Unix was secure. I said that certain versions of it come with all of the ports closed, which make it much less of a problem for the botnets to work.
As for the fundamental architecture of NT being no different than Unix, well maybe, maybe not, but the security model sure is different. By default on Windows, everything is open and accessible unless you shut it down. Even if you don't enable file and print sharing, there are hidden administrative shares that can't be disabled without dropping to the command line. All kinds of ports are open for all kinds of services, even though those services aren't even running. Users automatically have administrator rights.
There are desktop versions of *nix that don't have any ports open except for those required by the services that are actually installed and running. There are desktop versions of *nix that the user account is just a user and not an administrator. There are desktop versions of *nix that have disable the root account. All of these, especially when combined, offer a tighter security model than Windows.
Sure, if a user clicks-on or downloads malicious software and executes it, then there is a problem. However, the post I was responding to was about how the user must learn all about TCP/IP and the like. Knowing everything there is to know about TCP/IP and locking down my computer, still won't protect me from responding to the email that says my paypal account has been suspended, click here. However, the more locked down it is, the harder it is for it to be compromised. Mac OS X and the various *nix are more locked down than Windows. Even the reviews of the soon to be released Vista point that out.
As for your comment about them being insignificant and that is why there aren't as many exploits, well I have to believe that the same people who right these exploits here the same charge about how secure they are. In the hacker world, they already are on the radar scope. Instead of direct attacks, however, the attacks have come against various application faults (ie browsers, email, etc) and not the OS itself. That's different than in the Windows world, where the OS is the open door (and why it is so much harder to fix the problem).
I do agree that the current residential computing model is at fault, but if I may ask, who gave us that model? Microsoft created this pandora's box, and now the lid can't be closed. Now, they say they are coming out with a new model - trusted computing - however, the OS wasn't rewritten from scratch, instead they've added another security layer on top of the already shaky foundation. Trusted computing, like the XP Firewall, only gives a false sense of security, sure it may stop the casual hacker, but the people who really know what they are doing, and they are the ones to worry about, will break it/have broken it.
Are MacOS and Linux inherently better? If you are talking about security models, how can they not be? Are they the solution? Well that's a totally different question.