Vista Security Claims Debunked

An anonymous reader writes "Apparently Microsoft still hasn't learned that counting vendor acknowledged vulnerabilities isn't a good way to establish the security of an OS. As an analysis of Microsoft's claims on Full Disclosure shows, we see that the methodology used was badly flawed. A bug in Firefox (not to mention emacs), counts as a flaw for Linux, while IE bugs get ignored on Vista's chart. Then we see that vulnerabilities aren't vulnerabilities when they're security-challenged features such as Vista's Teredo. Also, there's far too little consideration given to severity, given that it stoops to counting even extra access restrictions on a file in OSX to have something to show. In short, the original Microsoft analysis was good PR and poor research."

Comments

Heh

[Moraelin]

Heh. So basically you can keep the kernel running, but your X programs are fucked anyway. Well, gee, that's so different from rebooting the system.

In fact, lemme get this straight. So Linux is _so_ much better because when a driver crashed, Joe Average could:

1. buy a second computer, so he can SSH into the first one. Just, you know, because it's so evil to buy a $25 firewall for your Windows box, but it's cool to buy a whole second computer for your Linux box.

2. learn a bunch of command-line stuff and other nerdy stuff, so, you know, he can actually kill the right process. Which otherwise he wouldn't have needed.

3. reload X and restart his programs. The unsaved changes are still lost anyway.

4. Maybe (or maybe not) discover that the driver did screw something else up. Like, since most drivers come with their own agpgart kernel drivers, left that one in an unstable state. So let's do that all again, with a bit of forced unloading and loading drivers back.

As opposed to that evil old Windows XP, where he restarts the computer and the program. So basically just step 3. And if you're running KDE or, to a lesser extent, Gnome, it actually takes more time to start X than it takes to boot an XP computer completely.

Heh.

Look, honestly, for Joe Average whether he restarts just X or the whole XP, is irrelevant. His programs and unsaved data are still fucked either way, and the full restart is a no-brainer. You don't even need to know what "ps" and "kill -9" are. Whether or not the kernel kept running is, at most, relevant for uptime e-penis size bragging rights, but normal people tend to not give a damn about those willy-waving contests.

Re:I'll call bull

[gr3kgr33n]

not the case. On may occasions I've had to restart an X session because of faulty display drivers and you can move the running apps to the new one.

I'm not going to hold your hand and tell you how because thats not the way of the linux admins.

Before you open your mouth, you might want to have some experience with more than pressing that button.

Windows.
Error: Restart
Critical Error: Reinstall
Hardware Error: Install linux

Linux
Error: Restart app
Critical Error: Restart service.
Hardware Error: Recompile Kernel
Driver Error: find OSS programmer of problematic section and castrate as needed.
Kernel Error: find OSS programmer of problematic section and beat him with his own arms.