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Vista Security Claims Debunked

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the setting-things-straight dept.

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."

6 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. Microsoft found making PR-FUD-ing research by MukiMuki · · Score: 5, Funny

    In other news, scientists have confirmed that water is, in fact, wet.

    1. Re:Microsoft found making PR-FUD-ing research by Tumbleweed · · Score: 5, Funny

      Au contraire - Gartner Group just released a study which concluded MS Water(tm) was not, in fact, wet*, unlike GNU/Water or H2O-BSD.

      (*) MS Water(tm) tested at temperatures below 0 degrees C and above 100 degrees C, GNU/Water and H2O-BSD tested between 0 degrees C and 100 degrees C.

  2. Shocked! by yotto · · Score: 5, Funny

    I am totally shocked. I just bought 10 licences too and threw away all my Linux computers!

    --
    Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
  3. Microsoft "Research" by WilliamSChips · · Score: 5, Funny

    Bears are Catholic. The Pope shits in the woods.

    --
    Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
  4. And here I was... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    riding a flying pig on my way to get a sweater at the store 'cause I heard Hell had frozen over. At the gamestop next to the sweater store, some kid was playing Duke Nukem Forever, which I thought was an amazing game. ...so what do you mean the report isn't true?

  5. I Am So Amazed That MS Would Deceive by NeverVotedBush · · Score: 5, Funny

    I mean, in their entire history, when has Microsoft ever done ANYTHING untrustworthy?

    Like literally copying/stealing other people's code line for line and putting it in their OS? (Stacker)

    Like putting in software hooks to see if competing office products were running and then crash them or make them run slow? (WordPerfect)

    Like swapping code in an OS and a browser to make it appear that the browser was integral to the OS to weasel out of antitrust issues? (Win98 / Explorer)

    Naw... I just can't believe that MicroSoft would stoop so low as to try to promote its "ground-up" new OS (that amazingly has many of the exact same vulnerabilities as XP) as being hardened and more secure than Linux and OSX>

    They wouldn't do anything like that, would they?