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Vista Post-SP2 Is the Safest OS On the Planet

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the color-me-skeptical dept.

pkluss noted Kevin Turner, COO of Microsoft making the proclamation that "Vista today, post-Service Pack 2, which is now in the marketplace, is the safest, most reliable OS we've ever built. It's also the most secure OS on the planet, including Linux and open source and Apple Leopard. It's the safest and most secure OS on the planet today."

5 of 1,010 comments (clear)

  1. The winner of Pwn2Own seems to agree by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pwn2own-mac-hack,2254-4.html

    'The NX bit is very powerful.When used properly, it ensures that user-supplied code cannot be executed in the process during exploitation. Researchers (and hackers) have struggled with ways around this protection. ASLR is also very tough to defeat. This is the way the process randomizes the location of code in a process. Between these two hurdles, no one knows how to execute arbitrary code in Firefox or IE 8 in Vista right now. For the record, Leopard has neither of these features, at least implemented effectively. In the exploit I won Pwn2Own with, I knew right where my shellcode was located and I knew it would execute on the heap for me.'

    And this was with Vista SP1. No one knows how to exploit Firefox or IE on Vista due to NX and ASLR.

    This seems to be a pretty powerful statement, from someone who would stand a chance of knowing.

    My only question is, where is Vista SP2? Last I checked, it was not yet released.

    --
    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
    1. Re:The winner of Pwn2Own seems to agree by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Informative

      Thing is, NX and ASLR are not unique to Vista.

      Linux, and the BSDs have, at least optionally, had them for some years now. I'm not sure about OSX.

      There is a very large difference between saying "most secure MS OS ever" and "most secure OS".

  2. Re:I have a feeling.... by cyber-vandal · · Score: 5, Informative

    People are always saying this on here (from NT 4.0 onwards) but how does the average user determine whether their hardware is faulty, their drivers are buggy or their OS is just a load of bloated crap? Vista is ok but I don't see any specific advantage over XP Home apart from being able to alter ACLs with a GUI instead of CACLS, and despite what apologists say, it is slower than XP.

  3. Re:Safest? by PhantomHarlock · · Score: 5, Informative

    Windows XP was not a continuation of the 95-98-98SE-ME hybrid 16/32bit product line. It is a continuation of Windows NT->2K line, which was 32-bit pure and already very stable in comparison. Apples and oranges.

  4. Re:I have a feeling.... by spud603 · · Score: 5, Informative

    And XP is slower than 2k.

    And 2k is slower than NT4.

    More functionality means less performance. Doesn't matter much

    Not to feed the troll, but really? In my experience new, feature-rich releases of OSs tend to be much faster than their predecessor. My experience is mostly with OS X and a bit of Ubuntu. OS X in particular has gotten snappier and more featureful with each point release.