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The Hidden Cost of Using Microsoft Software
Glyn Moody writes "Detractors of free software like to point out it's not really 'free,' and claim that its Total Cost of Ownership is often comparable with closed-source solutions if you take everything into account. And yet, despite their enthusiasm for including all the costs, they never include a very real extra that users of Microsoft's products frequently have to pay: the cost of cleaning up malware infections. For example, the UK city of Manchester has just paid out nearly $2.5 million to clean up the Conficker worm, most of which was 'a £1.2m [$2million] bill in the IT department, including £600,000 [$1 million] getting "consultancy support" to fix the problems, which including drafting in experts from Microsoft.' To make the comparisons fair, isn't it about time these often massive costs were included in TCO calculations?"
For example: The State of Vermont's Agency of Human Services just went through a similar exercise and I'm sure it cost them a fortune. The state is suffering financially as it is and yet, we haven't heard a WORD (there really isn't any investigative news in VT) about the outcome or how much it is costing
"Oh my god, not this AGAIN!!"
Error reading device 'Signature'. (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?
I don't want to sound like a detractor of free software (I actually favor FLOSS as much as I can), but it's not like Linux doesn't have any malware written for it. Sure, it's to a lesser degree, but it's still there and I'm not sure the costs of removing them are systematically calculated into the TCO either.
Instead of spending $2 million to *fix* virus issues, why not hire smarter people to *prevent* virus issues? I'm sure doing so would be much cheaper.
TPJ - Founder, The Amazon Basin
You might have a point.... except that Apache is far more popular than IIS and yet IIS is the one routinely attacked.
MS can't include these into calculations for obvious reasons. They must proceed as if such vulnerabilities don't exist in order to market their product. What's funny is they don't want you to either. They want to hold themselves up as either "just as good as" the next guy or make excuses for their lack of security.
In the long run this is a cost that need not be spent. There are alternative OS's and it's high time governments, of all entities, started using open alternatives. It's not just costing them in terms of being beholding to corporations like MS but in real dollars as well.
The question is not "Is Linux inherently as cheap as Microsoft". No. The question is, if we include all costs, including virus and other malware related costs, will Microsoft cost more than Linux.
Just as Microsoft is correct that when considering the real cost of 'free software', you have to include costs such as training, you ALSO have to consider the costs incurred due to malware.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The change of the user interface in Office 2007 is one huge hidden cost. It was done to make things "easier" with the result that old users instead have to re-learn the user interface completely and have a really hard time to do even the things that were simple before.
And some things that was easy in the old Office version is now really cumbersome. The style handling in Word is one example that can make the blood pressure rise.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Flame War; Didn't Read
But seriously, 2 MILLION to clean up some viruses? I need to move to Manchester and become a consultant!
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
What the hell were they doing paying $2.5 million to clean up a worm? Seriously? Hell, you could have paid the guys who wrote it 2 million to exclude your IP range in the fricking code, and saved 500k!
Governments have got to get their crap together on this stuff. When that worm hit corporate here, in luddite central, the number of effected machines was under 30...For the entire corporation! And that's with all properties connected by a corporate WAN.
That they had that level of infection is inexcusable. Shows that they're just wasting money right and left and getting nothing but a crap product.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
This story thread will have an extremely large number of posts which are highly moderated, but contain very little original or useful information.
#DeleteChrome
Yes, your complaint would apply if the entire world was considering switching from Microsoft to Linux. But when I advise my boss about the comparitive costs of using MS or of Linux, I would be foolish to refuse to include costs related to viruses simply because if in a mythical world where people used Linux more than MS then in that mysthical world the virus cost would be lower for Microsoft.
As a busineman, I must live in the real world and base my costs on reality, not your dream world. In reality, currently, Linux has lower virus related costs and I there MUST include the cost to deal with such problems when calculating the lifetime cost of software.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
You might have a point.... except that Apache is far more popular than IIS and yet IIS is the one routinely attacked.
Citation needed? ;)
Seriously, some data would be nice.
I am not following your argument, since windows has a higher market share than FOSS solutions it is exempt from malware removal costs? I think the point of the article is that while CSS vendors tout that FOSS solutions are not 'free' in terms of TCO, they neglect this cost that affects them more heavily than the completion.
I don't think the reason behind them having the higher cost (higher market share) is relevant. It is a cost, and they have a disproportionately large percent of it, admittedly for a quite valid reason.
No one said Linux is "bulletproof". Don't try to change the topic.
TFA is saying that the closed-source software costs more when operating costs are included in the total price tag. How much does industry pay for malware protection, virus protection, trojan protection, downtime from infection, and loss of productivity as a result of closed-source software? Those costs are relevant to businesses and should be considered.
Probably because when the web server is IIS it's always the same operating system platform behind, which in turn means that as soon as a breakthrough occurs it's often easy to continue with the penetration.
On an Apache web server you can't tell what kind of platform it runs on, which means that an attack that works on one server may be completely useless on another.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Maybe the world still runs on Microsoft because the TCO difference just isn't high enough to justify the cost of switching. The cost of migration has to be figured into the TCO of the alternative, despite how unfair it sounds to do so.
This leads to all sorts of bogus cruft getting installed on machines by users who are without a clue with computer security, and simply don't know to install tools like NoScript or SiteAdvisor and to pay attention to the warnings they generate.
Linux's in general do not run normal users with superuser capabilities, which stops a lot of garbage from getting installed on machines in the first place.
Really? You are allowing an infected machine to remain on the network with only a free firewall protecting the rest of your corporate network? Pulling a stunt like that would probably get me fired. It's not a matter of how technically sound the solution seems to be - it's a very high ongoing risk factor to the stability of the rest of the network.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
Maybe it's a strength that Linux is used less. That results in a lower cost of ownership overall for organizations "right now". In the far future, this could change obviously, but nothing suggests that this cost will be larger than that of Microsoft implementations, not by any margin, not any time soon.
So, as fundamentally correct as your point may be, the story "beats" you because it points out that Closed Source is misrepresenting a lower TCO by not accounting for security issues with the entire solution.
Close source solution offers "skip over" the windows virus/malware problem, Open Source has a clear answer to it now, and likely in the future. Large contracts should be made evaluating these things thoroughly, and include a real assessment of the validity of these offers, and not just take Joe I.T. Contractor's word for it.
Really? You are allowing an infected machine to remain on the network with only a free firewall protecting the rest of your corporate network? Pulling a stunt like that would probably get me fired. It's not a matter of how technically sound the solution seems to be - it's a very high ongoing risk factor to the stability of the rest of the network.
As if the idea wasn't intrinsically bad enough, he said that he puts the free firewall on that box itself! What's to prevent the malware from simply deactivating or circumventing the firewall? Malware has proven itself able to deactivate all kinds of software -- Windows Update, A/V, etc. -- what makes your free firewall so special?
Seriously, disinfecting PCs without reformatting them can be a PitA, but it's still possible. Stop being so lazy / stupid.
How about patching your systems in a timely manner so you don't have to suffer through these reactionary costs? The patch for the exploit conficker used was released in Nov 08. When did conficker start spreading around, Jan 09? Just saying.....
Insert funny smart-ass comment here.
Agreed that it's foolish. Some moron is bound to plug his thumb drive into it at some point, and spread the crap everywhere.
Still, we very seldom have viruses on our windows network, and the ones we get are all installed "accidentally" by stupid users, and they never spread because the network is well partitioned, and well configured.
If you're still having virus problems at that level NOW, there is something seriously wrong with the way your IT infrastructure is set up.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
You are confused. At this point, the typical 'hacker' works on whatever systems he thinks he can make the most botnet money from.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
This is also the same reason that you don't see as many windows problems in a corporate environment: Because the users aren't administrators.
I recently switched my entire home network over to AD, and started making people actual AD accounts that are not local admins on their machines, and the number of problems that they're having has gone WAY down. Sure, they have to ask me whenever they want to do something like install software, but for the most part their system configurations are fairly stable -- they just do the same tasks day after day, they're not highly dynamic users who like to experiment with new and exciting software / hardware like I am -- besides, them having to call me insures that I have a certain degree of oversight as to what goes onto their computer, allowing me not only to support them better later on (since I know exactly what happened to their PC), but also allows me to preempt problematic software etc.
Not necessarily, it points out that consultants (often independent companies) are wrongly evaluating software contract offers.
That's a big problem, not just for Microsoft, but especially for large organizations and the companies that evaluate these offers for them. No bashing there.
Make no mistake: if Linux were as widely used as Windows, there would be bugs galore to be a-cleaning in Linux land. I love Linux (heck, "I'm rinsing in it now!"), and have used it as my primary desktop and server platform since '94, but bulletproof it ain't.
I think by bullet proof they mean mitigate stupid user and developer tricks which still happen in Linux but you have to try harder.
I mean the first thing I did when first trying out Linux in 1997 was to learn it while logged in as root because that was how you logged into Windows NT.
That said, I strongly disagree that OS usage is directly correlated to viable exploits on a device.
Take the iPhone for example. Its used by a lot of people but its nigh impossible to exploit simply because its locked down.
Now you sacrifice a lot of usability, but that is the price you pay in terms of security.
I mean if Microsoft Wrote an OS that would not allow the user or their programs to write to anywhere else except the user home directory and programs could not starup other programs or modify their files, then you would never see any other viruses again on the Windows platform.
Of course this would break all the legacy programs and you wouldn't really be running windows anymore in a sense... But wouldn't it be worth it? ;)
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The problem is that for every penny they contributed in direct labor costs to clean up, there's probably at least as much wasted in employee downtime while services are unavailable.
If it wasn't for the fact that it was preventing staff from getting their work done, I doubt anyone would have spent $2 million to clean up Conficker.
I didn't RTFA, but it sounds like their total cost includes both the direct cleanup cost, and some of the indirect cost of paying people to be unproductive during the cleanup.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
My company was hit pretty hard by the conficker virus. It took a lot of users offline for days. The cleanup effort included bringing in a small army of consultants to help fix the issue. After everything was cleaned up and ready to go, IT's response to the outbreak was to kick our Virus Scanner into some crazy ultra cautious mode. The end result of that is 50% of my cpu is being used up by my virus scanner constantly and opening an app or compiling something in eclipse takes substantially longer than it used to. The fact that virus scanning software decreases worker productivity by tying up substantial system resources should be part of the TCO as well.
Our bugs are smarter than your test scripts.
I am not following your argument, since windows has a higher market share than FOSS solutions it is exempt from malware removal costs?
Not that its exempt, its that should people target Linux as much, the figure would likely be the same.
Also, if you keep up with security patches (like you should, regardless of OS), it becomes a non-issue. This is really just FUD aimed at MS, using 2001 "MS is insecure" arguements which are no longer true today.
Parent poster is full of crap.
Make no mistake: if Linux were as widely used as Windows, there would be bugs galore to be a-cleaning in Linux land.
This is the same as stating: "If linux had the number of users that microsoft windows had, it would be victim to the same number of viruses, malware, and general script kiddies" which is complete bullshit.
I'm sick of hearing this argument, only a complete tool would believe it. *Nix systems are inherently more secure, due to its security model (file permissions, groups, no admin rights, etc), and to the fact that it literally forces you to not be a complete moron (security wise) while using it. Furthermore, because of the variety of software that can be installed on each box, only the most common programs (apache, nginx, ssl, ssh, etc) would be effective targets to attack, limiting the areas an admin needs to cover.
Due to the above, there are only certain attacks that would be effective to a *Nix system. Off the top of my head, this leaves: privilege escalation, man-in-the-middle, and social engineering (a problem everywhere, regardless of OS).
In short, a Linux machine that is run by a competent administrator is MUCH more difficult to infect or attack than a Windows machine, and the parent is a moron.
An idiot is an idiot....no matter if he is pushing Windows or not.
Insert funny smart-ass comment here.
I don't think so.. Here's why.. users are lazy, and this is the biggest vulnerability.. With most Linux distributions, software is distributed by the "distro" (usually through repositories) .. This is the easy way.. The hard way is installing from outside this source and making it work.. the really hard way, is compiling from source... Now since most users are lazy, it's generally going to come from the distro repo where it has gone through many eyes and testing before it was available.. The other difference is executables.. If someone emails me something like a script, it requires extra effort to make it executable.. again laziness prevails in Linux's favor.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Oh yeah? What about all the time I spend clicking that little update button that keeps popping up on my Ubuntu Desktop? Huh? What about that! That takes away from my .... um, web surfing time! :P
You might have a point.... except that Apache is far more popular than IIS and yet IIS is the one routinely attacked.
Citation needed? ;)
Seriously, some data would be nice.
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/requested.html
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
not just that but it affects the services provided. For example, I know of a police force that was infected by conficker. It got everywhere. The consensus is that the company providing the mobile data interfaces was the original source of infection (but you cannot prove where conficker came from, its pervasive), and for a long while the officers on the beat had to use their handsets as mobile phones - no data, so no event updates and no communication with the CAD system.
I don't know the cost there, but they had con-sultants in from Microsoft to help clear the mess up and they weren't cheap. The infection lasted for 2 weeks, and they had reduced service for several weeks after that.
That's just for Conficker. Remember storm, sql slammer, I love you?
That is no longer true. Windows Vista & 7 both default to a limited user, not admin. I've been using Linux for my OS for 8 or so years, but you gotta give credit where credit is due.
Well, so long as netcraft confirms it...
Fast forward. MS only produces complicated behemoths. To this day MS Windows has not completely understood it is a network OS(perhaps 7 will do it). It is no longer the case that a part time person can keep 20 machines running. And when something does happen, it can be very difficult to fix. A single event can require a complete reinstall of the OS. I've made mistakes of going to a wrong web site and had this happen on a completely up to date machine. I have allowed untrusted parties to run my MS machines and have had significant damage caused within the hour. MS machines are the dependable work horses they once were. It now requires a significant infrastructure to keep MS machines a production. The best case scenario is to treat each machine as a RAID, keeping data off the machine, and using a standard HD disk images. Doesn't this sound like the pre-MS days of the so-called inefficient mainframe. MS is worried about this and has began a defensive campaign against IBM.
I would argue that MS machines are now, overall, as expensive and inefficient as the Unix machines were when ATT tried to save themselves with the introduction of this machine. This does not mean that MS does not have value, at least to legacy customers, but it may not be the best choice for startups, as Unix was the not the best choice in the late 1980's.
I can point to an exact time, around 2000, when MS became too expensive to use. It was a time whem MS would accuse paying customers of theft. Force customer to undergo intrusive and expensive audits. Require support staff to be redirected from supporting the customers need to make a profit, to the MS need to make a profit.
In light of this, I think we are going to see non-MS solution, just like we say non-ATT and non-IBM solutions. The biggest impediment to this is the easy supply of reliable naked PCs with full support to the SOHO owner. I think some companies, like Gateway, made a mistake in continuing to hook their saddle to the MS bandwagon instead of providing *nix solution for common business problems. In many cases, smart firms buy solutions, not an OS.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Windows has file permissions, too. Thats not the issue. The issue is more RPM/DEB and the fact that most users can install all they need through a trusted channel (yum/apt).
I don't get it, what prevents the attacker to try every recent vulnerability on that host, and he even guess some information about operating environment based on server replies it's not like this hasn't been done before. I suppose your criticism is valid but, if the attacker is serious about breaking into a system running apache he's probably got some exploits for more common operating system anyway, so this makes things a little bit difficult, but not by much.
Citation needed? ;)
Apache is far more popular: Netcraft confirms it! Attacks, on the other hand, are probably about equal, though, IME, security hardening Apache on *nix is far easier than security hardening IIS on Windows.
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Only Linux is not used less, Linux is used for almost every platform that includes a microprocessor, from PCs to embedded stuff to gadgets etc...
It's well known that huge organizations leave stuff unpatched for long periods of time. Wasn't it reported that the US Air Force took something like 6-12 months to roll out patches? They got a unified version of XP from Microsoft to simplify patch deployment time down to 60 days.
Yikes!
The company I work for tried switching. I really sucked. I submitted countless tickets to the IT department to fix printing and pdf. Yes linux can print some stuff. Yes linux can open some pdfs. But doing out of the ordinary things like trying to print an A3 pdf landscape apparently rarely gets tested. Not being able to set printing defaults across all applications really is stupid (ubuntu). I would have gladly paid the microsoft tax out of my own pocket just to get the satisfaction of actually being able to get some of the most basic functions of my electrical engineering job done.
Excel crashes, Exchange has quirks, Apache conf files can be a headache, and 75% of the operating system installs I've done have resulted in some level of headaches, whether Windows or Linux. Most human beings don't have the time, skills, or inclination to deal with these problems. While I've never witnessed this Windows vs. Linux argument happen in a fair and non-evangelical way, I think acknowledging that these costs exist for all software is a first step.
No, it submits passively.
I expect your shop is 100% Windows precisely because you're too macho to accept the many good reasons why a shop that is 100% anything makes you vulnerable.
Your arrogance will be your downfall.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Ahem..
Plese go look up fingerprinting, both active and passive, and revise "you can't tell what kind of platform it runs on".
Thanks
What a joke! I just tried this on my wife's Vista laptop. Your two options for account creation are 'administrator' or 'standard account', with 'standard' being the first defaulted choice. The only problem with this is that you can't install software at all with the standard account. Good luck with trying to install Microsoft Office from a standard account...
There is so much software out there that simply won't install correctly if the user is not an administrator, I don't even try any more...
And of course, this does nothing for the bulk of Windows home users, running Windows XP. These are the principal vectors of most malware...
waitasec... #4, www.bing.com, runs on *LINUX*? Man, the kool-aid in Redmond must SUCK.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
You've done your part!
"hacked" and "infected" are worlds apart.
This is the difference between your personal server being
rooted and the entire internet being brought to it's knees.
It's like the difference between needing to go to the hospital
because someone decided to stalk you and then shoot you versus
getting some plague like disease for going out in public.
Being hacked generally requires personal attention on the part of ...and there is "anti-exploit" code in Unix. It's probably been
some conscious assailant rather than just some automated bit of
malware exploiting some fundemental design flaw in the software
you're using.
around longer than the comparable "code" in DOS and Windows. The
fact that Unix is a harder target and it's users are intolerably
smug doesn't mean they aren't thinking about the problem.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The answer is, is that it's because the IT staff obviously were not on top of the maintenance of the computers. Rolling out Windows Updates is not a difficult task, computers can be set to do it themselves, or you can use a centralized roll-out system like WSUS.
You've failed to address one of main reasons why "big shops" don't get updates out in a timely manner: The need for updates must be carefully balanced against the likelihood that updates are going to disrupt mission critical systems.
As an IT guy, you should probably know this. Maybe your systems aren't so critical, and you can afford to believe the absolutist tripe about how it's the IT staff's fault for not getting the update out in time. IME, the real world is rarely so black-and-white, and keyboard badasses that make grand pronouncements are rarely worth listening to.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Further to that, bing.com has more views than google. Also, what the hell is tooooop.net?
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To claim that Window's insecurities aren't part of the true cost of Windows is genuinely dishonest. If you run Windows, and you DO NOT invest in security measures, you are a complete and utter fool. If you run Windows and you invest in inadequate security measures, then you are a mere run of the mill fool.
Any mission critical computer with sensitive information on it has to have expensive security software installed, and it must be supervised and monitored frequently. It is EXPENSIVE to keep a Windows machine "secure".
Only the basest of MS fanbois will say the same about *nix. Granted, only an idiot would set up a *nix machine without setting up a firewall, permissions, and other accepted security measures. But, an idiot can indeed manage to set a box up, and to run it for extended periods of time without problem, because *nix has a lot of security BUILT INTO IT. (Well, as long as our idiot doesn't run as root all the time - nothing can save an idiot from himself if he disregards ALL security measures.)
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
There's one big fat gaping hole in your argument.
Not everyone is comfortable with changing their systems on a whim.
They believe in little things like "testing" and "change control"
and they aren't going to just "throw something in" cowboy style.
Other stuff might break... important stuff.
So you can't always assume that end users are able to participate
in an endless cycle of changes to their important software.
In general, products should not be sold broken.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Douglas Adams' bowl of petunias thought "Oh no, not again". "Oh my god" was not part of the petunias' thoughts because it's widely known that petunias are, by and large, atheists.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Believe it or not, there are a whole lot of Microsoft users and some of them like their products. Automatically assuming someone is a shill because they speak positively about Windows is just plain retarded.
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The netcraft link shows Bing.com using linux. Really? Quite surprising. Microsoft wants to take on google, and it could not/would not do it with windows boxes?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
UAC is also a really excellent innovation, allowing even Administrators to keep themselves somewhat in-line.
Except UAC isn't a MS innovation. Privilege elevation has existed long before MS decide to start taking security seriously.
Slashdot is kind of like Playboy; we aren't here to read the articles.
A car WEARS OUT.
The oil in a Honda is a physical thing. It will break down chemically over time due to age and heat.
What is the comparable process in a computer?
There isn't any.
There's no good reason for the system software to require "maintenance"
to deal with bit rot. The only reason "maintenance" on software is
required is because it is sold to the customer BROKEN. This is why Microsoft
software gets infected with malware.
This notion that Linux or MacOS doesn't get hit due to lack of "popularity"
is just a self serving dellusion that Lemmings tell themselves to avoid
acknowledging the truth that they've been conned and duped and continue to
be conned and duped and don't see a good alternative.
Many of the older computing platforms were rife with malware because they
provided a suitable breeding ground for malware. Large numbers had nothing
to do with it. This is a historical fact that Lemmings continue to try to
gloss over any time they claim that malware is about "popularity".
A Honda is built not to implode at 60,000 miles. This is why you can drive
one for 300,000 miles. Your level of dedication to the product really doesn't
have that much to do with it.
Windows is no Honda.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I believe that the majority of corporate bosses are too stupid to pick up on this meme for the foreseeable future.
I am sure that in 30 or forty years it may become a problem, but by that time I will have retired.
In addition, many of the "costs" Microsoft calculates are in fact dependent on Linux being less poopular than MS. If everyone is using Linux, then the costs to retrain etc. will NOT be present.
No, Microsoft is not allowed to put in tons of "Linux is not the primary system people know" costs and then exclude the "Linux is not the primary system people write viruses for" costs.
Not to me at least.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
No, the primary strength of Linux is that it is not attempting to cluelessly
pander to the "normal user". Apple panders to this sort of user but it tries to
be smart about. Microsoft tries to pander to this user and f*cks it up. If Linux
tries to follow Microsoft's lead in some sort of stupidity, there will be enough
users bellyaching that it's a really bad idea. Who's there to send up the red
flags in Redmond?
The Mac is a pretty good demonstration of the idea that you don't have to
be an idiot to accomodate "idiots".
Much of Microsoft's trouble comes from violating principles that were beaten
into your head if you were computing online in the 80s.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The "real world" cost I find most annoying in dealing with software licenses is the human bandwidth cost of dealing with software licenses. The fact that an expense is involved launches all sorts of machinery within the company, requiring input from accounting, legal, management, etc. to determine which is the best choice, are we wasting money here, etc. Compound this with vendor's menu of selections that have to be considered, explaining the menu options to each concerned player, etc. etc. Then, if it is a renewable license, there's the annual annoyance of paying for the update, do we still need it? do we have to do accounting to the licensor? sales calls from the vendor, etc. When it's free, it's free - use it, or not. Simple decision, tons of hours saved simply because money is not involved.
There are other factors involved in deciding which software is "best" for a particular need, but if a "free" software will do the job adequately, it is saving several man days per year to use a "free" software as compared to having to turn the crank on the money machine.
waitasec... #4, www.bing.com, runs on *LINUX*? Man, the kool-aid in Redmond must SUCK.
Microsoft doesn't want bing.com to get attacked by the same malicious entities everything else they run does?
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
There's a problem with the theory that Linux will have as many viruses as Windows if it becomes more popular. Namely, Linux is currently the most popular webserver, despite this windows based webservers have far more malware.
Linux webservers do get hacked too, showing that they're a priority target, just not as many viruses.
You also have to factor in that Linux is a diverse ecosystem, windows is not as much, all products essentially the same. That makes writing a virus that will hit all Linux boxes a lot harder than one that will hit all windows ones.
Linux will certainly develop a malware problem as it grows, but it will never be as bad as Windows has it.
Also, from the perspective of TCO, as Linux becomes popular enough to have a malware problem, it will also decrease the cost of training.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
that is run by a competent administrator
This would be the key to any secure system. It is also possible to run Vista securely, but nobody does because that would require "training" the users more than we are used to. Linux is more secure by default, Linux users are more accustomed to running in a secured environment, etc.
Is the Linux security model "better" than the Vista one? I think that's a 99% subjective question. Subjectively, I find it easier to run Linux securely than Vista, and more importantly, it is easier to do things securely in Linux than to do them insecurely, in most instances. In Vista the opposite is often true - far easier to run in Administrator mode than to hassle with reconfiguring something to work properly in a secure way.
But, if you have a competent administrator and well trained users (both as common as Blue Moons on Thursdays), then Vista can be run just as securely as Linux, but then, well trained Linux user/administrators are also quite rare, in the real world.
This is not a hidden cost of Windows, but a hidden cost of having ignorant admins and/or management. If you're spending $2.5 Million cleaning up a virus infection, you've done something terribly wrong along the way. Most machines in most places of business maintain the same software day-in and day-out. Those machines should either be booting via write-protected remote images or using something like SteadyState to keep everything running perfectly. The servers should have correctly created permissions and security which make viral infections nearly impossible. The rest of the machines should be locked down with policies, limited privilege accounts, and software providing protection from infections. They should also be regularly imaged (as in nightly to a SAN/NAS/etc).
That's just the common sense little stuff. There's plenty more that could be done as well, but just the above will all but guarantee you never see a multi-million dollar cleanup bill regardless of your choice of OS.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
yadda yadda MS has 90% market share so that's the reason it has malware yadda yadda
I absolutely hate this argument. It assumes such a simplicity, that the only consideration that people pick for coding a virus is marketshare of the target. Of course it's one consideration, but not the only. It,. more importantly, seems to want to wash Microsoft's hands of the problem, meaning nothing will get fixed. There are a lot of things MS can do to help the situation (and in their defense they have done some) but saying "it's because they own the desktop, nothing to see here, move along" doesn't help anyone. Including you, when your net is down because some Conficker DoS.
The problem with Microsoft is just how damn easy it is to write a virus, at least in the old days. Microsoft had a system (Windows + Explorer + Outlook) which:
This is the essence of all VB email viruses. This bad design had absolutely nothing to do with marketshare, just made the impact much more widespread.
Also, they allowed HTML email to hit activeX, which means an untrackable email can execute code just by you opening the mail. It's the Goodtimes virus, but for real.
I personally use windows, and prefer windows, and since XP came out have never had a problem with it myself. The biggest problem with computers is they're technical machines which lend themselves to needing to have technical knowledge in order to use one safely/correctly....which the majority of people do not have.
An analogy would be that "cars are complicated now, with computers and stuff, and people need to be expected to know all that tech stuff to operate safely, so we can let them explode or catch on fire if people are not paying attention 100% of the time, because it's really their fault if the car blows up when you cross the yellow line"
Again, simplicity in argument. YES stuff is complicated, but there are a lot of things you can tie down by default. MS is driven by checkbox marketing, the more features the better. This blows up when people have a financial incentive to exploit those features.
Rolling out Windows Updates is not a difficult task
True but I would like to consider the line just before that one...
The answer is, is that it's because the IT staff obviously were not on top of the maintenance of the computers.
This statement slaps directly in the face of what Microsoft touts as their big advantage. Ease of manageability. In fact, they say that it is 60% the TCO of servers. See blue pie piece.
In fact what does Microsoft think Ease of manageability means? See first gray bubble
With a piece of software that just sooooooo easy to keep running, why do entire IT department fail to be "...on top of the maintenance of the computers?"
Trust. Microsoft's automatic updates not haz it, to use the lolcatz of our times. People don't trust Microsoft's updates. They fear it will break what they have going. slight pause It may, it may not, but that's not the point. The point is that the ease of manageability argument fails when we subscribe to your idea of...
it's because the IT staff obviously were not on top of the maintenance of the computers.
We can either say that IT departments need to spend due diligence with updates and security announcements with Microsoft products. (much like Unix and Linux IT departments,) or we can say that Microsoft has issues with security and trust which leads to an environment that breeds ripe servers for malware attacks.
In the end, one of these two options will cost an IT department money. True, this article looks at it from the latter point of view, but say we look at it from the first point of view and what do we have? The TCO rising because the "ease of manageability" is reduced, the two being inversely proportional per Microsoft. So even if Microsoft does patch whatever exploit it is that we are questioning, the trust is not there from the end-users and that cost something as human as it may sound.
I'm very curious as to whether that shop you mentioned fits within Microsoft's "TCO" calculations. I'd be willing to be that the company you're talking about goes far above and beyond what Microsoft says an outfit of that size and function should cost. Yes, it is possible to secure a Windows working environment, but as soon as you do you start to find that the other arguments Microsoft relies upon begin falling down. As soon as you start to build effective security your system starts to get harder to maintain compatibility, it starts to get more expensive to hire/train staff, and it starts being less user friendly.
This is just my personal experience matched up to yours, and it's worth just as much (nearly nothing). You want to know the real truth of the matter? Step the anecdotes back for a second and look at things more generally. HOW much is spent per year by businesses in general (not your pet data point) cleaning up malware? HOW much business is lost before it can be cleaned up properly? These numbers are so obnoxiously larger than the 0 you're subtly suggesting that I find the "IQ of a sponge" comment amusingly ironic.
What is more likely happen if Linux comes out on top is that there will be several companies that will provide distributions that will all be different, but which all will function and (god forbid) interoperate. If such a thing comes to pass, the single attack vector for malware writers dissappears, and they will have to work significantly harder to get a smaller payoff. You know that little thing, free market? The one we almost got rid off in our desire to serve the corporate overlords?
You forget about the Linux server market, where Linux is number one, and this fact hasn't upped the amount of viruses whatsoever.
Easy, http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/971492.mspx
Have a nice day!
1. It's patched.
2. It only affects webdav which is disabled by default
3. webdav is an extension of IIS, not IIS itself. I wouldn't say a vulnerability in PHP is a vulnerability in apache.
4. it's not a remote execution exploit. all you can get out of it is access to some page you might not have been previously allowed. considering webdav is only really used for exchange, this probably isnt a huge deal.
I had an interview at Geek Squad back at the beginning of summer. I didn't do well - and I'm rather glad. One of his questions was what I thought of free software. Being a naive young lad who has never worked in sales, I foolishly stated my position. I told him that I think it has a lot of advantages, and have often used free alternatives and/or open source software. His response to this - "How hard would you work for free?" It was a little shocking how he completely disregarded the benefits of the free software community. He then made it very clear that Geek Squad employees who mention free software to customers are often at risk of being fired. I can only imagine that this "hidden cost" referred to in TFA is far from hidden in the eyes of places like Best Buy. If people knew about all this cool free stuff that was out there, who would you rip off? Where would you find spyware-infested PCs that you can charge an arm and a leg to fix?
Careful, your Microsft uniform is showing. Ratchet back the shilling for a couple posts, then try it again more carefully. Also, "Windows anti-exploit code is insane" is not an approved meme. We don't want people thinking Windows drools on itself, now do we?
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
Yeah, I've heard of Code Red. Back at a major corporation I used to work for, we got hit. Bad.
I was admin on half a dozen *NIX boxes running Apache when another admin noted the strange URLs hitting his server logs. So we all checked and found hundreds of unique IP addresses of infected NT systems trying to pass it on. Later, this number woud grow to thousands. Several of us took it upon ourselves to grep|sort|cut out a list of IP addresses and forward them to our computing security department for further action.
Some of the admins of affected systems claimed that 1) they were up to date on all "applicable" patches and 2) they could not possibly be infected, as their systems were dedicated SQL Server hosts, not running IIS (so no IIS patches need be applied). It turns out that at some point, they had enabled their web admin interfaces and, as a result, that had started IIS (quietly, in the background, without their knowledge). Worse yet, it was started in some default configuration that left their systems wide open to all sorts of unauthorized manipulation. It took several weeks of around the clock effort on the part of the NT administration staff to clean the mess up.
I did have my own fun with it. One of my systems ran Apache on Linux with Samba (server and client). I wrote a CGI with the name and path of the Code Red URL request. It returned a 404 response through Apache (as would a standard Linux system), but I had it generate a WinPopup message sent back to the offending system to the effect that it was compromised.
Have gnu, will travel.
Your post might give the reasons why there are more viruses for Windows (although I would dispute your explanation) but the reality is that for whatever reason, Windows has much more of a problem in this area. One of the things that it routinely done in TCO calculations is to factor in the cost of 'retraining' users to use a different OS than Windows and a different office package to MS Office. That retraining is only required because of the MS market share. If it's fair to factor in those costs (which wouldn't be an issue if MS didn't hold a dominant/monopoly position) then it's definitely fair to factor in the virus/malware costs (which you claim are also because of their dominant position).
> This is really just FUD aimed at MS, using 2001 "MS is insecure" arguements which are no longer true today.
Totally man, we haven't had a Windows malware event so bad broke out into the mainstream media in years.
Oh sorry, my bad, we have. The patches fly out at about the same pace as they did in 2001. Different subsystems get targeted as the cat and mouse game goes on but since Windows is still a big blob of poorly documented, closed source and for the most part insecure code the game isn't likely to end soon.
That said, had a look a major Linux distro's errata firehose lately? So lets not get too smug. Yes I realize a Linux distro covers a much larger universe that includes server software, office suites and development tools. But compare apple to apples, say Firefox to IE and we still have work to do. Which is currently safer? Well I'm not posting this from Windows.
Democrat delenda est
Microsoft's tech "support" costs are truly one of the largest hidden costs of ownership. Assuming you can get a human on the phone at Microsoft, you're frequently directed to the wrong person, the wrong automated telephone system with inappropriate choices, the wrong department, the wrong planet... Spent 3 hours this weekend trying to get my temporary Vista Enterprise software (temporary 30 day solution) downgraded to Home Premium, which I legitimately own without having to reinstall everything. I was trying to be honest. After 3 hours, I just gave up, got online and hacked the registry to turn off notifications. 3 hours, 4 tech "support" personnel in India, 5 different, useless phone systems and .....nothing. Microsoft's eventual demise will be their own fault, plain and simple. Windows used to make my life easier. Those days are long gone.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I suppose people think that complexity is some how better or more indicative of truth... because why are we trying to battle on these obscure money-lenders' rationale of governing costs of software? It's simple, linux is downloaded for free, and to get Windows alone is what.. 199.95? Oh, and how much for Photoshop? Oh, maybe add Maya, and then perhaps some VM software? Because, we all know that Windows by itself, out of the box, is rather limited. Add in a full blown development environment... oh, yes and Microsoft Office I presume yes?
TCO is bullshit. Windows has a price tag greater than 0. No matter how complex or convoluted you get, no matter how many lawyers with fantasy rationale obfuscating the obvious, no matter what is said or how it's said... any price on Windows is always going to be more expensive than free.
Cost of operation? How much wasted time do you think has been put into trying to figure out mundane tasks in Office 2007? Might as well be a completely new product, Open Office which clearly is a different product is more familiar to a previous Office user than 2007 is. TCO accounts for "training" as their defense? They are shooting them in the foot. I mean, you always have "training" with new software. Sometimes you have it with just bug-fixes or upgrades. Some of us, it might only be "familiarizing", but others who are so dead set in a routine to complete a task will struggle for sure.
What is it, about TCO, is relevant, useful.... real? Keep that to yourself, I've read all the garbage. Bottom line is there's really nothing governing this bullshit "TCO" philosophy, any more in favor of Microsoft than any other software or product for that matter. The real fact is the real numbers. 199.95 for retail Windows. And then tally up all the numbers that would make your "Windows" installation, and all the third party software, "legal". There's your real cost, there's the obvious cost.
How much do you think it would cost to have a legit Windows box? 5,000 USD total in software costs?
No, better yet. How much would a Windows box cost, purchasing all of the commercial software available that would enable the Windows user to do what the typical Linux installation can do? I mean, I have photo editing software, 3D renderers galore... office suites, every server imaginable, VM software, conversion tools... jesus my box is Linux... nuff said. My Windows box would break the bank paying for and installing only a fraction of the capabilities in commercial software.
Now, site wide licenses, think organization size... thousands of desktops... niche market functionality... dear god. TCO is the least of your worries it seems.
Benchmarks comparing PCs with Windows and other OSs should be forced to run with AV-software installed - because that's the normal use-case.
Everything else silly.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
I got disappointed because when reading the title I thought this post was going to be about the REAL BIG cost of using Microsoft software. Security is one thing but they have been improving (you got to accept it). The real issue is the LOCK-IN, and THAT is a giantic hidden cost of MS software, I wish some serious publication could analyze and denounce it cause seriously, malware costs are not a big deal and pro-MS groups will always just use their giantic, excessive marketshare as an excuse for it.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
"And as that argument sways more users toward FOSS, the cost/benefit for malware writers will change."
But if that's the case, it will be *then*, not *now*.
"for FOSS we have no reasonable track record. So to me, that's background noise."
For me, having about 200 Linux systems, both servers and PCs my "background noise" says "malware-related costs to-date: zero". Surely my manager will say "but, hey, let's inflate this number since making our real numbers out of our real bills to get our real TCO would be a bit myopic, you know".
"imagine a world where the customer doesn't bear the cost of the vendor's mistakes. I know, crazy..."
Not so crazy: that's the world as of today: the customer does never bear the cost of the vendor's mistakes; it bears the cost of its very own mistakes... choosing the wrong providers, for instance.
"I work in IT, in a 100% Windows shop (the only non-Windows we have is ESX running under multiple Windows installs) and we simply do not have any problems with any form of malware, at all."
Don't you deploy antivirus on your systems, neither servers nor desktops? Do you think those antivirus go for free and that don't take away maintenance resources? Do you think those antivirus never threw any compatibility problem with any other service? Do you think they don't take up hard disk, RAM and CPU?
"I guarantee you that no matter what OS you run, you're going to run into problems if you don't take precautions to protect your software from malicious code."
And I agree 100% with you. It's about what the relative costs for those "precautions" are with regards to the platform. I'm not like you and my "house" is not 100% windows but about 90% Linux 10% Windows and I can tell you a significant difference does in fact exist.
"As for these people cleaning up Conficker...talk about a bad example! The vulnerability that Conficker takes advantage of has been patched for what...8 months now?"
So you want to talk about "real world" when it fits to your argument but avoid it when you don't like it?
"I wouldn't be complaining about the malware or the cost of removing it, I'd be firing the IT department en masse"
So you feel it's proper to talk about costs regarding compatibility issues basically maliciously provoked by Microsoft itself as a lock-in strategy (we are talking about "real world" after all) but you think firing your entire IT staff, hiring new ones, training them and hoping they'll be any better than the old ones will come for free, did I get it?
"she doesn't have Conficker because I set her Windows updates to do themselves automatically."
Ok, now I get it: your mother PC is the nearest you've been to a corporate environment, or else you'd never talk about automatic Windows updates as a solution.
"That is how easy THAT is."
Yes: filtering your facts in order to reach to simple solutions that won't account for all the "corner cases" of your real scenario is always easy. It's only that it's irrelevant too.
Permissions, primarily. As I sit here in front of my Debian/Ubuntu machine, my user name is "guy". I can do nothing outside of my home folder. I can't infect another user's files, can't touch any system file, can't touch root's folder. There is no C:\Program Files - meaning that I don't have write permissions to ANYTHING outside my home folder. If I wish to install a program on this machine without becoming root, I can install it to my home folder. In such a case, the program has no write permissions outside my home folder. Using any programs that root has installed doesn't give me write permissions even to that program's folder - any data that the program needs to save to my profile, history, or whatever is written inside my own home folder. In fact, I don't have access to all the programs that root has installed. I have to become root to use things like Wireshark properly, or to use the package manager.
With Windows, a limited user has to ActiveX among other things. A limited user can save files to various places outside his home folders, unlike *nix. While the Windows Administrator can lock down a lot of Windows system files, he can't prevent even a limited user from making changes and/or writing files that might be booby traps lying around waiting to be executed by a more privileged user.
While NT variants of Windows are vastly superior to Win9.x in that they actually HAVE a security model, that model doesn't compare with that of any *nix system.
Until I type in my password for sudo or root, I have fewer privileges on Debian than I would have on a limited account on Windows. I can't even open an internet connection - root does that at bootup with a script.
And, to be perfectly honest, I don't NEED privileges very often. I could probably run this account for the next year without becoming root, and manage to do everything I wanted to do, except for testing new programs and updating.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Not this strawman argument again.
Microsoft products have a long history of virus, worm, and bug problems for lots of reasons. One of which is the inability of anyone knowledgeable to review the code quality or to patch security holes. It's a closed-source system and in many cases its defaults leave vital processes vulnerable to attack. Many problems are not solved with an OS-level fix, i.e. buffer overruns. (That was actually quite funny, one unanticipated time when "buffer overruns" and "IE" are in the same sentence and it doesn't involve a Microsoft patch. But I digress.)
Linux systems have been around sufficiently long -- and are in so many things you use each day -- routers, switches, VOIP systems, firewall systems, servers, smartphones, PDAs, palmtop computers and more -- that the track record has been established. The NSA has given Linux its blessing, and recent competitions to try and break SELinux have proven uninteresting. By design it's a more secure system, and because of the quantity and quality of people looking at the code it's able to achieve a higher standard of security.
If you're going to try and hack some user desktops go ahead, Linux hasn't made inroads into the desktop like Windows has. It's the design flaws of Windows to require anitvirus software just to keep the thing alive. But, on the other hand, if you want to try and hack my network, it's protected by a Linux firewall appliance. Note which OS I use when security and stability matters?
How can you claim that 'closed-source software' is the cause of all the ills you mentioned?
Where exactly did he say that?
You sir, are a contender for the bad strawman of the day award.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Permissions, primarily. As I sit here in front of my Debian/Ubuntu machine, my user name is "guy". I can do nothing outside of my home folder. I can't infect another user's files, can't touch any system file, can't touch root's folder.
So, just like Windows then ?
There is no C:\Program Files - meaning that I don't have write permissions to ANYTHING outside my home folder.
Regular users in Windows do not have write privileges to %PROGRAMFILES%. At least, not by default.
If I wish to install a program on this machine without becoming root, I can install it to my home folder. In such a case, the program has no write permissions outside my home folder. Using any programs that root has installed doesn't give me write permissions even to that program's folder - any data that the program needs to save to my profile, history, or whatever is written inside my own home folder. In fact, I don't have access to all the programs that root has installed. I have to become root to use things like Wireshark properly, or to use the package manager.
Again, just like Windows.
With Windows, a limited user has to ActiveX among other things. A limited user can save files to various places outside his home folders, unlike *nix.
Where ?
While the Windows Administrator can lock down a lot of Windows system files, he can't prevent even a limited user from making changes and/or writing files that might be booby traps lying around waiting to be executed by a more privileged user.
Of course he can.
While NT variants of Windows are vastly superior to Win9.x in that they actually HAVE a security model, that model doesn't compare with that of any *nix system.
Actually, that security model is superior to traditional UNIX. It is both more comprehensive and more capable.
Until I type in my password for sudo or root, I have fewer privileges on Debian than I would have on a limited account on Windows. I can't even open an internet connection - root does that at bootup with a script.I have no idea what you're trying to say with "open an internet connection", but rest assured a regular user in Linux can make outgoing network connections by defaut in pretty much any non-locked-down distro.