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'WannaCry Makes an Easy Case For Linux' (techrepublic.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The thing is, WannaCry isn't the first of its kind. In fact, ransomware has been exploiting Windows vulnerabilities for a while. The first known ransomware attack was called "AIDS Trojan" that infected Windows machines back in 1989. This particular ransomware attack switched the autoexec.bat file. This new file counted the amount of times a machine had been booted; when the machine reached a count of 90, all of the filenames on the C drive were encrypted. Windows, of course, isn't the only platform to have been hit by ransomware. In fact, back in 2015, the LinuxEncoder ransomware was discovered. That bit of malicious code, however, only affected servers running the Magento ecommerce solution. The important question here is this: Have their been any ransomware attacks on the Linux desktop? The answer is no. With that in mind, it's pretty easy to draw the conclusion that now would be a great time to start deploying Linux on the desktop. I can already hear the tired arguments. The primary issue: software. I will counter that argument by saying this: Most software has migrated to either Software as a Service (SaaS) or the cloud. The majority of work people do is via a web browser. Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari; with few exceptions, SaaS doesn't care. With that in mind, why would you want your employees and staff using a vulnerable system? [...] Imagine, if you will, you have deployed Linux as a desktop OS for your company and those machines work like champs from the day you set them up to the day the hardware finally fails. Doesn't that sound like a win your company could use? If your employees work primarily with SaaS (through web browsers), then there is zero reason keeping you from making the switch to a more reliable, secure platform.
Firewalls and security updates. The Windows server firewall is locked down by default. The Windows desktop firewall has a million ports open. Many are to localsubnet, but it's still open.
What I really want MS to do is make their firewall scoping easier to use, like icefloor: allow grouping of IP ranges as a common name, and allow scopes to use that name. They started to do that with predefined networks, but stopped for some reason.
Virus writers will target the largest market portion.
This tripe is tired. There are more factors at play here, and being blind to them for decades isn't helping anyone.
The size of the installed base does not matter.
An argument could be made that the effectiveness of the exploit may matter. IE. if there are more vulnerable machines of some specific type, that's a bigger target. This could also be skewed depending on the demographic of that target (ex. if it was 90% of the ATM's and the exploit made all accounts using them available, it wouldn't matter if the number of ATM's is much smaller than the total number of Windows machines). This would still be a weak argument because the raw count is far from the only consideration.
My point is, there has to be a whole lot more VULNERABLE Windows machines to make it more attractive than other targets (Mac/Linux/etc). For example, if every Mac OS X install had a remote root vulnerability, but only %1 of Windows 10 installs were still vulnerable to a similarly bad thing, then Windows would not be as attractive based on numbers and impact.
WannaCry sucked extra hard because so many people actively disabled windows update so they could avoid the heavy handed push to Windows 10. People could avoid many of those large issues by moving to Linux - little to no telemetry (depending on distro, and can be easily disabled on those that have it), updates how and when you want them, updates that don't force restarts or delay boot up time, significantly fewer viruses now and for the foreseeable future, and way more freedom to stay current in whatever way suits you (ie. distro/desktop choices).
Sadly, I still think TFS is more of a troll than a real suggestion. It's just begging for people to trot out their favorite justifications.
> and therefore Linux is NOT going to become the largest market portion any time soon.
Oh really? Try taking off the myopic PC blinders for once.
Google achieved 2 Billion devices with Linux in 9 years what Microsoft WinCE couldn't do even in 20 years
MS may have 96% of the gamer's PC desktop but that ignores all the servers and virtual machines running non-Windows, let alone consoles.
MS is a total joke on the Top 500 super computers.
Hell, even 33% of Azure runs Linux
In the OS server space things get fuzzy -- are we talking Web Servers? Database Servers? Email servers? Windows be has high as 33% or 20%-- there are no accurate stats.
Let's recap where Linux dominates:
[x] Mobile: Linux
[x] Super computers: Linux
[x] Servers: Technically *nix, due to BSD and OSX.
[ ] PC Gaming Desktop
The only place Windows has a niche in is PC gaming and XBox -- but desktops aren't the only thing anymore.
In the global space MS is slowly becoming irrelevant next to Android, iOS, PS3/4, Servers, Super computers, and Wii/Switch.
Not bad for an OS that "(free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu)"