--On 09 December 2002 08:39 -0800 Scott Francis <lists-nanog@darkuncle.net> wrote:
*cough*OpenBSD*cough*
I've had lots of people off-list me to say how wonderfully secure X Y or Z OS distribution is. I am quite sure there is indeed a huge variation. MS fits somewhere into the scale too. The sort of thing I meant though, for example, was how many Linux/BSD distributions, on a *desktop* install, when you select a caching nameserver, have it only bound to 127.0.0.1 rather than bound to INADDR_ANY? Yes, you can tweak the config file, but what % of menu-using users know they should do that, and, if so, do it? How many machines then got infected by a BIND worm that needn't have done?
Taking off my evangelism hat for a moment, I think commercial software vendors in general will continue to ship whatever maximizes profit. When it becomes unprofitable to ship insecure buggy bloatware (through legal liability, for instance), companies will stop doing so.
From the point of view of traditional microecomics, operating system security has 'externalities' - i.e. costs incurred by third parties. Much
This is exactly my point. If the US government (which appears to be taking an interest), took an interest in making life less comfortable (read profitable) to ship insecure OS's, vendors will start stopping. Until then, security is only something they need package in for those who think they need it - as opposed to 'for the common good'. the same as pollution. In the general case, sufficient externalities are a good reason to examine some form of government intervention (taxation, regulation etc.). Even when the problems are international, there are historical precedents (drug regulation for instance) for international coordination. Alex Bligh