At 12:53 PM 8/13/2003 -0500, Ejay Hire wrote:
I don't care what defective operating system a worm uses.
Yes. Lets recall that the first worm on the net was a sendmail worm, and attacked UNIX systems. I'm no friend of Windows either, but a little humility is in order. Windows is attacked because it is ubiquitous, not because it is vulnerable. If the whole world ran Linux, the attacks would be on Linux machines.
Fred Baker wrote:
At 12:53 PM 8/13/2003 -0500, Ejay Hire wrote:
I don't care what defective operating system a worm uses.
Yes. Lets recall that the first worm on the net was a sendmail worm, and attacked UNIX systems. I'm no friend of Windows either, but a little humility is in order. Windows is attacked because it is ubiquitous, not because it is vulnerable. If the whole world ran Linux, the attacks would be on Linux machines.
Attacks _are_ on Linux machines. There have been Linux worms, Lion attacked BIND, Ramen attacked rpc.statd and wu-ftpd, Slapper attached Apache, to name a few. Attacks are on Solaris, the sadmin/IIS worm (which also attacked IIS, a cross-platform worm, remember that, cool, huh?). Attacks are on FreeBSD, Scalper worm attacked Apache. How soon people seem to forget these things. To pound it home one more time, worms that attack Microsoft products are a bigger deal only because Microsoft has at least an order of magnitude greater installbase than the nearest competitor. -- Crist J. Clark crist.clark@globalstar.com Globalstar Communications (408) 933-4387 The information contained in this e-mail message is confidential, intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible to deliver it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please contact postmaster@globalstar.com
If you haven't already heard...... http://www.kaspersky.com/news.html?id=985370 -Jack
Crist Clark wrote:
To pound it home one more time, worms that attack Microsoft products are a bigger deal only because Microsoft has at least an order of magnitude greater installbase than the nearest competitor.
True. I'd be curious to see the worm to software vendor ratios. Anyone have them? -Jack
On Wed, 13 Aug 2003, Crist Clark wrote:
Attacks _are_ on Linux machines. There have been Linux worms, Lion attacked BIND, Ramen attacked rpc.statd and wu-ftpd, Slapper attached Apache, to name a few. Attacks are on Solaris, the sadmin/IIS worm (which also attacked IIS, a cross-platform worm, remember that, cool, huh?). Attacks are on FreeBSD, Scalper worm attacked Apache.
How soon people seem to forget these things.
No, I don't think people are forgetting, but what Len was originally pointing out is that Microsoft, *because* of their vast install base *needs* to take a more proactive role in producing a secure OS. And the reason you can call it a "toy" OS is that on one hand you have *BSD, Linux and friends all with an annual budget of what, maybe $1M? And on the other hand you have a multi-billion dollar *software* company. Which should churn out better software? :) Charles
To pound it home one more time, worms that attack Microsoft products are a bigger deal only because Microsoft has at least an order of magnitude greater installbase than the nearest competitor. -- Crist J. Clark crist.clark@globalstar.com Globalstar Communications (408) 933-4387
The information contained in this e-mail message is confidential, intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible to deliver it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please contact postmaster@globalstar.com
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To pound it home one more time, worms that attack Microsoft products are a bigger deal only because Microsoft has at least an order of magnitude greater installbase than the nearest competitor. -- Crist J. Clark crist.clark@globalstar.com Globalstar Communications (408) 933-4387
It's also a factor that a lot of people are running Windows blindly, with no experienced administrators at the helm. This has traditionally not been the case for *nix, because of the difficulty factor, but I can see that changing. Users, both corporate and at home, need to be taught that there is no such thing as plug and play. Everything requires maintenance, or at least a cursory inspection once in a while. At least half the non-IT folks I warned about this worm a few days back ("Run Windows Update tonight, there's a nasty worm coming") responded with "How do I do that?". -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.8 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com> iQA/AwUBPzt5cEsAmEL5Zda/EQL8UgCgkDxgAuJoI7b9ogHKWfRKrkh0KFsAoNQE YPp2QYygqqMWJFS6V6WB+bSu =yOqb -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Wed, 13 Aug 2003, Fred Baker wrote: : attacked UNIX systems. I'm no friend of Windows either, but a little : humility is in order. Windows is attacked because it is ubiquitous, not : because it is vulnerable. If the whole world ran Linux, the attacks would I think that'd be only partially correct. I think it's also because they're a monopolistic corporate bully and they have a large installed base of pissed-off-at-them people due to that bully attitude. scott
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