[Gllug] just preaching to the converted !

[Steve Nelson]

On 10/22/05, Simon Morris <mozrat at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 22/10/05, Chris Hunter <chrisehunter at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>> > The "security" structure of any version of Windows (including "Vista" or
> > whatever it's called this week) is such that it is not possible to make
> > it (in any way) secure.  Abusing any Windows box is trivial!
>
> Hmmm, really? A fully patched and properly maintained Windows OS is
> fairly secure with the latest versions. Not impossible to crack, and
> certainly not as easy to look after with AV subscriptions and virus
> definition files etc but it is secure.

A security consultant friend of mine was recently hired to do some
intrusion tests on professionally hosted windows and unix machines for
a medium-sized ISP.  He was able to compromise more linux machines
than windows machines.  I asked him why he thought that was... his
answer: "Often people are more dilligent in patching windows machines
than linux machines... many people will leave a linux system unpatched
for many months, leaving dozens of nasty exploits open...."

My point?  A professional sysadmin will keep a windows system as
secure as a linux system, if they're any good.  In the last two years,
my company (which has 1000s of windows, solaris and linux machines)
has had one exploit... and that was due to a client refusing to patch
php on a redhat box.

Of course I prefer Linux to Windows, for many reasons, but it worries
me that we (the oss community) just look foolish when we diss
Microsoft willy-nilly, often without anything other than hearsay and
prejudice as supporting evidence.

I don't much like 'Microsoft'; I quite strongly disklike much of
Windows xp; NT4 was horrible; Windows 95/98 an abortion.... but there
is a lot in the Windows world which is very very clever, very well
designed, clean, robust, fast, scaleable....

I would spec a linux system over a Windows system 9/10 times, but not
always, and just mindlessly slagging Windows off really doesn't do the
Linux image much good, and simply perpetuates the fud-ish myth of
Linux not being a true professional OS, and rather the domain of
foaming-at-mouth, sandle-wearing, bearded hippies (which, incidentally
is the problem with getting Debian in the enterprise... Suse is
perceived to be smart Germans in suits, Redhat is smart Americans in
suits, Debian is weird people with funny t-shirts).

S.
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