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:
>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 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
: 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
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
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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?".