[GLLUG] WinVista security better than Linux?

[Thomas Hruska]

Michael Rudas wrote:
> Man, I'm glad I had already set my coffee cup down before reading this
> article-- the liquid shooting out my nose would certainly have bathed
> the monitor and keyboard:
> "Microsoft Claims Vista Is More Secure Than Linux"
> <http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=53263>

---
"The results of the analysis show that Windows Vista continues to show a 
trend of fewer total and fewer high-severity vulnerabilities at the 
six-month mark compared to its predecessor product Windows XP (which did 
not benefit from the SDL) and compared to other modern competitive 
workstation OSs (which also did not benefit from an SDL-like process)," 
Jones wrote.
---

I laughed when I saw that.  Microsoft doesn't bother to share numbers 
but a recent hardware/software survey (via Steam, Valve Corporation) 
showed only 5% of all gamers running Windows (people who tend toward the 
absolute latest cutting-edge tech.) have moved to Vista - the rest are 
running XP (about 3% were still running 2000).  Vista isn't really being 
targeted yet by virus/worm authors simply because the base of XP users 
is so huge.

This part of the article is intriguing:

---
In addition to comparing Vista to XP, Jones compared Vista to 
open-source operating systems. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, the most 
downloaded GNU/Linux distribution, saw 129 publicly disclosed bugs 
during its first six months of availability. Forty of them were ranked 
"high" severity. Red Hat fixed a total of 281 vulnerabilities in Red Hat 
Enterprise Linux 4 Workstation in the first six months, 86 of which were 
rated "high" severity. On the basis of these numbers, Jones concluded 
that Vista was more secure than its open-source counterpart.
---

On sheer vulnerability counts, Vista wins, BUT the comparison is apples 
to oranges.  A more appropriate comparison would have been to take the 
latest Ubuntu (which has a more Windows'ey look-and-feel to it and, IMO, 
is more popular - distrowatch.com's rating system agrees with me) during 
a similar timeframe.

-- 
Thomas Hruska
CubicleSoft President
Ph: 517-803-4197

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