Security Statistics and Operating System Conventional Wisdom 556
kev0153 writes "Microsoft Windows is more secure than you think, and Mac OS X is worse than you ever imagined. That is according to statistics published for the first time this week by Danish security firm Secunia. "Secunia is now displaying security statistics that will open many eyes, and for some it might be very disturbing news," said Secunia chief executive Niels Henrik Rasmussen. "The myth that Mac OS X is secure, for example, has been exposed." "
Welcome to Bizzaro World! (Score:5, Funny)
Until LM authentication is gone... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Until LM authentication is gone... (Score:3, Insightful)
Please elaborate.
- Oisin
Re:Until LM authentication is gone... (Score:5, Informative)
You can certainly turn it off, but unless you disable storing the LM hash, it's still available for cracking. In the wild, my experience is that LM hashes are available as a general rule (90% of the time or better). My insistance that LM authentication be removed outright is due to the "lazy admin" factor. So yes*, in practice, unless it is removed outright, many times it is still exploitable.
*Definately needs qualifying. Can you turn off LM effectively? (yes) Do admins do it? ('fraid not...)
Re:LM Hash Info (Score:5, Informative)
I've used LC and you're right, it works pretty well. It's also ungodly expensive and the serial number is tied to your hardware, so using it on another machine requires tech support "blessing". LC5 is licensed in truly bizarre ways, and did I mention that it's ungodly expensive?
For the same or better brute forcing speed, lower cost, no hassles moving to another machine, and generally a more polite program, try SamInside [insidepro.com] Best $40 LM hash cracker around.
Now for a "free" instant password cracker, use Rainbow Tables, a db of password/hashes that does all the brute forcing up front. For details, check out my journal. I'm soliciting participants to help generate the 128GB of data needed. Other than the pain of generating and storing all that data, it's free and extremely fast.
Re:Until LM authentication is gone... (Score:5, Informative)
Funny. I cracked the administrator password of XP (Pro, on a domain, with encrypted hashes), *without* admin access (that was the reason I cracked it - I needed admin access!).
What I did, was boot Knoppix, and copy over the SYSTEM and SAM registry hives. Most apps will crack with just the SAM hive. However, the SYSTEM hive contains the encryption key to the SAM hive, and a little app known as SAMinside (another l0phtcrack app), *does* understand how to crack this more secure hash.
Heck, there was a way to do it, so you could get the hashes, import them into l0phtcrack and use it to crack.
All it took were a couple of demo/shareware apps (l0phtcrack, SAMinside), and a Knoppix CD (to get at SAM and SYSTEM hives, via NTFS driver). And a 3rd party machine.
And no, none of those apps would work on the machine in question - locked down. I cracked it on my own Win2k machine.
Re:Until LM authentication is gone... (Score:3, Insightful)
What's wrong with having insecure features that are disabled by default? Many people operate in secure environments where such features (which they need for interoperability reasons) offer a "good enough" degree of security. There's no point in making these people's life harder.
Re:Until LM authentication is gone... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Until LM authentication is gone... (Score:5, Insightful)
So you're saying Linux is secure? Good. You see, it's been a few years since telnetd was installed in a base Linux install. I'd say that qualifies as "totally removed".
Re:Until LM authentication is gone... (Score:5, Informative)
Bad example. There's a telnet service in Windows too.
Telnet? You're missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad example. There's a telnet service in Windows too.
When was the last time telnet was exploitable? telnet is sniffable. Big deal, so is imap, pop3, smtp, http, you name it. Sniffing should not count against an OS - its a problem with the protocol, which is inherint to all internet based OSes. Heck, lets just say anything that uses TCP/IP is too insecure for internet access.
Here's an example:
RHSA-2004:174-09
Fix: utempter local exploit.
Ok. A local exploit. Granted, an exploit, but still, its a local exploit. This is what these so called "secuity" groups need to realize - webservers on the DMZ typically don't have local access for joebob to login to. Typically, they have ports 80,443, and maybe 22 open. So now, all of those 60+ exploits attributed to Red Hat become 0 (thats Zero, with a 0). True, Red Hat had more published advisories than Windows did in the same time period, but Windows didn't ship with nearly the amount of software Red Hat did, and no "sysadmin" is going to put a box on the DMZ, running every service on the box, with no firewall. It just doesn't happen.
So all of these so called security groups can shove it, because thats not real world security. Why don't they do a study on how many linux/unix sys admins patch their boxes diligently vs how many windows admins bothered to patch their boxes with patches available months before code red and other internet problems plagued the internet?
PS: On Windows, it'd be port 3389 (remote desktop), not port 22... And BOTH services (ssh and rdp) have had remote exploits available, so you can't retort with the "ssh is insecure" BS.
Here are the numbers. (Score:4, Interesting)
48% remote attack
46% granting system access
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 8 had 48 advisories in the same period,
58% remote attack
37% granting system access
Red Hat's Advanced Server 3 had 50 advisories in the same period - despite the fact that counting only began in November of last year.
66% remote attack
25% granting system access
Mac OS X 36 advisories
61% remote attackers
32% granting system access
Re:Here are the numbers. (Score:4, Insightful)
See Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics [appleturns.com]
The conclusion:(quote)
Faithful viewer jfletch pointed out another Techworld article from almost two months ago that also quoted Secunia and claimed that Mac OS X's security problem at the time "makes Microsoft's current Sasser problems look no more than a nasty nip." (Of course, two months later Sasser still turns up in articles on Google News posted just hours ago, but who's counting?) Now, far be it from us to claim that there's some sort of Techworld-Secunia conspiracy intended to undermine Apple's attempt to gain an entry into the enterprise market, because we would never-- oh, who are we kidding? There's some sort of Techworld-Secunia conspiracy intended to undermine Apple's attempt to gain an entry into the enterprise market. We've been jawing about this incessantly for about four days straight, now, so determining motive is left as an exercise for the viewer. Follow the money!
Re:Here are the numbers. (Score:3, Interesting)
can someone please enlighten me as to what exact services in linux have been exploitable in the last few years? i mean, a completely anonymous attacker gaining root access to a machine over a network?
these 'statistics' apparently show some 20 holes in linux that are remotely exploitable by anonymous attackers. i call shenanig
Re:Welcome to Bizzaro World! (Score:3, Insightful)
Or perhaps, where they want a target for their MSIE developers to aim at?
On a side note... (Score:5, Funny)
It took us a couple of tries to get the results so that they would give us the right answer, but eventually we figured out a way. Microsoft kept funding us all along the way.
Thank you!
Straight from the horse's mouth (Score:5, Informative)
Secunia Virus Statistics [secunia.com]
Of course you'll notice the common Win32. in front of all of them.
Re:Straight from the horse's mouth (Score:4, Insightful)
Secunia Virus Statistics"
Uh, no there not. Viruses in many cases stem from exploits in the underlying operating system. If there are exploits in the OS and it is worthwhile virus writers will start programming/scripting viruses for Mac. The fact that they continue to hold such a low market share makes it really unnecessary for a virus writer to target them, when they can infect 100000 times the amount of machines on a Windows OS. Exploits can lead to viruses and are easily just as problematic as without the exploit there would be no virus. Furthermore, Apple has been incredibly slow at releasing updates and fixes in the past. Unlike what all the Apple marketers want you to believe their OS is easily vulnerable just like all others. MS may be the worst but that is yet to be proven as they hold such a dominant position in the market that there is virtually no effort to produce viruses for the other platforms. Security takes effort and knowledge no matter what platform you are on.
Ok all you technicality asshats (Score:4, Insightful)
In THEORY, you are correct that it is all about exploits and there are possibly exploitable holes just as much in Linux or Mac. Difference? In the real world, they are exploited much less on the latter two. Also, critical issues are fixed MUCH faster in the latter two leading to a less vulnerable system.
MOREOVER, these assclowns count a vulnerability in every piece of free software as a Linux vulnerability and only count core vulnerabilities in Microsoft. Similarly for Mac probably. So yes, exploits are what matters, but in the REAL WORLD there are more exploits for Windows and more boxes constantly being exploited, so your point is moot.
The market share argument ... (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact that they continue to hold such a low market share makes it really unnecessary for a virus writer to target them, when they can infect 100000 times the amount of machines on a Windows OS.
There's the market share argument again!
Look, I won't bore you with the usual Apache has over 2/3 of the web server market share and all that. No, luckily (in this case?!), we can now highlight Mozilla as a product which still has a low market share in the browser market - as we all know - you see, recently we
Re:Straight from the horse's mouth (Score:4, Insightful)
All this rambling about OS X's lack of security is moot. Here is the only factor that matters:
A DEFAULT INSTALLATION OF THE CONSUMER-LEVEL VERSION OF MAC OS X (that ships with every mac) HAS ABSOLUTELY ZERO, ZILCH, NADA, NOTHING, NOT ONE NETWORK SERVICE ENABLED BY DEFAULT.
There's no way you can remotely own a default installation of Mac OS X.
Take a deep breath and re-run that sentence to yourself in your head.
Plug a default installation of XP (that ships with every PC) on any open network, you're owned within seconds. It's that simple.
Statistics are pointless when not scoped around what they really mean and their impact. So here's me doing everyone's job:
As a consumer-level operating system, Mac OS X, since day 1, and up until today, has always been, and remains FAR MORE SECURE than windows. Because the consumer-level version of Mac OS X, also known as "Mac OS X Client" does not unnecessarily enable by default any services, because the vast majority of users don't need'em, and the few who do can turn them on easily. Windows could have done that at least since 2001 and heydays of CodeRed and Nimda, yet never bothered to take this very very VERY simple measure. This is your first basic most simple, strongest line of security: if you don't need it, don't even turn it on. Be humble about the software you run, and understand that in may in fact be vulnerable, at the very least, to buffer overflows. APPLE HAS GROKKED THAT FROM DAY ONE, MICROSOFT NEVER DID, though i'm hoping SP2 will turn all that useless crap off. Saying that Apple has been lagging in releasing security updates is simply untrue. They've addressed all real ones very fast.
Now, as a server-level operating system, as far as security goes, it's all in the hands of a systems administrator. All services that run natively to the operating system are, in theory, at the very least, vulnerable to buffer overflows. And this goes regardless of which operating system you use. But frankly, if I was to admin a server, I'd still go with OS X, because I'd know that pretty-much all network services it runs come from the open-source community, if Apple is too slow to release a patch, I'll have known way ahead of time by keeping on-top of advisories and reading workarounds and solutions from the open-source community. If I'm running windoz 2003, I'm at the mercy of microsoft.
And whom funded this 'article' (Score:3, Funny)
Re:And whom funded this 'article' (Score:3, Informative)
Please. It's not that difficult.
"Who" is a subject. "Whom" is an object. A subject performs an action with a verb, an object receives the action of a verb. Prepositions take objects. I may have heard the term
Re:And whom funded this 'article' (Score:3, Informative)
It is commonly accepted now to use "who" in place of "whom". "Whom" is still ok, but "who" is no longer wrong when used in the same way. So unless you're still using "thy" and "thou" in everyday speech, you have no ground on which to bitch
Ah, the wonders of a dynamic language!
Re:And whom funded this 'article' (Score:3, Insightful)
By whom is this atrocity commonly accepted? Who in their right minds could have authorized such a thing? I have a compulsion to severely bludgeon those who committed such a heinous atrocity.
It's actually useful knowing the difference because, initially, I was going to write "...to severely bludgeon whomever I find out committed..." In thinking about the function of "whomever", though, I found that it was really the subject of "committed" and
Missing Stats? (Score:5, Interesting)
right?
Re:Missing Stats? (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows XP Professional saw 46 advisories in 2003-2004, with 48% of vulnerabilities allowing remote attacks and 46% enabling system access, Secunia said.
So that would mean, multiplying 46 by 48% would give you the number of remote attacks, and multiplying 46 by 46% would give you the number of attacks enabling system access. So for Windows:
Don't ask me why they are not integers. I suppose that some advisorys covered more than one bug?
Now, for OS X:Of the 36 advisories issued in 2003-2004, 61% could be exploited across the internet and 32% enabled attackers to take over the system.
Using the same system as before, I got:
So they're saying OS X allows HALF of the number of attacks that can gain access to a system as XP, but their conclusion is that "The myth that Mac OS X is secure, for example, has been exposed"???Hmmm....
Re:Missing Stats? (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe they mean that
1) Windows is not as insecure as YOU THINK
2) Mac OS X is not as secure as YOU THINK (they assume Mac OS X users think that the operating system has 0 to few exploits)
They're not really saying that Windows is more secure than Mac OS X. But the way the said it -- well, sure could mislead a lot of people.
Re:Missing Stats? (Score:3)
Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics (Score:3)
Re:Missing Stats? (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, if you want to allow the user to release and renew their DHCP lease (which is an essential troubleshooting step for any problems involving IP address problems in a dynamic address environment) you have to give the user the right to load device drivers. Which can be boosted to system level access.
Since access is associated only with the user... there's no setuid mechanism that allows a program to be run by the user but with elevated privileges... any code run by the user has that right, and thus any remote or local exploit really has to be treated as a root exploit.
On any UNIX based system, the same operation can be controlled by the setuid mechanism, which isn't perfect but *does* allow more separation of privilege than exists in Windows. And Mac OS X makes extensive use of it... every time you enter your password to allow access to a system function you're using setuid.
So those stats are really:
XP: 22 remote access attacks, 43 system access attacks.
OSX: 22 remote access attacks, 12 system access attacks.
Also, OS X ships with all remote access turned off by default, including remote file system and shell. You have to explicitly enable it. XP ships open to the world, you have to close it, and there's things you *can't* close without setting up a firewall.
So the statistics look more like this:
XP: 22 remote access attacks, some open by default, all leading to system access.
OSX: 22 remote access attacks, none open by default, no remote system access attacks open by default.
Here's the statistic that I'm concerned about:
There has been one significant browser-based hole on OS X. In the same time there have been multiple exploited holes in IE, including almost the same hole that was found in Safari, and after almost 10 years of similar browser-based holes being found on a regular basis with Microsoft making no attempt whatsoever to fix the underlying design flaw that makes them inevitable.
Hopefully Apple will respond better than Microsoft.
Re:Missing Stats? (Score:3, Interesting)
This means that protocols and helper apps that the desktop uses are also available to the browser, with various "hardening" done to try and keep you from neing able to (for example) creatse a "sh://rm -rf
Any application that uses LaunchServices (on Mac OS X) or the HTML control (on Windows) is susceptible. On OSX there is at least some intention that apps should be hardened if they register
Vulnerabilities vs Advisories (Score:5, Informative)
The Windows XP Pro list includes:
- Microsoft Windows 14 Vulnerabilities
- Microsoft Windows RPC/DCOM Multiple Vulnerabilities
- Microsoft Windows ASN.1 Library Integer Overflow Vulnerabilities
- Microsoft Windows RPCSS Service DCOM Interface Vulnerabilities
contain 14 + 4 + 2 + 3 = 23 vulnerabilities but Secunia only count 4 advisories. So the count is now 65 acknowledged vulnerabilities for XP Pro. Not including those silently fixed, nor the 38 vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer 6 alone [secunia.com].Actually, Secunia tend to publish alerts based the vendor bulletins. There are better sources for collated vulnerability information, such as Sintelli [sintelli.com] (free) or TruSecure [trusecure.com] (fee) which have far higher totals.
That depends upon how you count it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Which, in many cases, was when Microsoft had a patch ready.
But www.eeye.com had reported security holes to Microsoft for MONTHS before a patch was made available.
In other words, if Microsoft NEVER admitted PUBLICLY to a security hole, that security hole would NEVER be counted in the Forrester report.
http://www.eeye.com/html/research/upcoming/inde
For the current listing.
With Open Source software, the vulnerability is usually discussed on the mailing list.
So, if a hole is discovered in Linux, and discussed on the mailing list and a patch is released 48 hours later.....
And then Red Hat releases a
Forrester would count that as a 3 day delay.
You take the medium threat from www.eeye.com that is 49 days overdue (actually informed 109 days ago) and Microsoft releases a patch the same day Microsoft admits to the hole....
Forrester would count that a 1 day or less delay.
Re:Missing Stats? (Score:5, Informative)
This may be asking alot, but I'd like everyone to dig a little deeper and actual go to the secunia.com website and poke around at the statistics yourself. What you will find is that the guy who wrote this article is either too damned lazy to fully research his topic or he is intentionally using these statistics inaccurately in order to prove a false point.
For those who don't have the time to find out for themselves what the statistics REALLY say, here is what I found:
In the secunia.com statistics for Windows XP there is only a single exploit related to Internet Explorer. That sounds pretty good but its also blatantly false.
In fact, if you dig a little deeper into the statistics on their web site you discover that Internet Explorer 6 from 2003 to 2004 had 40 advisories by itself with 98% allowing remote attack and 31% enabling system access.
secunia.com/product/11/ [secunia.com]
So taking into account all the IE vulnerabilities instead of grouping them into one advisory we suddenly discover that Microsoft Windows XP Proffessional had 86 advisories from 2003 to 2004 with 71% allowing remote attacks and 38% enabling system access!
Now some will say "not fair" because IE is a seperate application. All I can tell you is that if you actually looked at the statistics you would already know that the OSX and linux statistics include security advisories for ALL applications included in with the OS. So it is only fair to also include ALL Windows applications that come with Windows.
So in conclusion, when I include the vulnerabilities of just one single Windows application the number of exploits in Windows is around double what you have with the likes of OSX or linux. I suspect that including other Windows applications that were excluded from the Windows statistics everyone will begin to understand why Windows is a haven for worms and viruses.
I don't think I will be migrating from my Mac OSX and linux installs any time soon.
burnin
Re:Missing Stats? (Score:3, Insightful)
Didn't Microsoft swear under oath that it was not a separate application, but was instead an integral part of the OS?
Re:Missing Stats? ??? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know just where you were living, but Unix and Linux grew up on networked systems where multiple college students shared the same machines (well, Linux less than Unix here) because they were too expensive. Actually, Linux is almost an accidental beneficiary here. Linux used Unix as a role-model, and Unix grew up being attacked by hackers who wanted to play Space-Invaders or Cave or Hunt the Wumpus when their school accounts wouldn't cover it. And by Phd candidates trying for a few more runs on their thesis project. It's true these weren't *remote* exploits. They were local ones...where the attacker didn't have priviledged access. But that's the basis of all security. Once you do that, all you have to do is make remote connections a special case of local access.
Re:Missing Stats? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm really tired of idiots on Slashdot that have no clue what the fuck they're talking about. Half a decade. Ptoii! I can start by going back 15 years and easily debunk your lies. At that time, most computers in this here world (disclaimer, I have no idea which world you're from - but you should phone home coz' your green-skinned momma is worried about you) were either in universities or corporations. I'm not counting the C= 64s, Atari ][ and Colecovisions here, kay? They have no bearing on the current crop of operating systems. UNIX does. VMS does. Access control and security were big back then - simply because schools with thousands of students had one 64k line to the world (for mail, ftp, gopher, archie and telnet) and diskspace measured in megs so there had to be ways to keep the students from eating it all up. They had to be kept from use the mainframes to play Nethack, to download ASCII pr0n and to chat on IRC instead of studying. Quotas, passwords, password policies, shadowing, encryption - all that jazz. It's not new. It's been around several decades. Half a decade... Maybe Microsoft haven't cared for it more than half a decade, but the world does not revolve around Redmond.
Security is not new. The problem is that Microsoft built DOS for single-user. It had no real security layer and that carried over into Windows 3.11, Windows 95 and all the way into ME. They had to preserve backwards compatibility, see? They had to maintain their monopoly and they could not let little things like end-user security get in the way of that goal.
Meanwhile, all the OSes that came from multi-user roots had a lot of that already built-in. They were network operating systems, built from a network-centric point of view. It wasn't tacked on afterwards like the TCP/IP stack for Windows 3.11. Remember that? It was a separate download.
Half a decade, my ass The Internet has been around and popularized by the WWW much longer than that. I've been building websites since 1995, kiddo. Were you even born back then? I used to log in remotely to SunView terminals and run the WhenHarryMetSally.aiff on my classmates' computers at full volume, that's a remote exploit if ever there was one! The Morris worm. Say no more, Squire!
And what delusional script kidde MS astroturfers modded your crappy rant Insightful, we'll never know. Hell, I was ranting on the 'net in 1990! You'd think the art would have evolved since then...
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Follow the money. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Follow the money. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not true. Secunia is its own private concern and judging from correspondence they have with the [theinquirer.net] inquirer [theinquirer.net] I very much doubt they'll be swayed by "contributions" as easily as our R&D friends at Adti.
That said, there are some omissions from the article such as which applications in the Linux distros were vulnerable and how long it took for each vuln to be patched.
no of vulnerablilities vs actual exploits (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because the potential is there doesn't mean these holes have exploits running in the wild.
It's a risk thing...Windows exploits are *more* likely to be exploited than Solaris ones, but that doesn't mean the Solaris ones won't be exploited (cf a couple of super computer centers getting hacked!)
Correlation vs Mechanism (Score:5, Insightful)
Before we all jump on the AdTI bandwagon... (Score:4, Informative)
It seems that it was Secunia which released lots of IE bugs, and that Microsoft has had scuffles with them before. Unless someone here has evidence that they got funding from MSFT since then, don't say that.
Re:Before we all jump on the AdTI bandwagon... (Score:5, Insightful)
This article is so beyond common sense and everyday experience, I cannot see how it can possibly hold up to examination.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Before we all jump on the AdTI bandwagon... (Score:3, Informative)
An unpatched OS X system can "get r00ted" by simply browsing to a websight. Safari has an extension association that would allow a page to call the command terminal and run any command desired. Oops, you're rooted. It has been patched, but so have most of the bugs viruses use in Windows.
Re:Before we all jump on the AdTI bandwagon... (Score:4, Informative)
(Of course, if it turns out in the future that OS X has any privilege elevation bugs, all bets are off.)
Re:Before we all jump on the AdTI bandwagon... (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously... I believe I'm using the same account on my Windows XP box that the installer set up for me. I don't think I've ever had a single permissions issue with editing the registry, installing/uninstalling software, etc. Never been asked for my username/password, outside of logging in. On my Mac, on the other hand, any time I do anything remotely related to modifying the system, up pops a dialog asking for my username and password, and informing me what application is requesting this information.
Now, this dialog isn't anywhere near secure - I think it'd be trivial to put together a fake dialog that looks like it's some other application, but uses the information typed in to its own nefarious advantage. But it does give you the idea that Apple seems to be more concerned about security out of the box.
Re:Before we all jump on the AdTI bandwagon... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Before we all jump on the AdTI bandwagon... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Before we all jump on the AdTI bandwagon... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have no knowledge of WHERE they are getting their funding. But they don't seem to have any criteria by which someone besides themselves can judge the security of a system. Saying "Mac security is worse than anyone imagined" is nugatory without saying how bad you think someone had imagined it as being...unless you give some other indication of how bad you think it is. Perhaps they did, and I just didn't understand them. I must
Mac OSX and Linux - face the facts (Score:5, Funny)
How many independent reports have we seen that come to the same conclusion? 10? 20? The head in the sand approach won't work. The "Microsoft Shill" theory doesn't hold water.
No, it is time for the Linux community to address these issues and bring Linux back up to the level of Windows.
And by the way, I'm a cybersecurity consultant, so I know what I'm talking about.
Re:Mac OSX and Linux - face the facts (Score:5, Insightful)
I once read that Hitler ordered a report made, signed by a hundred scientists, proving that Einstein was wrong. When they asked Einstein about it, he answered "if I was wrong, one scientist alone would be able to prove it".
Re:It's not just Funny (Score:3)
No one needs to exploit the Windows kernel because, typically, the user running the application has sufficient priveleges to accomplish the goal of the attacker. In that sense the Windows kernel just lets them right on in.
This would work just as well under any *NIX system that had vulnerable applications
I don't allow non-root users to execute sendmail. They can't modify my firewall rules or change network
Micorsoft? (Score:3, Funny)
A statistic is like a whore... (Score:3, Funny)
Patches do not equal problems. (Score:4, Insightful)
When the difference in use of exploits is an order of magnitude or two higher for the 'doze stuff, it's hard to see how a mere "count of vulerabilities fixed" means much at all. The basic design differences between unix and 'doze are profound, which is why the 'doze exploits do so well.
Re:Patches do not equal problems. (Score:3, Informative)
Problem with that, is that you also won't be able to run stats on your site with Analog or another tool, if you want to see which search engines folks are using to get to it. For almost everyone that doesn't matter, but sometimes it'd be nice to be able to show that like for a marketing site, or whatever. I just do a quick grep -v of a few strings before running through analog, so I can still get the search engine info (how folks found the site) without all o
Article is an irrelevance (Score:5, Insightful)
If a sysadmin is lazy and security unaware, he will ALWAYS be cracked into and exploited regardless of the OS system used, Windows Linux whatever. At the same time if he is vigulant and security aware he will unlikely to be seriously cracked and his systems will be stable, again regardless of the OS involved.
What I have found is that managing Linux properly is a lot easier and cheaper than managing the Windows OS's properly due to the better OS design in philosophy and security, and attitude of the OS maintainers.
THAT to me is what is relevant.
Don't dismiss this (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux is fallaible, but at least with open source we can find bugs and get rid of them quick, without waiting for patches. Windows is not as bad as OS X in this regard either.
I find the statement Linux suppliers took longer to release patches. Is that true? I know security consious admins will patch themselves but is it true that vendors will igorne minoe bugs?
Perhaps this is what the MS reps meant when they said Linux was becoming morew like windows.
Re:Don't dismiss this (Score:3, Funny)
Did you perhaps mean to say "leaking like a sieve" or "full of holes like swiss cheese?"
Again Windows only vs. RedHat/SuSE plus apps? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Again Windows only vs. RedHat/SuSE plus apps? (Score:5, Informative)
The list of advisories for RedHat AS 3 is listed at the bottom and currently it contains 51 advisories and what they were issued for. I copied the list and sorted them so here you can see a list of exactly what they included:
Strange that..........CVS
ethereal
FreeRADIUS
gaim
glibc
gnupg
httpd
iproute
ipsec-tools
kdelibs
kdepim
kernel
krb5
lftp
LHA
libpng
libxml2
mod_python
mod_ssl
mozilla
Mutt
NetPBM
net-snmp
nfs-utils
OpenOffice
OpenSSL
PWLib
Quagga
rsync
slocate
squid
squirrelmail
sysstat
tcpdump
utempter
XFree86
As you can see a lots of these are what might be called non-OS components. I've had a quick look at XP Home and it doesn't even seem to include issues with IE which according to MS is an integral part of the OS unlike Linux and Mozilla, yet they happily bundled them together.
what does it prove? (Score:3, Interesting)
Mac OS X does not stand out as particularly more secure than the competition, according to Secunia.
The proportion of critical bugs was also comparable with other software - 33% of the OS X vulnerabilities were "highly" or "extremely" critical by Secunia's reckoning, compared with 30% for XP Professional and 27% for SLES 8 and just 12% for Advanced Server 3. OS X had the highest proportion of "extremely critical" bugs at 19%.
Oh, okay, well, by MY reckoning, none of the OS X vulnerabilities were "highly" or "extremely" critical, therefore by MY reckoning, OS X is the most secure of them all!
These studies analyze the statistics of the security advisories and attempt to draw conclusions. I don't see the value of it.
Here's what I do: I just *assume* that all operating systems and software is insecure (unless djb wrote it, heh). After all, I'm constantly updating FreeBSD, Gentoo, and Windows, all the time, anyway.
Since it only takes ONE show-stopper bug to let in an attacker, it really doesn't matter to me how *many* bugs each OS has.
In my experience, the easiest OS to upgrade is OS X. However I don't manage any production OS X servers, just my own computers, so take that with a grain of salt.
Next easiest is Gentoo. You can upgrade just the components you need, BUT it's a little hard to separate the security fixes from the non-security fixes (they are working on that though).
Next is FreeBSD. Like Gentoo, it's hard to pick out just the security updates, but they are working on that too. Rebuilding the base OS is time-consuming and risky, so FreeBSD gets a mark for that.
Next is Windows. Too GUI-oriented, and service packs are too complex and cause breakage.
However we do manage to keep all machines up to date and implement layered security (firewall, network IDS, host IDS [tripwire], remote syslog, log monitoring.......)
Re:what does it prove? (Score:4, Insightful)
How can you not find arbitrary remote code execution from a web browser [incutio.com] highly critical? It meant that if a bad guy hacked a website popular with Mac users, they could take control of many machines potentially without their users noticing - just like the problems Windows has.
The solution is clear ... (Score:3, Funny)
Junk Science (Score:5, Insightful)
This research tells you nothing about how secure an OS is. The number of security advisories has a lot to do with how diligent the OS manufacturer is in informing the public about security problems. For all we know Apple could just be a lot better about airing its dirty laundry than microsoft. I would assume that due to the open source model, the statistcs on SUSE were fairly accurate.
Re:Junk Science (Score:5, Insightful)
Not spinning it. Just saying that there's no data here. My statement "For all we know Apple could just be a lot better about airing its dirty laundry than microsoft." was merely to demonstrate how these results could be used to prove anything, and therefore have no value.
The biggest security hole on any machine is the person administrating it. No OS is immune to a moron.
I agree completely.
Counting advisories is skewed (Score:5, Interesting)
One problem with counting only advisories is simply that there are different levels of transparency to users and developers among Windows XP, Linux, Solaris, and Mac OS X. One thing the study doesn't mention (which is unknowable, so they conveniently brush it off as unimportant) is how many covered-up or known-only-by-crackers vulnerabilities exist in each platform.
Also, why didn't the study mention OpenBSD? What about default configurations? Where the documented vulnerabilities always relevant or were they very obscure (e.g., service X used by three people in Greenland)?
I think this article smells biased.
They neglect to mention.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Somebody explain to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
``Windows XP Professional saw 46 advisories in 2003-2004, with 48% of vulnerabilities allowing remote attacks and 46% enabling system access, Secunia said.
<snip>
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 8 had 48 advisories in the same period, with 58% of the holes exploitable remotely and 37% enabling system access.
<snip>
Mac OS X does not stand out as particularly more secure than the competition, according to Secunia.
Of the 36 advisories issued in 2003-2004, 61% could be exploited across the internet and 32% enabled attackers to take over the system.''
So, Windows XP and SLES had about the same number of vulnerabilities, but SLES manages to keep them out of the vital parts better. Mac OS X has had significantly (about 30%) fewer vulnerabilities, with the percentage of vulnerabilities leading to system level access on par with SLES.
What this says to me is that _if_ the detection ratio for all systems is the same (which I don't believe, but without this assumption, you can't say anything), WinXP is the worst, and OS X the most secure. This is exactly opposite to what is claimed.
Doesn't change the facts... (Score:5, Informative)
Black and White (Score:4, Informative)
This poll does not take into affect the time to resolution, effect of exploit, and how hard it was to actually perform the exploit. Honestly, all software has bugs, all software has exploits it is the result of those exploits that I am more concerned with. Quite often Apple finds and fixes exploits before their are programs in the wild to exploit them. The same goes for Open-Source software which I am sure that some of the OSX advisories were a result of given Apples embrace of OSS.
Ask an Apple user how many Viruses, pop-ups, and unexplained daemons they have had on their system. The number will almost always be 0.
Potential study problem (Score:5, Insightful)
If The Gimp has a security issue a Linux vendor will issue an alert for it.
If Photoshop has a security issue, MS won't inform you.
Also most alerts I see for Linux are pro-active, someone finding a bug that may be exploitable. Most alerts I see for MS are reactive, pluging a hole that has been exploited. That's the primary difference between open and closed source software. Not the number of bugs found, but when they're found and how fast they get fixed.
Not potential, it is a study problem (Score:3, Informative)
secunia.com/product/11/ [secunia.com]
Sorry Windows lovers, its time to face the facts, your OS of choice and associated applications are a haven for worms and viruses not because there are so many of you, its because the software is crap.
burnin
lies, damned lies and statistics (Score:3, Interesting)
I would be far more interested to hear, on the MacOs example for instance, how Apple responded to its security holes and how that compared to those of Microsoft or the Linux community.
Its not the system, its the admin (Score:4, Insightful)
That said, most 'windows admins' are home users ( by percentage ) that have NO clue what they are doing...
Home *nix admins tend to have more clue..
Just counting (Score:3, Insightful)
Still not accurate (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's have one of these companies do a real test. Where they take a Windows install, and then a RedHat (or SuSE) install crafted to match it as closely as possible. No servers, Mozilla installed on the Linux system. Just the basics. Then count the vulnerabilities. It will tell a much different story.
-Todd
Epilogue (Score:3, Funny)
Security reporting worse than you ever imagined (Score:5, Insightful)
Different suppliers report vulnerabilities differently. Consider every "cumulative update" you've seen, and every "multiple vulnerabilities in $product" advisory from CERT. A supplier which is more honest and meticulous about vulnerability reporting may have more advisories but better security -- while one which batches up several bugs in a single advisory will underreport.
A system which includes more software may have more advisories, even though most advisories do not affect most computers running that system. In Windows, a database server is a separate product whose advisories would not be counted against "Windows". Many Linux systems include at least two database servers, but they are not turned on by default. If a hole in MS SQL doesn't count against Windows, should one in mySQL count against Red Hat?
Unpatched vulnerabilities may go for months without the release of an official advisory. For instance, a number of holes in Internet Explorer have been known and discussed within the security community well in advance of any official advisory from Microsoft.
Systems which have better default system-wide security settings (e.g. packet filtering, services turned off by default) may have all kinds of "vulnerabilities" that can't actually be exploited. For instance, Mac OS X includes OpenSSH, but it's turned off until the user asks for it. A hole in OpenSSH cannot be exploited on a default-install Mac system.
Leaving it up to the supplier to decide if something is a "vulnerability" or a "feature" leads to underreporting. Take CD autorun, for instance, which allows the installation of spyware when a (mostly-)audio CD is inserted into a Windows PC. A security-conscious user regards this as a vulnerability, but the supplier regards it as a beneficial feature.
Some of the most common attacks -- such as viruses -- rely on social engineering, and on "features" that are not classed as "vulnerabilities". However, these attacks are also more prominent on some systems than on others. Any comparative assessment of security which discounts the most common attacks blinds itself to a wide segment of the security landscape.
Anyone find it strange? (Score:5, Interesting)
Peace
Most secure OS: MacOS 9! (Score:4, Funny)
Friends, you just can't argue with pie charts.
This is the "we're-not-zealots" FUD troll (Score:3, Interesting)
Even on an administrator account, you can't screw up the operating system without a chance to bail out at a password prompt. Try that on Windows.
Lies! Lies! Lies! (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting wording (Score:3, Interesting)
Emphasis mine.
Were not talking solid numbers, but numbers made by personal opinion. What is 'critical'?
MS can butter up the numbers so none of their holes are 'critical' if they so desire. So can anyone else.
Can't draw conclusions from this (Score:3, Insightful)
Firstly, this article is a summary of some other set of statistics. These summaries are usually horrible since the writers really don't understand statistics. Things never add up to 100%, and one quote often refers to a slightly different way of calculating things than another.
I don't know tons about security, so I read this with an open mind. But I KNOW some things are wrong:
I haven't read Forrester's research, so I would like to see it. (anybody know a link?) OSS is definitely faster at releasing patches. We see that time and time again. Perhaps they were comparing how long it took for the vendors like Red Hat to ship product updates for Apache, or put them on their web sites? But if I installed Apache, I don't look to Suse or Red Hat or Mandrake for my updates, I look to apt-get or apache.org. Of course, MS claims that all exploits come from MS patches [slashdot.org] anyway. (Which is proven not to be true on a weekly basis).
Lastly, the article rebuff's itself in the final quote:
Even though that is the basis for the article's comparisons. lol!A ripped text from the wonderful "appleturns" (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, it's like this: faithful viewer C. J. Corbett tipped us off to a Techworld article last week with the ominous title of "Mac OS X security myth exposed" which leads off with this oh-so-fair-and-balanced sentence: "Windows is more secure than you think, and Mac OS X is worse than you ever imagined." See, security firm Secunia claims to have compiled some honest-to-goodness statistics proving once and for all that choosing Mac OS X over Windows is your surest path to having some scary 'net dude invade your system, swipe your financial data, and start leering at digital photos of your family members in an... unsavory manner.
How is this possible? Well, numbers don't lie, and while Windows XP Professional clocked "46 advisories in 2003-2004, with 48 percent of vulnerabilities allowing remote attacks and 46 percent enabling system access," Mac OS X racked up 36 such advisories, with 61 percent remotely exploitable and 32 percent allowing the takeover of the system. See? Worse than you ever imagined. It's like a wedge of Swiss cheese with a shotgun blast through the middle or something. Meanwhile, Windows users will no doubt be thrilled to hear that their virus-ridden, spyware-loaded, worm-propagating systems are more secure than they think. Good for them.
There are just a few problems with this argument, however. The first is the claim that Mac OS X isn't much better than Windows XP Professional because it had 36 security advisories compared to Windows's 46. Maybe we're fresh off the turnip truck or something, but 22% fewer advisories sounds quite a bit better to us. Also, if you actually look at the data to which Techworld refers, it's not 36 advisories for Mac OS X at all; it's 33. (Apparently Techworld decided to go back to 2002 to fetch its reported number.) Granted, the Windows number is also 45 instead of 46-- yeesh, Techworld; fact-check much?-- but even so, now we're talking about nearly 27% fewer security advisories for Mac OS X than for Windows XP Professional.
Now take a look at the advisories themselves, and notice how no fewer than eleven of those 33 advisories (that's a third, for the mathematically inept) are titled "Mac OS X Security Update Fixes Multiple Vulnerabilities" or something similar. Yes, in its advisory count, Secunia is including those advisories it generated just to report that Apple had fixed something. Does anyone else find it a little odd that Secunia penalizes Apple for fixing problems, including ones that were fixed so quickly that Secunia had never found out about them in the first place? (While they may describe a flaw and immediately note the presence of a patch, none of the Windows advisories appears to exist simply to announce that Redmond had fixed a bunch of holes.)
Notice also that Secunia yaps on about how, for Mac OS X, "of the 36 advisories issued in 2003-2004, 61 percent could be exploited across the Internet and 32 percent enabled attackers to take over the system"-- but never mentions how many could be exploited across the Internet to enable attackers to take over the system. Personally, we aren't much concerned about exploits that require local access to a Mac, because if any
This is an absurd way to calculate OS security (Score:3, Informative)
On anoter note, how about we tally the number of viruses and trojans for the different operating systems? This is one of the most important security problems facing businesses today. Gee, I think we'll see a MUCH different ratio for OS X vs. Windows XP.
I can't stand it when a security company comes up with skewed statistics in an effort to get press and web hits. The comparison of only the number and type of vendor bulletins is not an effective measurement of OS security.
Interesting time to publish the report (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting time to publish this - right between last week's IIS/IE [us-cert.gov] multiple [washingtonpost.com] exploits [slashdot.org] and this week's Evaman Worm outbreak [slashdot.org].
Now that CERT [washingtonpost.com] and the Dept. of Homeland Security [yahoo.com] both recommend consumers abandon Intenet Explorer, can we get them to recommend dropping Outlook Express?
Let's translate those statistics to medicine (Score:3, Insightful)
Patient A's clinical history:
Headache
Influenza
A small scar in his hace
A broken arm
Patient B:
Stomach cancer
Which of the two patients is in a worse state? According to Secunia, patient A would be really bad, he has three lines in his medical record!!!!
Amazing, indeed
Proof that the results are BS (Score:3, Interesting)
That set off a few bells... Know what BullGuard is? It's spyware that happens to come bundled with Kazaa. Amusingly, you can see BullGuard on Kazaa's *cough* No Spyware Policy [kazaa.com] Page, where they try to pretend that their bundled software isn't spyware.
# Advisories != # Vulnerabilities != Security Risk (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two major things wrong with this article, which have been touched on by other posters. One is that the number of vulnerabilities is different than the number of advisories, because advisories [secunia.com] can cover multiple vulnerabilities [secunia.com].
The second is that (as other posters have covered) Linux distributors post advisories and bug fixes for all software bundled with their distribution, not just the kernel and core libraries. Looking at the list of MS Windows XP [secunia.com] advisories, all I see are the core components, with the glaring omission of Internet Explorer [secunia.com] (which these days is in fact a core component of the operating system).
This study is bogus (Score:3, Interesting)
b) All Linux distros ship far more software than Microsoft does with Windows, and rarely will all of it be installed and running on a given system. If a vulnerable package isn't installed on a given system, then that system isn't vulnerable. To compare like with like, you'd need to take Windows' stats and add them to IIS, Exchange, Mozilla, Office/OpenOffice.org, Cygwin/SFU, SQL server, a bunch of free and shareware IRC clients and so on.
If folks are going to play these silly pissing contests, then the only fair way to do it is to take account of the period of vulnerability and base comparisons on "role profiles" (e.g. PHP web server, anti-spam MTA, static web server, graphical desktop).
--
Methodology is flawed... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How respectable are these guys? (Score:5, Insightful)
I admonish the following:
Security databases are largely fed with information from people working on open source code. It is much easier to find a logic fault in source code than to notice a bug and reverse engineer its origin in proprietary code. When I mangle entries for security databases the majority are for open source code. By and large the security databases are weighted in such a fashion that makes open source code look less secure.
When I last looked at my Windows Update history on my machine at work, there were no fewer than 10 security patches and, going to the MS website, each one patched several security holes in this/that/the other. None of these will ever be documented in databases like Secunia because MS doesn't release the technical information. Secunia only lists the exploits which users in the field have found and submitted.
So relax, people. The article may be inflammatory and perhaps the head of Secunia should be shoulder-checked for 3 hours straight on the soccer field, but the Linux OS is still outperforming the competition.
But isn't that contradictory? (Score:4, Insightful)
A "respectable security source" that knowingly mis-counts vulnerabilities and then publishes an inflammatory "report" based upon such?
That sounds like the opposite of "respectable" to me.
Re:The summary is missleading (Score:4, Interesting)
But the article doesn't mention that Secunia is stocked primarily with vuln information which comes from the open source sector. Vuln information from the proprietary sector is reliant on the proprietary company releasing all of the properly arranged information to make a proper entry in Secunia's database. In the OSS community, every single vuln in every single patch which you got from Windowsupdate would receive a separate entry. It doesn't because MS doesn't collaborate to create these entries. By default the Secunia database is light on actual vulns for MS-Windows. Primarily the vulnerabilities in Secunia's database which are relevent to Windows will focus on third-party software manufacturers.