Microsoft's Security Chief Says Windows Safer Than Linux

TechWeb ^ | February 10, 2005 | Gregg Keizer

[chilepepper]

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength

[ken21]

ha ha.

[blastdad51]

Mr Nash ... please clarify " compare favorably"

[ccmay]

How comical.

Though it must be said, I found "only" 44 spyware programs last time I ran Ad-Aware on my Windows 2000 system. Usually there are several hundred.

Of course, I have never had even one on my Macs.

-ccm

[rlmorel]

Hehe, okay...if he says so then it must be true!

[explodingspleen]

ROTFL, first half of the peace is about Microsoft being "secure", second half is about Microsoft trying to combat the massive numbers of viruses it products are susceptible to (virus: something linux is not susceptible to!).

[The Red Zone]

Winders is plugging holes faster than Linux, because Winders has more holes to plug.

[Light Your World]

"Year-to-date for 2005, Microsoft has fixed 15 vulnerabilities affecting Windows Server 2003. In the same time period, for just this year, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 users have had to patch 34 vulnerabilities and SuSE Enterprise Linux 9 users have had to patch over 78 vulnerabilities."

This is the key statement -- Red Hat and SuSE actually patch their vulnerabilities right away, whereas Microsoft waits quite awhile and sometimes doesn't fix known problems at all.

[clee1]

Add to that the fact that there are very few people actively trying hack Linux. Every punk with a VB compiler is busy trying to screw MicroShiite.

[Nick Danger]

Microsoft's Security Chief Says Windows Safer Than Linux

What's next, "Joe Isuzu says Toyotas suck"?

[AFreeBird]

Hackers Quickly Target Newly Disclosed Microsoft Flaw

[hiredhand]

As always, we'll just have to take their word because unless you're a developer for M$, you aren't going to get to even peek at their source code.

The argument has never really been whether it was "safer" or not, but rather the advantage of speed and dynamics of bug fixing with the open source model.

I wonder if M$ is brave enough to make the same claim against OpenBSD? :-)

Also, if memory serves me correctly, the busiest web servers on the planet do NOT run M$ operating systems, nor do they run a M$ webserver (IIS). I'm pretty certain they run FreeBSD and Apache....which M$ fails to mention.

Now why do you suppose this is? It's because Linux is a threat to M$ and that's where they are focusing.... Which actually means that Linux is probably a pretty good operating system!

As a matter of fact, I know it's a good operating system. I work for a major global telecom provider, and in the next several years we're going to be making substantial investments in Linux....particularly RedHat on account of their partnering with Oracle. In fact, our CIO is VERY unhappy about the losses we've suffered both in terms of revenue and customer satisfaction on account of worms which simply couldn't have happened if not for Microsoft operating systems. There was talk of supplying Linux to desktop computers, but I'm not sure they'll ever get around to doing that.

I trust M$ about as far as I can throw my truck across the parking lot. ...and lest we forget, they don't have a good track record with being honest to their customer base.

[The Red Zone]

Also, Windows Server isn't the main target anyhow. It's Windows desktops.

[ohCompGk]

"Even with the relatively large number of bulletins we released this week, we compare favorably," he said. "Year-to-date for 2005, Microsoft has fixed 15 vulnerabilities affecting Windows Server 2003. In the same time period, for just this year, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 users have had to patch 34 vulnerabilities and SuSE Enterprise Linux 9 users have had to patch over 78 vulnerabilities."

Doesn't mention how much larger the RH and SUSE packages are in comparison to 2003.

GeCAD was very solid when we acquired it . . . That said, there were some things we wanted to improve.

Yeah, like RAV's Spam control algorithms were written to run on a linux mail server and their windows AV client was OK at best. I always thought they bought it to pull it from the linux market. Not releasing it under a MS name in over a year reinforces that opinion.

[djf]

You hear news like this and can't help but wonder...


how many roomfuls of coders does MS have, anxiously coding away like a million monkeys on a million keyboards, trying to perfect a couple good hacks into Linux..

They would never release them, of course.

[Poser]

I like Windows better than Linux but this is ridiculous.

[ohCompGk]

...doesn't fix known problems at all.

Hey, setting the default value of opening email attachments with Outlook Express to "don't allow" is a fix to the vulnerability isn't it?

[rockrr]

Is there something in the water around here?

First our King County Chief Mo-ron (Ron Sims) announces the single most f'd up election contest of the 2004 season had "An accuracy that bankers would be proud of", then this.

These people are demented!!!

[Griptilian]

I never get spyware with IE.
Haven't had any on my system until I started using Firefox.

Maybe you should evaluate your surfing habits and system set up...... and\or knowledge of.