Symantec: Windows Is Most Secure Os

xboxrulz

Mar 23 2007, 02:08 AM

QUOTE

Symantec: Windows is Most Secure OS

hackers.jpgIn a report that surprises even the PC lovers around here (read: me), Symantec has listed Microsoft Windows as the most secure OS out there. They claim that Windows had the fewest number of patches and the shortest patch development time of any OS, including Mac, Red Hat Linux, Solaris, and HP-UX (any HP-UX fanboys in the house?).

So what in the hell is going on? We've been spoon-fed all this data that says Windows is about as secure as a screen door while Macs are perfectly safe, yet OS X came in 3rd in the report (behind Linux, which came in 2nd). At first we figured Symantec must just be really biased, as they sell PC software, but when you think about it, it's in their best interest to have people think that PCs are vulnerable so they think they need Symantec's software. And furthermore, Symantec sued Microsoft last year, so it's not like they're best buds.

Maybe it's… true? Something tells me that if this report included Internet Explorer as part of the Windows OS it would be a lot different, but for us Windows users that use Firefox it's nice to know we aren't just asking to get H4X0Red every time we go online. –Adam Frucci

Source: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/pcs/symantec-wi...e-os-246447.php

lmao!! funniest thing ever!

xboxrulz

Jimmy89

Mar 23 2007, 09:53 AM

thats very strange. i think its microsoft that is the only OS that releases heaps of patches EVERY week for something thats gone wrong! and then symantec comes out and says that it is the most secure, i think not!

and as xboxrulz said, as symantec sells PC software and thats where their market is, thats why they MAY BE biased to Windows cause without them, they would have no customers.

SilverFox

Mar 23 2007, 10:26 AM

Personally I don't think Windows is that dangerous. A lot of people have some problem with it online, but they are just complainers. I rarely get those patches and I'm okay. I think all the anti-windows people need to just get a new record, this one's broken.

However, I still find that report a bunch of BS.

Quatrux

Mar 23 2007, 11:47 AM

As xboxrulz said, it is one of the most funniest things I heard this week too

Personally, I don't even care about that article, people nowadays can write a lot of bullshit ;-] like that guy in some-kind of topic, who said that all Linux users are pirates and Linux needs Windows to Load

Anyway, hahahahahahahahaha

When I use Windows, I never had a virus, only some spyware.. Most of that crap comes from stupid websites when browsing with IE, which I don't use, cracks and other illegal stuff and files you don't know about, like email attachments.. I don't use any of those and feel safe.. I don't even have a normal Antivirus, just ClamWin open source/free Antivirus, which in my opinion, doesn't do anything.

Omkar™

Mar 24 2007, 06:52 PM

Just tell me who in the world wrote that article - I just want to give that person a 'courtesy visit'!

Microsoft®-Windows®-Secure can't even think of these 3 words in one sentence!

QUOTE

I don't even have a normal Antivirus, just ClamWin open source/free Antivirus, which in my opinion, doesn't do anything.

Kewl speech, Quatrux! But with my copy of Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional with Service Pack 2, its stuffed with Avast! Antivirus, Spybot Search & Destroy, ZoneAlarm Pro Firewall to get along with. Niether do I trust Microsoft's DEP nor do I trust its firewall! In my opinion, any berserk going online with IE and equipped with the Windows Firewall, would repent in a short while, his PC gone to ashes and in for a re-installation! I even actually tried that - on a new Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition installation, I connected it to the internet and surfed the sites one usually does - Yahoo! and other stuff, clicking on advertisements on the go - and (no) viola! A later scan found insanic stats of Virii and Spyware! So, in no way is Microsoft® Windows® a secure OS!

As for the patches are concerned, we've been all the way to Service Pack 2 and still struggling for a "Security Hotfix" from the Windows® Update every week!

So, just a friendly compliment to Symantec - if you wish to sell your products, please praise yourself, not your platform!

bluefish

Mar 24 2007, 08:51 PM

QUOTE

Windows - 39, 12 severe, average 21 day fix
Mac - 49, 1 severe, average 66 day fix
Red Hat - 208, 2 severe, average 13 day fix

As you can see, Windows has the fewest. However, it has by far the most severe ones. Also, the average fix is much slower than for Linux (though it turns out that Mac takes over two months on average). From these stats, anyone that looks closely can see that in fact, Windows is the least secure: 12 severe problems, while Linux has a sixth of that, and Mac has only one!

Personally, from a security standpoint, I would choose Red Hat. For one, it only had 2 severe. I wouldn't choose Mac even though it has many fewer, just because it takes so long. My second choice would be Mac.

Also, as also pointed out in the comments, the number of patches does not correlate with the number of bugs. Windows could have 169 unpatched bugs.

xboxrulz

Mar 25 2007, 03:04 AM

QUOTE(bluefish @ Mar 24 2007, 04:51 PM)

This seems kind of crazy, but I suppose it depends what you do on your computer. If you keep your Windows locked up in an airtight safe with no internet access, I suppose you might be able to avoid any security leaks. And why, may I ask, is Linux the most trusted OS to run a web server on?

I read a few of the comments, and here's what they were basing it on (apparently):
As you can see, Windows has the fewest. However, it has by far the most severe ones. Also, the average fix is much slower than for Linux (though it turns out that Mac takes over two months on average). From these stats, anyone that looks closely can see that in fact, Windows is the least secure: 12 severe problems, while Linux has a sixth of that, and Mac has only one!

Personally, from a security standpoint, I would choose Red Hat. For one, it only had 2 severe. I wouldn't choose Mac even though it has many fewer, just because it takes so long. My second choice would be Mac.

Also, as also pointed out in the comments, the number of patches does not correlate with the number of bugs. Windows could have 169 unpatched bugs.

True, but those on Linux are just to make sure it runs smoothly and some are to actually fix holes. Microsoft always releases patches now, especially with Windows Vista. Everyday, I see a new patch.

xboxrulz

vizskywalker

Mar 25 2007, 11:16 AM

This does not surprise me. A couple (read less than a year, more than half) of months ago, PCWorld released an article with a comparison of bugs discovered/threats and viruses created and found/patches and fixes released int he past couple years and as yearly average for linux kernel, OSX and Windows XP. Although OSX had far fewer by far, Linux, especially recently, came off as slightly worse than Windows. Intrigued because of all the bad press Windows gets, I looked into it, and sure enough, Linux did have more problems. The reasons for the bad press seemed to be as follows:
1) Every issue with windows effects as many people as maybe every 10-50 issues in linux.
2) Microsoft makes a point of announcing to the whole world over various sources when issues are found and fixed, linux just posts them in places where it's assumed users know to look.
3) More people who should not be touching computers use windows, so the issues with windows are compounded by stupidity.

However, to combat that, think of the number of antivirus companies that write for windows, and mostly for windows. It's most of the top companies, such as Symantec and MacAfee. These companies know what they are doing, and are quick to find new viruses and ways to beat them. But with linux, because of its open source nature, all of the holes that are easy to find have been found, so the viruses are very complex and take advantage of wholes that whole communities have missed. This makes finding them, identifying them, fixing them, and predicting them much more difficult. Also, Windows and Linux do have the same permissions system, much as people like to feel that linux permissions make it safer. It's just that most people run XP in administrator mode.

Vista changed a lot. Because it is a very new system for Windows, a lot of the old viruses don't work, and because it is a small population, it is not yet a large target for viruses. Also, Vista by default does not let the default user account be an admin account, so the permissions actually manage to protect the naive user, and the advanced user can change to a default admin account if they wish.

~Viz

wutske

Mar 25 2007, 02:48 PM

it's just depens on what your vision of 'safe' is. With more than 50000 viruses available (more or less, since a lot of pre XP viruses don't work anymore) for windows, I wouldn't realy call it a safe environement.
Of course, if you only look at patches, then it might be possible that windows looks safer, but even tough things are being patched, there still are plenty holes wich viri can use to exploit.

Of course I'm not stupid, I'm very open minded and I'm not saying MacOS or Linux are the safest of them all, but since there's only a small group of Mac/Linux users available, they of course form a smaller target. Popular software has always been a popular target, look at Firefox, in the beginning there weren't any leaks (because no-one was looking for them), but nowadays there are a lot of exploits for FF available (luckily, the Mozilla team is fast enough

), just because it's popular.

xboxrulz

Mar 26 2007, 10:08 PM

I know that the Linux kernel is patched up every few days to every few weeks, there's definitely new releases every once and a while. You usually never see that on Windows because Microsoft is doing this as a business and they wouldn't want to release a new OS every couple of weeks, that's going to ruin their profits and etc.

xboxrulz

Latest Entries

jbitkill

Nov 2 2007, 11:10 AM

QUOTE(xboxrulz @ Mar 23 2007, 02:08 AM)

Source: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/pcs/symantec-wi...e-os-246447.php

lmao!! funniest thing ever!

xboxrulz

Only because they make AntiVirus for Windows doesn't mean that Windows is the safest. My friend uses Linux, a file virus downloaded in a EXE format and didn't even attempt to execute! Windows has the easiest to break in records. Click your fingers, enter blah blah in the DOS prompt and its infected.

Viruses don't go to people with mininum web education don't know about the impact that viruses does, that is why they use AntiVirus, good thinking!
Viruses go to the without AntiVirus, but don't you forget, any AntiVirus can't block all of them!

xxxx-jozh-xxxx

xboxrulz

Mar 28 2007, 11:37 PM

QUOTE(mastercomputers @ Mar 28 2007, 03:21 AM)

It's quite sad that in this day and age, we still have to read between the lines, and people should be more accurate with their content, just recently a popular beverage that has been around for years, gave the impression their drink had 4 times the amount of Vitamin C than Oranges, but in their wording, they said Blackcurrants used in the drink have 4 times the amount of Vitamin C than Oranges, but university students discovered they only had 1.5 times the amount of Vitamin C than Oranges, but it's possible the Blackcurrants they used had 4 times the amount. It turns out that this drink has more sugar than Coca Cola (Coke).

Fewest number of patches means, they need to get off their ass more and fix it. The least things they fix, the least number of patches you'll see.

Shortest patch development time means they probably left a semi-colon off a product and fixed it quicker than some with more serious problems. There's been some things Microsoft has chosen to ignore, like not fixing a known problem, because they felt it wasn't worth it, so I'm guessing they also hold the title for longest awaiting patch development too.

As far as I can tell, this is just twisting the information to their advantage, Microsoft has done this quite a few times with twisting the information around to make them be on top, but what does count is comparing Operating System components themselves and not programs, also severe problems and not how long it took them to develop a patch, but how long it took them to make sure all their Operating Systems in use became patched. Another thing, everything would be judged on a default installation, how about a custom installation with minimal options or can't they do that because Windows no longer allows customisation, and you have to put up with what gets installed?

Security seems to be a big issue, and it would be with Symantec, but what about Stability. I know a lot of the problems can be a result caused by programmers, but there really needs to be standards implied, otherwise programming is just one big fire with logs being thrown in just to keep it running.

Either way, we'll never get to the truth, just people saying Windows is secure, Linux is secure, OS X is secure. May as well say everything is secure as long as you take the precautions to make sure no one can break into your home/office and steal your computer.

Cheers,

MC

That's true, fewer patches may actually mean less holes are being patched. Symantec should've said they found the least holes in Windows than any other operating system

xboxrulz

mastercomputers

Mar 28 2007, 07:21 AM

xboxrulz

Mar 28 2007, 03:41 AM

QUOTE(vhortex @ Mar 27 2007, 04:52 PM)

...
-------
Windoze = install once, worry many
*Nix = install many, worry once

I rarely need to constantly reinstall Linux, except for the kernel which I constantly upgrade since I get to use the new optimizations it comes out with each release.

xboxrulz

vhortex

Mar 28 2007, 02:12 AM

QUOTE(.:Brian:. @ Mar 28 2007, 05:56 AM)

I also have to say, with people who say that linux is so secure....Linux isn't used by anywhere near the number of people that windows is used by, so it isn't necessarily targeted as much by people to find holes in it. Why would a hacker, or somebody who has the intent of doing something malicious, want to try and find security issues with an OS that isn't used by as many people around the world?

well, having bazillion dollars worth of information does count.. guess i am correct.

why would need to have root or control on windows desktops when knowing that they can contain less information. the much logical things i can see on exploiting windoze desktops are the following

1. to steal bank data from users when they type in there accounts
2. create zombies for the hackers other purposes. [free spamming email server anyone? DDOS anybody?]

----------

Now on *Nixes, this is harder not that there are less exploits.. in fact a *Nix install out of the box will have lots of exploits open and lots of vulnerability. however, we do configure aren't we? I have conducted a test between two system. windoze and Fedora, i turn on windows proection and firewall from fresh install and I define an IPtables in Fedora.

Fedora turns out to be invisible to nmap and other port scanning software. windoze was clearly visible and ports are replying to nmap. I have succesfully made a DDOS using 20 computers on windoze and it crashed, fedora remains untouched..

No test on mac, dont have money to buy one.