Re: New IP based security hole in Windows 2000 (yet again)

From: Moe Trin (ibuprofin_at_painkiller.example.tld)
Date: 08/05/05

  • Next message: Johan Wevers: "Re: What can one do against Keylogger Attacks?" 
    Date: Fri, 05 Aug 2005 14:27:28 -0500

    In the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
    <kYadnTmN5-eUlm7fRVn-rw@comcast.com>, Jbob wrote:

    >"Imhotep" <Imhotep@nospam.com> wrote:

    >> Time for Linux/BSD everyone...

    >You say that like Linux has no flaws(for a better word).

    *BSD* is not Linux. The four (BSD386, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD) are
    similar in that they are like UNIX, but they are as different from one
    another (and Linux) as cars from different manufacturers.

    >If I'm not mistaken Linux has had more security patches over the last
    >6 months than MS has.

    Microsoft is trying to advertise that - yes, but oranges and tomatoes are
    different. Most Linux distributions come with hundreds of applications,
    but the applications are not part of the operating system. If the 200+
    Linux distributors each release a patch for the same problem in a web
    browser like Mozilla (one of many browsers that come with each distribution;
    the one I'm using at home has seven different browsers) is that one patch
    by your count, or two hundred? Or none, because it's a separate application.

    Then to, most Linux distributors release patches and errata immediately,
    instead of waiting to release one massive "Urgent Security Update" each
    month that contain an unknown number of patches that may or may not fix
    problems that have been around for a month to a year or more.

    >I actually don't see most of this stuff as flaws but more as exploits.
    >Crackers in a dark hole somewhere can crack anything if they hit it enough.
     
    -rw-rw-r-- 1 admin admin 46713120 Jul 15 21:57 linux-2.6.12.3.tar.gz

    That's a recent kernel source file - 46.7 Megabyte compressed, about
    four million lines of C code. The applications are separate. The average
    distribution includes another 2,500 Megabytes compressed of the source
    code for the applications. So the crackers have something like 250
    million lines of the sources - and they can't find stuff to crack in
    that? Microsoft has never released the entire source for the O/S or any
    application, and we have this huge business in anti-virus, anti-worm,
    anti-trojan, anti-spyware programs for windoze - why?

    >Even the precious Linux Kernel.

    It's been tried. The advantage is that everyone can see the source, and
    anyone seeing a problem can either fix it themselves, or tell the world
    about it, so that someone else can fix it. Looking at the ChangeLog file
    for the 2.6.12 kernel, I see 423 different people from around the world who
    supplied changes. Most bug fixes are available in hours, though the Intel
    'F00F' bug in 1997 took seven days (and microsoft has never bothered to fix
    because it was a hardware bug - google for it).

    >FWIW, I wish I new Linux better! :-) I'm trying though.

    http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/
    http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html

    http://tldp.org/guides.html
    http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/linux-doc-project/

    http://www.distrowatch.com/

    http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/

    But as noted above, Linux isn't the only game in town, though the "popular"
    distributions like Fedora, Mandriva and SuSE try to make it a lot more
    newbie friendly than the *BSDs.

            Old guy

  • Next message: Johan Wevers: "Re: What can one do against Keylogger Attacks?"

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