Re: Scary report on OSS/Linux security

From: Erik Ljungstroem (erikDOTljungstrom@metalab.unc.edu)
Date: 11/28/02 

From: "Erik Ljungstroem" <erikDOTljungstrom@metalab.unc.edu>
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 17:24:30 GMT

On Tue, 19 Nov 2002 19:36:33 +0000, Gerry Van Donkersgoed wrote:

> Quote from the article
> "Study: Linux's Security Problems Outstrip Microsoft's"
> NewsFactor Network (11/15/02); Maguire, James
> at http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/19996.html

[-snip-]

> That doesn't sound very good... Any comments ?

One thing people tend to forget in discussions like this, is the
fact that open source itself means that anyone can read the code
and analyse it. It is by far easier to discover security holes
with the code in front of you, rather when it isn't.

I could bet any of my body parts, that the list of security
holes in Microsoft products would increase by hundreds of percent
if a handfull of hackers got their hands on the code.

And as someone else in this thread mentioned, the amount of
software available has a factor in this. Can someone find
like 50 open source ftp servers for Windows? Guess not!

This leaves me with no other option than reach the same conclution,
as a lot of others have, this is pure bs! 

-- 
	-> Erik Ljungstroem (erik.ljungstrom@metalab.unc.edu)
	-> http://www.northernmost.org
	-> Norrköping, Sweden

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