Re: Short List of Security Questions


"Ian" <Ian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:83C4C597-8B45-4F37-8AD2-B29DD9866723@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The security of any OS is directly proportional to its age.

.... and the way it's configured. The insecure default settings of Windows
98 and Linux of the same period, and the resulting hackings, are partly the
manufacturer's fault, and partly the user's fault. The user is more and
more at fault as the optimal settings and countermeasures [e.g. installing
patches, running antivirus and firewall] become more widely known and
advertized, and as people continue to knowingly use OSes like 98 that are no
longer being supported with security updates.

Despite its somewhat poorer stability and lack of proper user-permissions,
even in its heyday the Win95/98 product line suffered far fewer
security-problems than the NT-based line.

.... despite the fact that Windows 98 was a home user product never intended
for security. It seems silly to have to answer questions about the security
of Windows 98 after it's retired. I'm not sure what the OP's goal was in
asking these questions, but if this is part of a decision as to whether to
continue to buy Microsoft Windows, Windows 98 isn't at all relevant to that
discussion.

The fact that Linux is relatively secure is no doubt largely due to its
being based on a truly ancient core, one whose vulnerabilities have long
been
identified and understood.

Linux is doing something right [although to be fair, Windows includes a lot
of functionality intended for enterprise system interoperability that Linux
doesn't have]. But before we call them relatively secure, consider that
Linux far outnumbers Windows in the number of web servers hacked as reported
at web sites that track such things.

Modern distros of Linux has a lot more things disabled by default, which is
partly a security decision, and partly just the way Linux is distributed -
it's a very small core with additional functionality provided by a variety
of third party add-ons. If a user wants to enable FTP services, Linux
distros come with several different ones for the user to choose. With
Windows, pretty much everything that comes with Windows is provided by
Microsoft and is the de facto default, making it easy to target large
numbers of users by knowing what's running on their systems. Of course,
Microsoft argues that this standardized monolithic design makes it easier to
support Windows in an enterprise, and there are pros and cons to that
assertion.


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