Robert
Sat Aug 16 09:42:17 CDT 2003
Jason wrote:
> Same as any OS. Heck, just look at this blaster nonsense. The warning
> and update was out almost a month ago and the MS newgroups are full of
> people whining and bitching about it. :)
>
> Seriously Robert how many are out there for linux? Yes I know
> www.google.com. lol
Like you say... www.google.com
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=linux&num=10&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=worm+trojan&as_eq=windows&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=off
Very unscientific and is no count of the number of discrete worms, but it
shows that any platform is vulnerable to worms that can cause major
distraction. Assuming we count the variants of a worm as more than one worm
(which isn't the normal practice in antivirus circles but seems fair for
this as people bashing microsoft for the RPC vulnerability and its attendant
worms talk about loads of worms exploiting the hole) then we've certainly
got more than 10!
Whats more interesting and more important is that when you look at virtually
all worms running on all platforms they spread through vulnerabilities that
were discovered by the vendor and a patch released for users to apply at
least a few weeks before the worm exploiting the vulnerability appeared.
This brings us back to a theory of mine that I've held for a long time which
says that security isn't really a function of what operating system you use
but rather of how you use it. Forget to play it safe and secure and you'll
get punished whether you run windows, linux, Mac OS/OSX or even a mainframe.
Regards
Rob Moir
--
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Rob
MS MVP
http://www.robertmoir.co.uk