full-disclosure - [inbox] Re: CyberInsecurity: The cost of Monopoly

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Message-ID: <1064881671.490.86.camel@localhost>
From: frank at knobbe.us (Frank Knobbe)
Subject: [inbox] Re: CyberInsecurity: The cost of
	Monopoly

On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 17:24, Rodrigo Barbosa wrote:
> My whole point is: I do think Windows is insecure, but one cannot blame
> Windows alone. There are many, many server still vulnerable to CodeRed,
> and that, these days, is mostly a fault of the server admin.

Don't shift blame to the admins. There are good admins on Windows, and
good admins on Unix. There are also bad admins on Windows and bad admins
on Unix. There are still CodeRed vulnerable machines around, and there
are probably still bind or lpr vulnerable machines out there.

In both cases, Windows and Unix, the role of the admin is important. But
take the admin out of picture for the moment and just compare Unix to
Windows from an architectural point of view. Let's even overlook those
default setups (like IIS wide open, or a dozen daemons that don't need
to be running). Just from an architectural point of view, I claim
Windows is more vulnerable just due to the immense complexity.

I only have experience with some Linux and some BSDs. I can't speak for
AIX, Solaris, HPUX, and whatever else, but I doubt they are as complex
as Windows these days.

Don't get me wrong, I liked Windows (up until a couple years ago when
the blatant privacy violations and increasing amount of bugs/patches
made me decide to drop it). I'm just saying that so you know that I'm
not a native Windows basher. But I argue that NT 4 for example is more
secure than Windows 2000 (I actually believe that. I was running an NT 4
box with IIS 3 for 4 years on the Internet without any incidents.... But
I credit IIS 3 for it :)

Anyhow. Windows these days is less secure because it is bloated with
code. Yes, good admins can easily secure it. But that still doesn't get
rid of the inherent code-bloat based insecurity.
(I could also argue that BSD is more secure than Linux when you take the
admin out of the picture. Just compare Linux's etc-hell to BSD's. But I
don't really want to alienate too many.... oh darn, too late...)

Complexity is security's worst enemy. Being it in network design,
application design, operating systems, or airplanes.

Regards,
Frank

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