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Author
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Topic: Zotob Madness and the Real Cost of Windows vs. Linux
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radiorahim
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2777
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posted 19 August 2005 12:14 AM
quote:
The Zotob attacks could have been prevented by proper Windows patching, or they could have easily been prevented for less by using Linux in the first place.
What do CNN, ABC, The New York Times and a lot of Fortune 500 companies all have in common?Can you say "clueless Windows administrators"? I knew you could. Zotob variants, today's Windows worm, are running roughshod over Windows 2000-based businesses. The businesses being smacked by Zotob are a laundry list of some of the world's biggest, best, and, when it comes to IT, dumbest companies. Why dumb? First, they're not the brightest bulbs because they're still using Windows 2000. In case you've been hiding under a rock, Windows 2000 support croaked on June 30.
E-week article
From: a Micro$oft-free computer | Registered: Jun 2002
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Yst
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 9749
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posted 20 August 2005 03:54 AM
Yes, I think this condemnation is overstated, if not outright deluded. Using Windows 2000 in the present isn't all that bad an administrative decision if you've got an infrastructure built upon the OS already. Ongoing use of NT4 outside closed networks can at this point legitimately be condemned, as MS has withdrawn support on schedule, but 2000 is still good for a while now. In fact, you could quite reasonably argue that, while most exploits affecting 2000 affect XP identically and so in most cases there's little basis for a preference, any new worms are far more likely to affect the latter if they affect only one or the other, and so really the folks running XP are the schmucks these days. But in practice, as a server OS, neither holds a strong adventage over the other for now. If you're depending on XP SP2's firewall for your corporate security these days, then you fall neatly into the schmuck category, and have quite emphatically forfeited any right to criticse users of 2000 who properly secure their networks using real firewall solutions.As for using Linux, well, yes, using an OS with a smaller installed base will naturally expose you to a smaller selection of major worms and viruses, which is what we're talking about here (sheer quantity and frequency of exploits that, say, a script kiddie might pick up on, and the timeliness of their patching, is a completely different argument and frequency of patching is in the Linux/Unix/BSD case wholly dependent on the sysadmin, so an analogy doesn't really work). Using SunOS, sure, you can be almost certain you're safe from any self-propagating web worm. Heck, use Webstar under MacOS8 and if you ever fall victim to a self-propagating worm in the wild on the web I'll send you a million bucks. Security through obscurity only goes so far. It's good protection against major self-propagating worms like this one. Poor protection against script kiddies and hackers who know what they're doing. And the latter are vastly more likely to end up compromising your system in a truly problematic way, in the end. 2000/XP, Linux and the BSDs all have their place in the present, and all have situations where the respective OS provides the lowest TCO possible to the user.
From: State of Genderfuck | Registered: Jun 2005
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