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Thread ID: 77803	2007-03-23 07:01:00	Surprise, Microsoft Listed as Most Secure OS	winmacguy (3367)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
535211	2007-03-23 07:01:00	Steve Bizaro Ballmer must have threatened to throw a chair at Symantec for their previous report that Vista is not secure, so Symantec came up with this report. www.internetnews.com Or was it because of this? www.internetnews.com	winmacguy (3367)
535212	2007-03-23 08:30:00	That report seems rather unfair. * They're assuming that the amount of bugs patched in a certain time frame has something to do with security. I mean, I could go make an OS and patch a bunch of basic bugs and bam, I have a more secure OS than all of the ones mentioned. * For the Linux distro they seem to be counting all patches made to all the software on the CD that came with it. For the Mac OS X and Windows tests they only seem to count the "core OS" patches. * Vista was in development at the time of the report taking place.	byte (11156)
535213	2007-03-23 08:33:00	That report seems rather unfair. Both reports are from Symantic so yes both could be construed as biasd and misleading FUD.	winmacguy (3367)
535214	2007-03-23 09:09:00	No hang on. What Symantec says is actually: But Symantec (Quote), no friend of Microsoft, said in its latest research report that when it comes to widely-used operating systems, Microsoft is doing better overall than its leading commercial competitors. So who is their leading commercial competitor? They don't have one. :lol: Competitors, yes, commercial competitors, no. So Symantec is quite right.:lol:	pctek (84)
535215	2007-03-23 09:16:00	You trust Symantec?	winmacguy (3367)
535216	2007-03-23 12:51:00	Quoting the Symantec report: Of the 39 Microsoft vulnerabilities disclosed during this period, 12 were considered high severity Of the 208 Red Hat vulnerabilities during the second half of 2006, two were considered high severity It appears that InternetNews reported only on the bits they wanted. I wouldn't call the Symantec report exactly balanced (it takes special care to trash Windows Vista and stress the importance of third party security software) but it is quite clear from the actual report that Red Hat was better off in terms of security. As byte pointed out, all software shipped by Red Hat is included in 'their' vulnerabilities, most of which is general open source software which is neither maintained by the vendor nor present on the majority of clients' systems. This difference is also reflected in the classification of less than 1% of RH vulnerabilities as high severity against the more than 30% for Microsoft (system service compromises are much more likely to be high severity than a buffer overflow in a Tetris clone). Unfortunately with the nature of open source development it is very easy for companies or news agencies to extract statistics they can use to scare managers with. Open source operating systems tend to ship a lot more out of the box than proprietary ones and have more "whole system" vulnerabilities as a result. There are also a lot of really terribly designed projects under open source licences. The moral of this is to either check thoroughly yourself or use a vendor you can trust. Based on the statistics there, I believe Red Hat would more than qualify.	TGoddard (7263)
535217	2007-03-23 19:55:00	Think about it, ANY version of Windows is more secure than anything else. Have a think.	pcuser42 (130)
535218	2007-03-23 20:03:00	Your joking right?	winmacguy (3367)
535219	2007-03-23 22:49:00	Think about it, ANY version of Windows is more secure than anything else. Have a think. In the case of ME, you may be right, it is so unlikely to be working that the virus has an exceptionally small window of opportunity to slip into the (non)operating system. It is USERS who cause the problems, they are the ones who break the shrink-wrap that is your real armour against virus attacks.	R2x1 (4628)
535220	2007-03-23 23:10:00	I think Symantec is actually trying to get very close to MS by they way they have carefully worded their report. This comment from a poster over at OSNews describes it very well "Actually, if you read the article carefully it is worded in such a way that it could be considered a one horse race. Since Windows is the only "widely available commercial" OS you could hardly reach any other conclusion. Looks to me like Symantec is ready to run up the white flag. :-)"	winmacguy (3367)
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