Study: Linux' Security Problems Outstrip Microsoft's

karavite

Registered
Not sure if this belongs in news and rumors or here (or anywhere?), but I saw this article stating that MS security holes are on the decline while Linux and OS are on the rise (sort of).

http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/19996.html

I am not savvy enough to even have an opinion on this, so I thought some of you hot shots could put in your 2 cents. Is MS making headway on all their problems with security? I understand Billy made it top priority and it would seem MS has the people to take care of this once the decision was made. You just know they will use something like this to combat open source. I'm a big fan of the whole open source idea, but how serious are Linux security issues and how does open source work to resolve this? The link has many of comment posts about the validity of the report, but it is hard to know who is informed or not.

Also, at the risk of being a conspiracy advocate, would it be beneath MS to fund people to break into Linux systems? If I was as greedy and determined as Bill, I would do it!
 
It benefits everybody for people to crack free software, at least under labratory conditions. Security is a process, not a state. It is hard to say what it means if there has been a decreased incidence of know MS exploits, because there is no transparency to the codebase. OTOH, many of the "linux" exploits (which include a variety of projects) are discovered in the lab and patched before anyone can use them maliciously. This is a good thing. The fact that in the past MS exploits outnumbered free software exploits is frankly shocking, considering there were no white hats trying to discover them.

Other than that, I would point out that they were comparing MS OSs, essentially 2000 and XP at this point, to FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, the various GNU/linux distributions and the hundreds of projects that comprise them. Also, they made no attempt to weight the impact/severity of the exploits.
 
Now, come on.

This could not possibly be a Microsoft managed news leak. Can’t be. It is right with the article about Microsoft creating a "virtual brain" where one can store and retrieve one's wet ware memory.

"Researchers at Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Latest News about Microsoft Media Presence Lab are developing a "virtual brain," a PC-based database that holds a record of an individual's complete life experience. Called MyLifeBits, the project aims to make this database of human memories searchable in the manner of a conventional search engine."

http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/20064.html

Please.
 
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