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[NEWS] 5,198 Software Flaws Found in 2005

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Mr.Guvernment

Member
Joined
Feb 26, 2003
Well, pending on this source and how reliable it is (and what they consider a flaw?), is *nux really as "safe" out of the box as people claim? I did have a friend who got hard into linux fast and he did tell me that Linux is NO where as safe as what many Linux Guru's tout their O/S to be and Unix, i thought it was inpenetrable compared to windows....

I am not posting my thought to start a war, but all i ever hear is how much safer *nix is over windows.....

People do complain of windows updates but when i installed Fedora Core 4 - i had to download almost 300+ mb of updates...

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| 5,198 Software Flaws Found in 2005 |
| from the better-to-find-them-than-not dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Saturday December 31, @08:31 (Security) |
| http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/31/0812210 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

An anonymous reader writes "Security researchers uncovered nearly 5,200
software vulnerabilities in 2005, almost 40 percent more than the number
discovered in 2004, according to [0]Washingtonpost.com. From the article:
'According to US-CERT...researchers found 812 flaws in the Windows
operating system, 2,328 problems in various versions of the Unix/Linux
operating systems (Mac included). An additional 2,058 flaws affected
multiple operating systems.'"

Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=05/12/31/0812210

Links:
0. http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2005/12/uscert_5198_sof.html#comments


+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
 
Unix and windows are pieces of Software made by humans and since it's made by humans it has mistakes.

It's how these mistakes get treated that gives the impression that one is safer than the other.

MS gets tonnes of publicity when a mistake is found because 90% of the world uses it and it's a big multi-billion dollar company and it's a little slow to release updates.

*nix is open source updates are faster because there are people who are willing to share their fixes with the world. Also no one cares when only 5% of the world is affected and it's not backed by a multi-billion dollar company.

I have an understanding of *nix, it has it's own problems but the way it treats errors in programs and network security by default is slightly better than windows but at the same time the way it treats those actions sometimes makes it annoying. Take the most obvious difference case sensitive file names, helpful and annoying.
 
Well, the thing with a *nix is that the user has tremendous freedom to customize and recompile the entire OS. Security wasn't added on as an afterthought with *nix systems.
So, there is no contest betwixt MS and *nix in this regard.

I really have a problem with the Microsoft paradigm of "dumbing" down things. Its a bit insulting to assume that Joe-sixpack is an idiot. Anybody with a little bit of help can learn how to use a *nix system.

It is true that some flavors of *nix, notable the Fedora Project are bloated and full of unnecessary fluff. But, you still have the source code and the customizability the *nix family offers.
 
^^ further reading it seems alot of the flaws in the *nix line are alot of the 3rd party apps that ship with *nix, now is it the *nix's Cmpanythat made the O/S , that should be responsible for testing out a programs security before integrating it into their O/S - or the makers? if i got hacked due to a flaw in say a media player, who would be to blame....

Nicely put Tebore!
 
Super Nade said:
I really have a problem with the Microsoft paradigm of "dumbing" down things. Its a bit insulting to assume that Joe-sixpack is an idiot. Anybody with a little bit of help can learn how to use a *nix system.

.

you don't develop software do ya? or work with the General Joe Six Pack population, because even windows poses challenges for many of them, and I have to dumb down a windows system even more then it is out of the box, developing software even for highly educated people, who are not in the computer field requires making it dumbed down, the difference between nested menu's and simple clicking is a huge change in usability for non power users, for my self I like nested menu's but have found joe 6 pack likes to point and click and not navigate nested menu's


now on topic


if you look at which *nix distros are getting the flaws they all tend to be bloated distro's if Windows was not so bloated I'm sure it wouldn't have as many problems. I think the *nix flaws tend to really matter only to casual users since server enviroments don't have much of the bloat, but the windows server enviroments still have it.
 
Dont forget price. I love the functionality of my FC 2 machine more than my XP machine. I just wish I could get more games that I liek to play with wine. But you know what? If I want to try another flavor of Unix it wont cost me anything. Cant say that with Windows.
 
deRussett,

The only reason people are stupid is because we treat them so. Throw somebody in the well and they will be forced to learn how to swim. This is a big problem, we as a society are teaching our kids to take the easy way out.

I wish I had started out with a *nix. It would have saved me a world of trouble.

Anybody who has used Gentoo will tell you what functionality and stability really means :)
 
The only reason people are stupid is because we treat them so. Throw somebody in the well and they will be forced to learn how to swim. This is a big problem, we as a society are teaching our kids to take the easy way out.

Lazyness - people want things done for them and think computers are the tools to do it.

perfect example, on these forums how many people make a new post instead of doing the work to search ?

this generation of computers users - the "majority" as there are always exceptions are lazy.

back when i was 17 i could learn anything u tossed at me, now i couldnt be bothered really - figure someone else alreayd knows it, so why should i learn it :) but that is changing.
 
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