Study: Linux "Most Breached" OS

Apple Computer's OS X and the open-source BSD operating system provide the "world's safest and most secure" computing platforms, according to London-based security firm mi2g. The report also describes Linux as the world's "most breached" online computing environment, followed by Microsoft's Windows operating system.

According to mi2g, the firm's Intelligence Unit study analyzed more than 235,000 successful attacks against "permanently connected -- 24/7 online -- computers" worldwide between November 2003 and October 2004. According to the study, computers running Linux accounted for about 65 percent of all recorded breaches, while Microsoft Windows-based systems accounted for about 25 percent of such attacks. Successful attacks against OS X and BSD-based online systems accounted for less than five percent of the worldwide total.

"More and more smart individuals, government agencies, and corporations are shifting towards Apple and BSD environments," said D.K. Matai, executive chairman of mi2g. Technology professionals, he said, "don't have time to cope with the umpteen flavors of Linux or to wait for Microsoft's Longhorn when Windows XP has proved to be a stumbling block" due to persistent security flaws.

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News source: Internet Week

Mac OS X: because making Unix user-friendly is easier than debugging Windows :D

I thought this would attract more responses.

Not really, everyone knows that its only professional courtesy that stops linux headlines about security vulnerabilities. I know a few people who spend their time having a friendly game of "root"... where the idea is to gain control of anothers machine remotely... if it is so secure, why is that possible?

It makes one wonder about the popularity of Linux. And, if it is only cost, well, security issues are not cost effective.

Show me any OS that's impregnable...

Chances are the linux guys that were attacked had angered someone else. Like my brother was in charge of a linux server at one of his jobs. There was another guy there he didn't like much. He ended up leaving the job, and the other guy took over control of the server. The other guy was bragging one day on MSN how he improved the security on the server... so needless to say my brother used one of his backdoors and locked the server up nice and tight... 10 minutes later the guy wrote, "The server locked" or something like that and my brother asked if he wanted the server back... there was no reply for about 15 minutes and the guy replied, yes... and my brother was like "what do you say?" another 5 minutes went past and the reply was "Yes, please."

So I could see variations of this happening quite a bit. There was a guy in college that had a linux box that he specifically setup so he could challenge people to break in. Crawled our inet access to a halt for a while...