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XPost: alt.sad-people.microsoft.lovers, comp.sys.mac.advocacy, c
mp.sys.macintrash
XPost: microsoft.windows.crash.crash.crash
From: reply_in_group@mouse-potato.com

In article
, Derek
Currie wrote:
> Finding the safest computer OS is more important that warz mongering. My
> point stands, as does that of this news alert, no matter what mud you have
> to sling at mi2g.

OK, let's try it this way.  Suppose next year, in response to that Mi2G
report, almost everyone switched to OS X.  So, we end up with 98% of the
servers running OS X, 1% running Linux, and 1% running Windows.  Question:
what would be the result?

Answer: OS X would then become the most breached OS, and, according to
Mi2G's methodology, the least insecure OS of the three.

*That* is why Mi2G's study is meaningless.  Total number of breaches per OS,
which is what they report, tells you nothing about the security of the OSes.
What you want to know (and what they leave out) is *what* *percentage* of
the servers that were running each OS were breached.

How many major hosting companies run OS X?  How many run Linux?  If the two
OSes had the exact same level of security, Linux would suffer at least an
order of magnitude more breaches, simply because there are so many more
Linux servers out there.

What puzzles me is why I even need to explain this.  A report that claims
Linux is massively less secure than Windows should have set off alarms for
you that should have tipped you off that the study is flawed.  You should
have then Googled Mi2G, and found out that they are generally considered
to be somewhat of a joke among security professionals.

--
--Tim Smith

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
 * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)