8 ms·

I mean, the answer is unequivocally, without the slightest doubt, yes. The Linux Desktop is probably a good 5-10yrs behind Windows 10 in terms of defense-in-dep

I mean, the answer is unequivocally, without the slightest doubt, yes. The Linux Desktop is probably a good 5-10yrs behind Windows 10 in terms of defense-in-depth mitigations as well as exploits in common targets like file parsers etc etc. https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-16/materials/us-16-Weston-Windows-10-Mitigation-Improvements.pdf https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-16/materials/us-16-Weston-W... is a good reference for all the stuff that Desktop Linux in 2017 is for the most part, missing

AsyncAwait 10y ago
The thing with the Linux Desktop is that you can selectively enable SELinux, use PaX etc. and have security comparable to, if not better, than Windows 10, plus the fact that Linux is a much more varied attack surface still applies. Or you can do nothing, in which case you're probably less secure.
- vocworker 10y ago
  Sure, extremely motivated individuals or governments might do that. But I'd still rate a distribution by it's default security settings. Being secure by default is important if you are shipping to thousands of users.
  - deckiedan 10y ago
    Fedora comes with SELinux enabled by default, and is working towards more interesting sandboxing stuff for the future too.
    - pawadu 10y ago
      Ubuntu comes with AppArmor enabled by default [1]. Unfortunately its service will terminate at startup due to missing profiles [2]. This shows how much QA goes into security related stuff in a distro of this size. --- [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AppArmor https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AppArmor [2] sudo apt install apparmor-profiles-extra
    - notalaser 10y ago
      Unfortunately, while SELinux itself is good, the tooling around it has to be the most atrocious, useless steaming pile of thrash in this niche. From setroubleshootd randomly deciding to eat up 100% of CPU time (and no one being able to explain exactly what it does) to the endless fun of figuring out what policycoreutils-python & friends do and how, actually doing something useful with it is somewhere between "painful" and "frustrating". If Microsoft had published something like this, they'd have been the laughing stock of the whole Linux community. I don't know anyone in my immediate circle of peers - not even people who use SELinux on servers or in products that they develop - who doesn't disable SELinux on their desktop. They're not idiots, either, nor re-booted Windows programmers that the IoT and DevOps craze has thrown into the Linux world, many of us have been using Linux since back when there was no E in RHEL.
      - deckiedan 10y ago
        Oh yes, SElinux tooling is an abomination. I feel like there should be a way to write a new set of simplified tooling on top of the kernel API. I've been running fedora at home an on my laptop for about a year now, and don't need to turn SElinux off. I only needed to add one custom role myself too, when trying to mount certain host directories as volumes in docker. Which is fair enough.
- thatcat 10y ago
  Where's a good place to get a general guide on every day desktop use of SELinux, PaX, etc?
  - AsyncAwait 10y ago
    I'd look into Fedora and Arch Linux documentation/wiki.
  - bigbugbag 10y ago
    Arch wiki is a goldmine: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Security https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Security
  - unhammer 10y ago
    One of the slides also mentioned at what point each distro introduced ASLR (ie. it might be worth upgrading your Ubuntu to 16.10 if you're on an older one)
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Windows still has better protection of credentials, it can be better protected against DMA attacks and has quite a few other tricks under its belt.
- sytelus 10y ago
  This is exactly the problem. You can buy Windows 10 machine and if it becomes vulnerable it's Microsoft's fault and you would count on them to fix it immediately, push out the automatic update and go on with your life. If default Linux desktop is insecure then consumer is supposed to figure out what exactly is insecure, be expert in knowing the alternatives and how to replace everything. The question isn't whether Linux desktop can be made more secure but rather why isn't it secure by default?
  - AsyncAwait 10y ago
    > you would count on them to fix it immediately, push out the automatic update and go on with your life. Not only do you get security updates for your distro with the vast majority of Linux distros, but you also get it for all your 3rd party software, using the same system mechanism. They may not push the updates automatically, (you can of course set it that way), but some of us still want to be in control of what gets installed on our machines That's not to say it can't be improved, but the situation isn't quite as bad as you are painting it, ie there are mainstream distros that come hardened by default and security patches are regularly backported. I'd argue that macOS is also technologically less secure than modern Windows, yet its users are in no more danger than Windows users are, (despite its theoretically security), because security depends on a lot of factors including the user culture, market share etc. i.e. Linux doesn't have a culture of downloading executables from random websites for one. I'd guess most distributions feel like they're providing an adequate level of protection for their users as of now, without introducing too much friction. Once that is no longer the case, it's easy to turn on a few more knobs, the software is already there.
    - sytelus 10y ago
      The 3rd party software is huge problem, actually. When you do apt-get or install using Ubuntu App Store it gives a false sense of security to novice user that things are safe. This is even more problematic because there are so many things one needs to download on default desktop to be on par with default Windows. The File Manager UI, for example, lacks too many features and user must investigate alternatives and either assume that everything is all right or deeply examine security vulnerabilities for each available option. Same goes for basic things like text editor or calculator and so on.
jmnicolas 10y ago
Maybe I'm not rational but I'm much more worried about Microsoft having access to my data than some random "Russian" hacker.
- ch0wn 10y ago
  Yes, that does not exactly strike me as a rational stance to take. Are you actually more worried about Microsoft blackmailing you about those photos from 4 years ago?
  - serf 10y ago
    No, but i'd be worried about a government with power to control Microsoft using such information in a negative way. Basically this scenario comes to mind : a) A power change occurs within a government. This power change facilitates the changing of laws. b) A corporation with massive stores of information about individuals is within this government. c) New government doesn't like X people because they aren't Y people. New government coerces corporation within legal boundaries to fess up data on X people. d) New government does horrible things using list provided by and facilitated by corporation, through no direct fault of that corporation other than the happenstance of existing within a country with ever-changing laws and regulation.
    - simonh 10y ago
      But surely almost all of the above, while theoretically a possible future issue in the USA, is day-to-day reality in Russia and China already.
      - AimHere 10y ago
        Presumably the commenter is physically out of reach of the Russian and Chinese governments, and being the victim of regime change in the US is more likely than being invaded by the other two.
      - Arizhel 10y ago
        I don't live in Russia or China. I'm not worried about their governments not liking me.
realusername 10y ago
Windows does have better technical defenses but its attack surface is also much higher due to the thousands of deprecated but still supported older technologies for backward compatibility so I don't know, it's just different problems
belorn 10y ago
Security without a threat assessment is not very meaningful. If we are comparing a default linux desktop installation and a default windows installation, what would the test setup look like? Let say we had two such machines and gave them each a reachable ip address and let the first test just be them running unattended until unwanted software got in. In the second experiment we had the same machines go to random websites (top 1k), clicking randomly, using the default web browser. In the third, we let them click and run attachment from email spam. In the fourth and final experiment, we hire pen testers to target the machines explicitly. With the same conviction that xpaulbettsx wrote, I have no doubt that the first 3 tests would show Windows 10 going down first. The amount of threats that targets window user is just order of magnitude more than those targeting linux users. The fourth test might give different results, but users who want to defend against targeted attack are generally advised to use extra security tools to defend themselves.
- dijit 10y ago
  Just because Windows goes down first doesn't mean that Linux is more secure. It only means that it doesn't have a high enough market share to meaningfully exploit for a return on investment. We should take the metric of "given a motivated party, how difficult would it be to exploit this machine" I have no doubt people are already sufficiently motivated to exploit Windows. But maybe only the NSA gives a shit about Linux- do we leave them unchecked?
  - yAnonymous 10y ago
    You're ignoring that most Linux distros come with better defaults, i.e. no open ports. Reducing the attack surface is an important part in keeping the OS safe. Windows is remarkably bad in that regard.
    - mavhc 10y ago
      I had a look at Windows 10, by default, assuming you clicked Private for the network connection, there are no ports that are open for any program to use. There are 33 rules for the All profile, 18 for the private profile, some duplicates, each of which specifies what local program is allowed to receive data: 9 connect to Modern Windows apps, 1 for ICMPv4, 12 for ICMPv6, 1 for IGMP, 1 for ISATAP, 12 for TCP, Cast to device, IPHTTPS, Network Discovery, WiDi. 15 UDP: 2 for Cast to device, 2 for DHCP, 1 for Teredo, 1 for Delivery Optimization, 1 for mDNS, 7 for network discovery, 1 for miracast.
bigbugbag 10y ago
There is no unequivocally answer in the domain of security, secure refers to a threat model. When your threat model includes Microsoft or US surveillance then no Microsoft OS can provide you the security you're aiming for. Then again Desktop Linux is no OpenBSD or GRsecurity[1], A hardened linux experience usually doesn't come out of the box with Desktop Linux, but still there are options to explore[2] if you're so inclined. [1]: https://grsecurity.net/ https://grsecurity.net/ [2]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Security https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Security
MohammadLee 10y ago
Now imagine what a Linux distribution could achieve with the same budget...
- majewsky 10y ago
  Realistically, about the same. Many of the problems with Windows are rooted in being developed by a huge corporation with as much budget and manpower as it has.
  - MohammadLee 10y ago
    I get your point, but I meant that the open source community works because it can leverage on the work from each other. The achievements would be multiplied by the potential reach.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      No, because everyone is busy doing its own little thing.
- piyush_soni 10y ago
  Well, that can't be used as an excuse for not being secure by default.
- c3833174 10y ago
  Write another desktop enviroment from scratch? /sarcasm
  - josteink 10y ago
    > Write another desktop enviroment from scratch? I think you mean a new distro which is mostly, but not entirely yet another a Ubuntu-derivative, which comes packaged with its own DE and related software. And no, this new and perfect email-client will still not try to beat Outlook by managing both email and calendar at the same time. Go away! Seriously... What are Linux Mint and ElementaryOS even thinking?

AsyncAwait 10y ago

The thing with the Linux Desktop is that you can selectively enable SELinux, use PaX etc. and have security comparable to, if not better, than Windows 10, plus the fact that Linux is a much more varied attack surface still applies. Or you can do nothing, in which case you're probably less secure.

vocworker 10y ago
Sure, extremely motivated individuals or governments might do that. But I'd still rate a distribution by it's default security settings. Being secure by default is important if you are shipping to thousands of users.
- deckiedan 10y ago
  Fedora comes with SELinux enabled by default, and is working towards more interesting sandboxing stuff for the future too.
  - pawadu 10y ago
    Ubuntu comes with AppArmor enabled by default [1]. Unfortunately its service will terminate at startup due to missing profiles [2]. This shows how much QA goes into security related stuff in a distro of this size. --- [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AppArmor https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AppArmor [2] sudo apt install apparmor-profiles-extra
  - notalaser 10y ago
    Unfortunately, while SELinux itself is good, the tooling around it has to be the most atrocious, useless steaming pile of thrash in this niche. From setroubleshootd randomly deciding to eat up 100% of CPU time (and no one being able to explain exactly what it does) to the endless fun of figuring out what policycoreutils-python & friends do and how, actually doing something useful with it is somewhere between "painful" and "frustrating". If Microsoft had published something like this, they'd have been the laughing stock of the whole Linux community. I don't know anyone in my immediate circle of peers - not even people who use SELinux on servers or in products that they develop - who doesn't disable SELinux on their desktop. They're not idiots, either, nor re-booted Windows programmers that the IoT and DevOps craze has thrown into the Linux world, many of us have been using Linux since back when there was no E in RHEL.
    - deckiedan 10y ago
      Oh yes, SElinux tooling is an abomination. I feel like there should be a way to write a new set of simplified tooling on top of the kernel API. I've been running fedora at home an on my laptop for about a year now, and don't need to turn SElinux off. I only needed to add one custom role myself too, when trying to mount certain host directories as volumes in docker. Which is fair enough.
thatcat 10y ago
Where's a good place to get a general guide on every day desktop use of SELinux, PaX, etc?
- AsyncAwait 10y ago
  I'd look into Fedora and Arch Linux documentation/wiki.
- bigbugbag 10y ago
  Arch wiki is a goldmine: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Security https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Security
- unhammer 10y ago
  One of the slides also mentioned at what point each distro introduced ASLR (ie. it might be worth upgrading your Ubuntu to 16.10 if you're on an older one)
dogma1138 10y ago
Windows still has better protection of credentials, it can be better protected against DMA attacks and has quite a few other tricks under its belt.
sytelus 10y ago
This is exactly the problem. You can buy Windows 10 machine and if it becomes vulnerable it's Microsoft's fault and you would count on them to fix it immediately, push out the automatic update and go on with your life. If default Linux desktop is insecure then consumer is supposed to figure out what exactly is insecure, be expert in knowing the alternatives and how to replace everything. The question isn't whether Linux desktop can be made more secure but rather why isn't it secure by default?
- AsyncAwait 10y ago
  > you would count on them to fix it immediately, push out the automatic update and go on with your life. Not only do you get security updates for your distro with the vast majority of Linux distros, but you also get it for all your 3rd party software, using the same system mechanism. They may not push the updates automatically, (you can of course set it that way), but some of us still want to be in control of what gets installed on our machines That's not to say it can't be improved, but the situation isn't quite as bad as you are painting it, ie there are mainstream distros that come hardened by default and security patches are regularly backported. I'd argue that macOS is also technologically less secure than modern Windows, yet its users are in no more danger than Windows users are, (despite its theoretically security), because security depends on a lot of factors including the user culture, market share etc. i.e. Linux doesn't have a culture of downloading executables from random websites for one. I'd guess most distributions feel like they're providing an adequate level of protection for their users as of now, without introducing too much friction. Once that is no longer the case, it's easy to turn on a few more knobs, the software is already there.
  - sytelus 10y ago
    The 3rd party software is huge problem, actually. When you do apt-get or install using Ubuntu App Store it gives a false sense of security to novice user that things are safe. This is even more problematic because there are so many things one needs to download on default desktop to be on par with default Windows. The File Manager UI, for example, lacks too many features and user must investigate alternatives and either assume that everything is all right or deeply examine security vulnerabilities for each available option. Same goes for basic things like text editor or calculator and so on.

jmnicolas 10y ago

Maybe I'm not rational but I'm much more worried about Microsoft having access to my data than some random "Russian" hacker.

ch0wn 10y ago
Yes, that does not exactly strike me as a rational stance to take. Are you actually more worried about Microsoft blackmailing you about those photos from 4 years ago?
- serf 10y ago
  No, but i'd be worried about a government with power to control Microsoft using such information in a negative way. Basically this scenario comes to mind : a) A power change occurs within a government. This power change facilitates the changing of laws. b) A corporation with massive stores of information about individuals is within this government. c) New government doesn't like X people because they aren't Y people. New government coerces corporation within legal boundaries to fess up data on X people. d) New government does horrible things using list provided by and facilitated by corporation, through no direct fault of that corporation other than the happenstance of existing within a country with ever-changing laws and regulation.
  - simonh 10y ago
    But surely almost all of the above, while theoretically a possible future issue in the USA, is day-to-day reality in Russia and China already.
    - AimHere 10y ago
      Presumably the commenter is physically out of reach of the Russian and Chinese governments, and being the victim of regime change in the US is more likely than being invaded by the other two.
    - Arizhel 10y ago
      I don't live in Russia or China. I'm not worried about their governments not liking me.

realusername 10y ago

Windows does have better technical defenses but its attack surface is also much higher due to the thousands of deprecated but still supported older technologies for backward compatibility so I don't know, it's just different problems

belorn 10y ago

Security without a threat assessment is not very meaningful. If we are comparing a default linux desktop installation and a default windows installation, what would the test setup look like? Let say we had two such machines and gave them each a reachable ip address and let the first test just be them running unattended until unwanted software got in. In the second experiment we had the same machines go to random websites (top 1k), clicking randomly, using the default web browser. In the third, we let them click and run attachment from email spam. In the fourth and final experiment, we hire pen testers to target the machines explicitly. With the same conviction that xpaulbettsx wrote, I have no doubt that the first 3 tests would show Windows 10 going down first. The amount of threats that targets window user is just order of magnitude more than those targeting linux users. The fourth test might give different results, but users who want to defend against targeted attack are generally advised to use extra security tools to defend themselves.

dijit 10y ago
Just because Windows goes down first doesn't mean that Linux is more secure. It only means that it doesn't have a high enough market share to meaningfully exploit for a return on investment. We should take the metric of "given a motivated party, how difficult would it be to exploit this machine" I have no doubt people are already sufficiently motivated to exploit Windows. But maybe only the NSA gives a shit about Linux- do we leave them unchecked?
- yAnonymous 10y ago
  You're ignoring that most Linux distros come with better defaults, i.e. no open ports. Reducing the attack surface is an important part in keeping the OS safe. Windows is remarkably bad in that regard.
  - mavhc 10y ago
    I had a look at Windows 10, by default, assuming you clicked Private for the network connection, there are no ports that are open for any program to use. There are 33 rules for the All profile, 18 for the private profile, some duplicates, each of which specifies what local program is allowed to receive data: 9 connect to Modern Windows apps, 1 for ICMPv4, 12 for ICMPv6, 1 for IGMP, 1 for ISATAP, 12 for TCP, Cast to device, IPHTTPS, Network Discovery, WiDi. 15 UDP: 2 for Cast to device, 2 for DHCP, 1 for Teredo, 1 for Delivery Optimization, 1 for mDNS, 7 for network discovery, 1 for miracast.

bigbugbag 10y ago

There is no unequivocally answer in the domain of security, secure refers to a threat model. When your threat model includes Microsoft or US surveillance then no Microsoft OS can provide you the security you're aiming for. Then again Desktop Linux is no OpenBSD or GRsecurity[1], A hardened linux experience usually doesn't come out of the box with Desktop Linux, but still there are options to explore[2] if you're so inclined. [1]: https://grsecurity.net/ https://grsecurity.net/ [2]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Security https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Security

MohammadLee 10y ago

Now imagine what a Linux distribution could achieve with the same budget...

majewsky 10y ago
Realistically, about the same. Many of the problems with Windows are rooted in being developed by a huge corporation with as much budget and manpower as it has.
- MohammadLee 10y ago
  I get your point, but I meant that the open source community works because it can leverage on the work from each other. The achievements would be multiplied by the potential reach.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    No, because everyone is busy doing its own little thing.
piyush_soni 10y ago
Well, that can't be used as an excuse for not being secure by default.
c3833174 10y ago
Write another desktop enviroment from scratch? /sarcasm
- josteink 10y ago
  > Write another desktop enviroment from scratch? I think you mean a new distro which is mostly, but not entirely yet another a Ubuntu-derivative, which comes packaged with its own DE and related software. And no, this new and perfect email-client will still not try to beat Outlook by managing both email and calendar at the same time. Go away! Seriously... What are Linux Mint and ElementaryOS even thinking?