4 ms·

It's not just popularity. "Admin by default" and "Easy-to-use over everything" is what doomed Windows. In *nix you always had to exploit bugs, in Windows you

by lelele 16y ago

It's not just popularity. "Admin by default" and "Easy-to-use over everything" is what doomed Windows. In *nix you always had to exploit bugs, in Windows you hadn't to. Nowadays Microsoft has built layer of abstraction over layer of abstraction to fix these previous decisions, but I think that such complexity has just made exploitable bugs more likely. Moreover, according to Secunia, in mainstream Linux distros every security bug gets fixed eventually. No such hope comforts Windows user.

tptacek 16y ago
See above. Why, besides vanity, does superuser matter to a virus? The idea that Windows is harder to update than Linux will come as a surprise to enterprises who have been getting autoupdated fixes for almost a decade now.
- Locke1689 16y ago
  Given that my hobby used to be exploiting various overflow exploits in Linux machines I agree with you, but do you think there are some things that Windows lagged on that hurt it? For example, there are a couple things like ASLR, NX/W^X bit, and stack canaries that I think they should have rolled out sooner. Do you think that made a difference or were SQL injection et al so easy by then that there was no point in bothering with overflow attacks if your goal was to make money and get information? Edit: Ah, and I forgot: Windows ACE's are pretty much as good as NFSv4 ACLs but Linux still doesn't support anything other than basic POSIX.1e ACLs out of the box.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    My perception is that at WinXPSP2, where Microsoft finally got serious about runtime protection, the state of the art in mainstream Unix deployments was not that much better. How resilient was Solaris to overflows in 2003?
    - Locke1689 16y ago
      I think you're right; most UNIX installations weren't that much better (Linux especially). I think Solaris may have been one of the best simply because they were running on SPARC procs and the SPARCs have had optional NX support since '98 or so. That still relied on the admin enabling it though (so basically no one had it enabled).
      - yuhong 16y ago
        AFRIK, NX support was added to 32-bit Linux and Windows XP SP2 around the same time. Unfortunately, it required PAE. XP's bootloader could autodetect and automatically load the PAE kernel, Linux's bootloaders couldn't and so most people still ran with the non-PAE kernel and were thus not taking advantage of NX. This was made worse by the fact that Intel's early Pentium M processors did not have PAE. Finally years later some Linux distributions added auto-detection to their installer.
        Locke1689 16y ago
        Actually, the first NX-related supported was available for Linux as PAGEEXEC on the PaX patch in 2000. You're right that that was nonstandard, though.
- lelele 16y ago
  While I agree on all OSes being exploitable and therefore on despicable "smug Unix weenie attitude", I still think that while *nix were just exploitable, Windows "welcomed" viruses (think about ActiveX, autorun, administrative privileges by default and such). There is a misunderstanding about updates. I was not saying that Windows is less updated, I was saying its security holes remain exploitable for a longer time, if they get fixed at all. Compare Windows XP (read section "Most Critical Unpatched"): http://secunia.com/advisories/product/22/?task=statistics_2010 http://secunia.com/advisories/product/22/?task=statistics_20... with Ubuntu Linux (again, read section "Most Critical Unpatched"): http://secunia.com/advisories/product/18611/?task=statistics_2010 http://secunia.com/advisories/product/18611/?task=statistics...

by lelele 16y ago

tptacek 16y ago

See above. Why, besides vanity, does superuser matter to a virus? The idea that Windows is harder to update than Linux will come as a surprise to enterprises who have been getting autoupdated fixes for almost a decade now.

Locke1689 16y ago
Given that my hobby used to be exploiting various overflow exploits in Linux machines I agree with you, but do you think there are some things that Windows lagged on that hurt it? For example, there are a couple things like ASLR, NX/W^X bit, and stack canaries that I think they should have rolled out sooner. Do you think that made a difference or were SQL injection et al so easy by then that there was no point in bothering with overflow attacks if your goal was to make money and get information? Edit: Ah, and I forgot: Windows ACE's are pretty much as good as NFSv4 ACLs but Linux still doesn't support anything other than basic POSIX.1e ACLs out of the box.
- tptacek 16y ago
  My perception is that at WinXPSP2, where Microsoft finally got serious about runtime protection, the state of the art in mainstream Unix deployments was not that much better. How resilient was Solaris to overflows in 2003?
  - Locke1689 16y ago
    I think you're right; most UNIX installations weren't that much better (Linux especially). I think Solaris may have been one of the best simply because they were running on SPARC procs and the SPARCs have had optional NX support since '98 or so. That still relied on the admin enabling it though (so basically no one had it enabled).
    - yuhong 16y ago
      AFRIK, NX support was added to 32-bit Linux and Windows XP SP2 around the same time. Unfortunately, it required PAE. XP's bootloader could autodetect and automatically load the PAE kernel, Linux's bootloaders couldn't and so most people still ran with the non-PAE kernel and were thus not taking advantage of NX. This was made worse by the fact that Intel's early Pentium M processors did not have PAE. Finally years later some Linux distributions added auto-detection to their installer.
      - Locke1689 16y ago
        Actually, the first NX-related supported was available for Linux as PAGEEXEC on the PaX patch in 2000. You're right that that was nonstandard, though.
lelele 16y ago
While I agree on all OSes being exploitable and therefore on despicable "smug Unix weenie attitude", I still think that while *nix were just exploitable, Windows "welcomed" viruses (think about ActiveX, autorun, administrative privileges by default and such). There is a misunderstanding about updates. I was not saying that Windows is less updated, I was saying its security holes remain exploitable for a longer time, if they get fixed at all. Compare Windows XP (read section "Most Critical Unpatched"): http://secunia.com/advisories/product/22/?task=statistics_2010 http://secunia.com/advisories/product/22/?task=statistics_20... with Ubuntu Linux (again, read section "Most Critical Unpatched"): http://secunia.com/advisories/product/18611/?task=statistics_2010 http://secunia.com/advisories/product/18611/?task=statistics...