8 ms·

I'm not by any means a security guru. I understand some basics, but I think I'm missing a conceptual model somewhere. What is it about Windows that makes it so

by tomrod 2y ago

I'm not by any means a security guru. I understand some basics, but I think I'm missing a conceptual model somewhere. What is it about Windows that makes it so damn hackable?

mardifoufs 2y ago
What do you mean by hackable? I can't really see how other operating systems (say, Linux+any distro) are more secure than windows fundamentally?
pcdoodle 2y ago
IMO: The backward compatibility and lots of hands touching many moving parts.
- jsheard 2y ago
  Yep, the almost impenetrable security of the last few Xboxes shows that Microsoft does have it in them to architect a very secure platform, even against physical attacks, but they don't have the luxury of doing such a clean-slate design with Windows. They can almost never afford to break backwards compatibility and the Xbox approach of running each instance of legacy software in its own fully isolated virtual machine wouldn't really scale to a multitasking environment. For those not keeping score, the Xbox One only recently got a very limited jailbreak a decade after release, that only works on old firmware and only allows access to the innermost level of sandboxing, with the outer system sandbox, hypervisor, bootloader and optical drive handshake remaining unbroken to this day.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    The Xbox is 'secure', but against the user. There are a great many PC's out there that this model doesn't work for.
    - lock_it_down 2y ago
      It's secure against everyone, including the user. Windows could relax that part a bit if they wanted.
high_priest 2y ago
From my experience, it's that users are administrators by default. And it is super easy to convince them, to run anything with elevated permissions.
- ajross 2y ago
  The exploit under discussion is an attack on Windows Update, it doesn't AFAICT involved running privileged code as the user. Also the default Windows user has been non-Administrator for many years now. It's true you can fool users into elevating a shell or whatever, but that's true for pretty much all platforms.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    I'm happy to complain about Windows, but I will say their progress in converting their ecosystem to user-by-default with elevation prompt warnings has been impressive. Especially when they had to drag their developer community kicking and screaming to it. (in Windows Vista ~2006) Afaicr, there's also a neat bit where the lock screen and UAC prompt actually run under an entirely different, privileged and restricted session (than the normal one the user is interacting with and running programs in). Ref: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/application-security/application-control/user-account-control/how-it-works#securing-the-elevation-prompt https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/applicati... Apparently now termed the "secure desktop", it's transparently overlaid on top of the user desktop whenever you see a prompt.
    - dimensi0nal 2y ago
      It's not a transparent overlay, it's a completely separate desktop with a screenshot of the user desktop as its background. Really clever.
      - wongogue 2y ago
        And 50% of the times, the background fails to load and I have to double check. At first I thought it may be my specfic hardware combo but no.
high_priest 2y ago
[flagged]
Citizen_Lame 2y ago
It's not an error, it's by design. Only issue is these "vulnerabilities" were reserved for three letter agencies.
peppermint_gum 2y ago
What makes you think that it's "so damn hackable"? Also, this particular attack requires administrator privileges and bypasses a security boundary that doesn't even exist on e.g. Linux. Linux doesn't have driver signatures and root can easily install a new kernel module.
- privacymatters4 2y ago
  Just a quick look at 2024's CVEs, 0days for Windows is a security nightmare. Not singling out Windows specifically, but they have a lot. Browsers only just recently patched browsers being able to be served javascript that scans local devices on 10.* and 192.168.* etc hitting IoT devices with exploits and payloads, hell even hitting open listening sockets on localhost and 0.0.0.0 -- that's cross platform, how many years did that go under the radar? And now Windows is getting 'Recall' which will monitor and scan your every PC action to remember it for you using ML; I don't see that going back at all /s
  - gruez 2y ago
    >Browsers only just recently patched browsers being able to be served javascript that scans local devices on 10.* and 192.168.* etc hitting IoT devices with exploits and payloads, hell even hitting open listening sockets on localhost and 0.0.0.0 -- that's cross platform, how many years did that go under the radar? Ironically windows was not hit by that, but the "secure"(?) operating systems of mac and linux were.
- formerly_proven 2y ago
  > Linux doesn't have driver signatures and root can easily install a new kernel module. Linux supports signed kernel modules (and not just on paper, this is a widely deployed feature).
  - NekkoDroid 2y ago
    Yep, when booting with secure boot the kernel won't load any unsigned drivers.
beeboobaa3 2y ago
It allows it's users to actually use their computer as a computer instead of a glorified phone. MacOS nannies you left and right, preventing you from doing things you want to do because Apple says no. Windows historically didn't have such restrictions because it's a desktop operating system and not a gimped phone. They're slowly being added, but it takes time to overhaul an entire architecture while maintaining backwards compatibility (which MacOS also doesn't care about at all). Linux is of course far more "hackable" but there aren't as many computer illiterates using it.
- bubblesnort 2y ago
  I let the illiterates use it, but if they don't need root they don't get root. Debian stable with auto-unattend.
- survivedurcode 2y ago
  LOL you should be upvoted as your comment perfectly captures the blind arrogance of the software industry. When you call people computer illiterate, you are blind to the technocrat injustice imparted onto the general populace. > The obnoxious behavior and obscure interaction that software-based products exhibit is institutionalizing what I call "software apartheid":” > ― Alan Cooper, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity > “When programmers speak of "computer literacy," they are drawing red lines around ethnic groups, too, yet few have pointed this out.” > ― Alan Cooper, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity You too can see the light and rise above the elitism of computer literacy. You know, there are many smart people that are too prideful to put up with what computer people demand as computer literacy. They suffer in silence, you will not have their loyalty, and they will switch to competing software the moment they are able to.
  - beeboobaa3 2y ago
    What? I never said being computer illiterate is bad. Plenty of fine people are computer illiterate. And plenty of fine people are fantastic at things I'll never be good at. That's fine.
nwellinghoff 2y ago
Can’t believe people have not pointed out the biggest reason of them all. Its the most widely deployed desktop os across rich targets (corporations). A lot of time and investment goes into cracking it.
- Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    For a while apple had better security. Now it's more even, if you go by the 0day prices. There's not a lot of truly secure options unless you wanted to develop your own phone from the ground up.
    - beng-nl 2y ago
      How about iPhone in lockdown mode?
      - Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
        [flagged]
    - edm0nd 2y ago
      GrapheneOS has been doing a lot of great work in the secure mobile OS space.
      - Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
        Yeah its a chilling effect where anything useful enough to get popular gets assumed to be compromised. It seems unfalsifiable but it's also not unlikely.
  - cruffle_duffle 2y ago
    Wait until all those regulations requiring apple to allow different app stores come online and then we will see how secure iOS is. The day Joe Clicks-A-Lot can follow a link in some random pig butchering scam email then “legally” sideload and run whatever crazy weird goop happens to be at other end will really put things to the test. Because letting Susie Easy-To-Phish install anything and everything on her iPhone is going to make things very… interesting. That being said, Joe and Susie can already do that on android right?
n_plus_1_acc 2y ago
Tens of millions LOC in legacy C++ with many many compatability layers.
robhlt 2y ago
The prevalence of 3rd party kernel-level code is an important factor too. Lots of windows malware relies on a vulnerable 3rd party kernel driver at some point. By comparison, 3rd party kernel modules are rare and looked down upon on Linux and outright banned on macOS.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  To note, Windows isn't allowed to completely block third party kernel code. I don't have the reference at hand but it was part of their various anti-trust fallout, as it would give them an unfair advantage regarding to their own products. PS: an analysis of that situation during the Crowdstrike issue, with the relevant bits of the EU ruling: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366598838/Why-is-CrowdStrike-allowed-to-run-in-the-Windows-kernel https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366598838/Why-is-CrowdSt...
  - spockz 2y ago
    What might be enough is to have windows required to boot in a “install” mode before 3rd party kernel code can be added.
  - LinXitoW 2y ago
    IANAL, but this seems more like a classic temper tantrum thrown by a big corp over reasonable legislation. They could offer an API for security relevant scanning for EVERYONE, including their own antivirus software. But that would make the world better, and make the legislation look justified. It's the exact same thing with the Google Maps integration on Google Search. They could offer an API and a selection of map provider to the user. That would make Google Search better for the user AND enable competition. Instead they threw a temper tantrum and disabled map integration entirely, so they can blame the EU.
    - dwattttt 2y ago
      > They could offer an API for security relevant scanning for EVERYONE, including their own antivirus software I mean, they have _lots_ of APIs. You'll just never have as much control from usermode as you will from the kernel; what API would make you say "yep, don't need a driver now, can do security fine from user"?
throwaway48476 2y ago
The problem is that windows was developed before security was important. No one has made the necessary investments to create a truly secure computing platform. Ideally a secure computing platform would have reproducible builds built on public inspectable infrastructure like fdroid. It would also virtualize all untrusted applications in a sandbox and implement the least privilege model. Today we have the worst security. There is unknown, probably untested and insecure code running at every ring, from the CPU's ME, to the UEFI components, to the OS 3rd party drivers. SeL4 has a fully verified kernel but it doesn't do virtualization yet.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  The same can be told of UNIX, lets not forget the first worm was targeted at UNIX systems, and the root cause keeps being a regular CVE in C and C++ projects.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    Of course. A new secure computing platform would have to be built from scratch and from secure primitives that would not be backwards compatible with anything outside of virtualized emulation.
  - ddtaylor 2y ago
    When that worm was created Windows did not exist.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      And yet the root cause for it still hasn't been fixed in UNIX systems.
      - anthk 2y ago
        If you consider plan9/9front Unix 2.0, they did with namespaces.
Hilift 2y ago
The driver signing blacklist file DriverSiPolicy.p7b had not been updated for years. It took a CERT analyst (Will Dormann) to ask why in 2022. It's being updated regularly now, but WTF. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-fixes-windows-vulnerable-driver-blocklist-sync-issue/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-fi...
marcosdumay 2y ago
In principle, there's something about Windows object system being much a much more complex abstraction than Unix's streams. But the reality is not that. Windows is just surrounded by layers and layers of bad code with atrocious interfaces. Any architectural weakness doesn't even register.
gosub100 2y ago
- The EULA absolves Microsoft of any liability whatsoever. So they share in none of the risk. Imagine if physical items were like this: hit one bump and your pickup is destroyed. Scissors fall apart irreparably once they contact any material that's not paper. - MS putting backwards compatibility (mainly done for business customers) above everything, at all costs. The peanut butter factory in Indiana that's been running WFW since '89 must never be inconvenienced, even if it means tens of thousands of people have to take their brand new computers to the shop (at their own cost!) multiple times per year because of spyware infections. - Not valuing innovation. A culture where engineers are just a necessity to keep the money-making machine running. All the excitement was drained about the end of the '90s. They made a couple nominal hits with the Surface, Xbox, and Azure, not going to discount that.
ruthmarx 2y ago
Windows isn't especially hackable, they've been taking security seriously and doing a decent job for at least a decade, and honestly these days it's a lot better than the alternatives. Really the issue is because it's used on something like 95% of desktops. More eyes on windows means more bugs being found.
- a_vanderbilt 2y ago
  A lot better than the alternatives in terms of security? Even if we only consider alternatives in wide use like ChromeOS or macOS, I wouldn't in any serious way consider Windows to be more secure. More compatible yes, but not more secure.
  - ruthmarx 2y ago
    It has a significantly better security architecture than macOS, and Linux is a mess as far as desktop use goes. Can't speak to ChromeOS but I understand that's pretty locked down, and honestly that could possibly take the lead, although I was only really thinking of Linux, Mac and Windows.
    - a_vanderbilt 2y ago
      Linux definitely exists in a weird limbo. While it can be secured to an extreme degree, most people aren't using Linux that way on personal devices. Especially on a desktop. ChromeOS is quite secure since it is so locked down, but imagine getting the average Linux user to like it. Curious as to your rationale for the security architecture of macOS being inferior. Is it because of the way the security features are implemented that you lean that way? macOS has its warts, but it also has plenty of security features I'm not aware of Windows/NT having.
      - ruthmarx 2y ago
        > Linux definitely exists in a weird limbo. While it can be secured to an extreme degree, most people aren't using Linux that way on personal devices.v For sure. I think my minimal Alpine desktop with well defined SELinux policies is better than Windows or macOS, but most people are using Ubuntu or similar which doesn't have anything like that (AppArmor helps somewhat), and doesn't really have any of the security innovations macOS or Windows have. > Curious as to your rationale for the security architecture of macOS being inferior. Is it because of the way the security features are implemented that you lean that way? macOS has its warts, but it also has plenty of security features I'm not aware of Windows/NT having. I will say I'm a little out of date on new features macOS may have introduced, but back in the day I remember them not even having a proper ASLR implementation, no form of MAC, nothing even close to things like Windows Secure Desktop[1] etc. Microsoft had a well deserved horrible reputation, but they really put in a lot of effort to turn things around, and I think they succeeded but without getting due credit from most techies. Whereas Apple it seemed like were coasting on the fact that macs were not nearly as targeted as a platform. [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/uac/user-account-control-prompts-on-the-secure-desktop https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/uac/user-acc...

by tomrod 2y ago

I'm not by any means a security guru. I understand some basics, but I think I'm missing a conceptual model somewhere. What is it about Windows that makes it so damn hackable?

mardifoufs 2y ago

What do you mean by hackable? I can't really see how other operating systems (say, Linux+any distro) are more secure than windows fundamentally?

pcdoodle 2y ago

IMO: The backward compatibility and lots of hands touching many moving parts.

jsheard 2y ago
Yep, the almost impenetrable security of the last few Xboxes shows that Microsoft does have it in them to architect a very secure platform, even against physical attacks, but they don't have the luxury of doing such a clean-slate design with Windows. They can almost never afford to break backwards compatibility and the Xbox approach of running each instance of legacy software in its own fully isolated virtual machine wouldn't really scale to a multitasking environment. For those not keeping score, the Xbox One only recently got a very limited jailbreak a decade after release, that only works on old firmware and only allows access to the innermost level of sandboxing, with the outer system sandbox, hypervisor, bootloader and optical drive handshake remaining unbroken to this day.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  The Xbox is 'secure', but against the user. There are a great many PC's out there that this model doesn't work for.
  - lock_it_down 2y ago
    It's secure against everyone, including the user. Windows could relax that part a bit if they wanted.

high_priest 2y ago

From my experience, it's that users are administrators by default. And it is super easy to convince them, to run anything with elevated permissions.

ajross 2y ago
The exploit under discussion is an attack on Windows Update, it doesn't AFAICT involved running privileged code as the user. Also the default Windows user has been non-Administrator for many years now. It's true you can fool users into elevating a shell or whatever, but that's true for pretty much all platforms.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  I'm happy to complain about Windows, but I will say their progress in converting their ecosystem to user-by-default with elevation prompt warnings has been impressive. Especially when they had to drag their developer community kicking and screaming to it. (in Windows Vista ~2006) Afaicr, there's also a neat bit where the lock screen and UAC prompt actually run under an entirely different, privileged and restricted session (than the normal one the user is interacting with and running programs in). Ref: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/application-security/application-control/user-account-control/how-it-works#securing-the-elevation-prompt https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/applicati... Apparently now termed the "secure desktop", it's transparently overlaid on top of the user desktop whenever you see a prompt.
  - dimensi0nal 2y ago
    It's not a transparent overlay, it's a completely separate desktop with a screenshot of the user desktop as its background. Really clever.
    - wongogue 2y ago
      And 50% of the times, the background fails to load and I have to double check. At first I thought it may be my specfic hardware combo but no.

high_priest 2y ago

[flagged]

Citizen_Lame 2y ago

It's not an error, it's by design. Only issue is these "vulnerabilities" were reserved for three letter agencies.

peppermint_gum 2y ago

What makes you think that it's "so damn hackable"? Also, this particular attack requires administrator privileges and bypasses a security boundary that doesn't even exist on e.g. Linux. Linux doesn't have driver signatures and root can easily install a new kernel module.

privacymatters4 2y ago
Just a quick look at 2024's CVEs, 0days for Windows is a security nightmare. Not singling out Windows specifically, but they have a lot. Browsers only just recently patched browsers being able to be served javascript that scans local devices on 10.* and 192.168.* etc hitting IoT devices with exploits and payloads, hell even hitting open listening sockets on localhost and 0.0.0.0 -- that's cross platform, how many years did that go under the radar? And now Windows is getting 'Recall' which will monitor and scan your every PC action to remember it for you using ML; I don't see that going back at all /s
- gruez 2y ago
  >Browsers only just recently patched browsers being able to be served javascript that scans local devices on 10.* and 192.168.* etc hitting IoT devices with exploits and payloads, hell even hitting open listening sockets on localhost and 0.0.0.0 -- that's cross platform, how many years did that go under the radar? Ironically windows was not hit by that, but the "secure"(?) operating systems of mac and linux were.
formerly_proven 2y ago
> Linux doesn't have driver signatures and root can easily install a new kernel module. Linux supports signed kernel modules (and not just on paper, this is a widely deployed feature).
- NekkoDroid 2y ago
  Yep, when booting with secure boot the kernel won't load any unsigned drivers.

beeboobaa3 2y ago

It allows it's users to actually use their computer as a computer instead of a glorified phone. MacOS nannies you left and right, preventing you from doing things you want to do because Apple says no. Windows historically didn't have such restrictions because it's a desktop operating system and not a gimped phone. They're slowly being added, but it takes time to overhaul an entire architecture while maintaining backwards compatibility (which MacOS also doesn't care about at all). Linux is of course far more "hackable" but there aren't as many computer illiterates using it.

bubblesnort 2y ago
I let the illiterates use it, but if they don't need root they don't get root. Debian stable with auto-unattend.
survivedurcode 2y ago
LOL you should be upvoted as your comment perfectly captures the blind arrogance of the software industry. When you call people computer illiterate, you are blind to the technocrat injustice imparted onto the general populace. > The obnoxious behavior and obscure interaction that software-based products exhibit is institutionalizing what I call "software apartheid":” > ― Alan Cooper, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity > “When programmers speak of "computer literacy," they are drawing red lines around ethnic groups, too, yet few have pointed this out.” > ― Alan Cooper, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity You too can see the light and rise above the elitism of computer literacy. You know, there are many smart people that are too prideful to put up with what computer people demand as computer literacy. They suffer in silence, you will not have their loyalty, and they will switch to competing software the moment they are able to.
- beeboobaa3 2y ago
  What? I never said being computer illiterate is bad. Plenty of fine people are computer illiterate. And plenty of fine people are fantastic at things I'll never be good at. That's fine.

nwellinghoff 2y ago

Can’t believe people have not pointed out the biggest reason of them all. Its the most widely deployed desktop os across rich targets (corporations). A lot of time and investment goes into cracking it.

Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
[flagged]
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  For a while apple had better security. Now it's more even, if you go by the 0day prices. There's not a lot of truly secure options unless you wanted to develop your own phone from the ground up.
  - beng-nl 2y ago
    How about iPhone in lockdown mode?
    - Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - edm0nd 2y ago
    GrapheneOS has been doing a lot of great work in the secure mobile OS space.
    - Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
      Yeah its a chilling effect where anything useful enough to get popular gets assumed to be compromised. It seems unfalsifiable but it's also not unlikely.
- cruffle_duffle 2y ago
  Wait until all those regulations requiring apple to allow different app stores come online and then we will see how secure iOS is. The day Joe Clicks-A-Lot can follow a link in some random pig butchering scam email then “legally” sideload and run whatever crazy weird goop happens to be at other end will really put things to the test. Because letting Susie Easy-To-Phish install anything and everything on her iPhone is going to make things very… interesting. That being said, Joe and Susie can already do that on android right?

n_plus_1_acc 2y ago

Tens of millions LOC in legacy C++ with many many compatability layers.

robhlt 2y ago

The prevalence of 3rd party kernel-level code is an important factor too. Lots of windows malware relies on a vulnerable 3rd party kernel driver at some point. By comparison, 3rd party kernel modules are rare and looked down upon on Linux and outright banned on macOS.

makeitdouble 2y ago
To note, Windows isn't allowed to completely block third party kernel code. I don't have the reference at hand but it was part of their various anti-trust fallout, as it would give them an unfair advantage regarding to their own products. PS: an analysis of that situation during the Crowdstrike issue, with the relevant bits of the EU ruling: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366598838/Why-is-CrowdStrike-allowed-to-run-in-the-Windows-kernel https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366598838/Why-is-CrowdSt...
- spockz 2y ago
  What might be enough is to have windows required to boot in a “install” mode before 3rd party kernel code can be added.
- LinXitoW 2y ago
  IANAL, but this seems more like a classic temper tantrum thrown by a big corp over reasonable legislation. They could offer an API for security relevant scanning for EVERYONE, including their own antivirus software. But that would make the world better, and make the legislation look justified. It's the exact same thing with the Google Maps integration on Google Search. They could offer an API and a selection of map provider to the user. That would make Google Search better for the user AND enable competition. Instead they threw a temper tantrum and disabled map integration entirely, so they can blame the EU.
  - dwattttt 2y ago
    > They could offer an API for security relevant scanning for EVERYONE, including their own antivirus software I mean, they have _lots_ of APIs. You'll just never have as much control from usermode as you will from the kernel; what API would make you say "yep, don't need a driver now, can do security fine from user"?

throwaway48476 2y ago

The problem is that windows was developed before security was important. No one has made the necessary investments to create a truly secure computing platform. Ideally a secure computing platform would have reproducible builds built on public inspectable infrastructure like fdroid. It would also virtualize all untrusted applications in a sandbox and implement the least privilege model. Today we have the worst security. There is unknown, probably untested and insecure code running at every ring, from the CPU's ME, to the UEFI components, to the OS 3rd party drivers. SeL4 has a fully verified kernel but it doesn't do virtualization yet.

pjmlp 2y ago
The same can be told of UNIX, lets not forget the first worm was targeted at UNIX systems, and the root cause keeps being a regular CVE in C and C++ projects.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  Of course. A new secure computing platform would have to be built from scratch and from secure primitives that would not be backwards compatible with anything outside of virtualized emulation.
- ddtaylor 2y ago
  When that worm was created Windows did not exist.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    And yet the root cause for it still hasn't been fixed in UNIX systems.
    - anthk 2y ago
      If you consider plan9/9front Unix 2.0, they did with namespaces.

Hilift 2y ago

The driver signing blacklist file DriverSiPolicy.p7b had not been updated for years. It took a CERT analyst (Will Dormann) to ask why in 2022. It's being updated regularly now, but WTF. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-fixes-windows-vulnerable-driver-blocklist-sync-issue/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-fi...

marcosdumay 2y ago

In principle, there's something about Windows object system being much a much more complex abstraction than Unix's streams. But the reality is not that. Windows is just surrounded by layers and layers of bad code with atrocious interfaces. Any architectural weakness doesn't even register.

gosub100 2y ago

- The EULA absolves Microsoft of any liability whatsoever. So they share in none of the risk. Imagine if physical items were like this: hit one bump and your pickup is destroyed. Scissors fall apart irreparably once they contact any material that's not paper. - MS putting backwards compatibility (mainly done for business customers) above everything, at all costs. The peanut butter factory in Indiana that's been running WFW since '89 must never be inconvenienced, even if it means tens of thousands of people have to take their brand new computers to the shop (at their own cost!) multiple times per year because of spyware infections. - Not valuing innovation. A culture where engineers are just a necessity to keep the money-making machine running. All the excitement was drained about the end of the '90s. They made a couple nominal hits with the Surface, Xbox, and Azure, not going to discount that.

ruthmarx 2y ago

Windows isn't especially hackable, they've been taking security seriously and doing a decent job for at least a decade, and honestly these days it's a lot better than the alternatives. Really the issue is because it's used on something like 95% of desktops. More eyes on windows means more bugs being found.

a_vanderbilt 2y ago
A lot better than the alternatives in terms of security? Even if we only consider alternatives in wide use like ChromeOS or macOS, I wouldn't in any serious way consider Windows to be more secure. More compatible yes, but not more secure.
- ruthmarx 2y ago
  It has a significantly better security architecture than macOS, and Linux is a mess as far as desktop use goes. Can't speak to ChromeOS but I understand that's pretty locked down, and honestly that could possibly take the lead, although I was only really thinking of Linux, Mac and Windows.
  - a_vanderbilt 2y ago
    Linux definitely exists in a weird limbo. While it can be secured to an extreme degree, most people aren't using Linux that way on personal devices. Especially on a desktop. ChromeOS is quite secure since it is so locked down, but imagine getting the average Linux user to like it. Curious as to your rationale for the security architecture of macOS being inferior. Is it because of the way the security features are implemented that you lean that way? macOS has its warts, but it also has plenty of security features I'm not aware of Windows/NT having.
    - ruthmarx 2y ago
      > Linux definitely exists in a weird limbo. While it can be secured to an extreme degree, most people aren't using Linux that way on personal devices.v For sure. I think my minimal Alpine desktop with well defined SELinux policies is better than Windows or macOS, but most people are using Ubuntu or similar which doesn't have anything like that (AppArmor helps somewhat), and doesn't really have any of the security innovations macOS or Windows have. > Curious as to your rationale for the security architecture of macOS being inferior. Is it because of the way the security features are implemented that you lean that way? macOS has its warts, but it also has plenty of security features I'm not aware of Windows/NT having. I will say I'm a little out of date on new features macOS may have introduced, but back in the day I remember them not even having a proper ASLR implementation, no form of MAC, nothing even close to things like Windows Secure Desktop[1] etc. Microsoft had a well deserved horrible reputation, but they really put in a lot of effort to turn things around, and I think they succeeded but without getting due credit from most techies. Whereas Apple it seemed like were coasting on the fact that macs were not nearly as targeted as a platform. [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/uac/user-account-control-prompts-on-the-secure-desktop https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/uac/user-acc...