In my previous entry discussing why I’ve switched to Ubuntu, a pro-Windows user, Zotok, suggests that Microsoft [creates] the most secure Operating System[s] to date. While some will shake their head in disagreement, let’s look at the facts and find out OS is the most secure.
Zotok, an avid user of Windows who intends on eventually switching to Mac, cites his source of information to an Inquirer article, Symantec tells world that Windows is most secure OS, states that Symantec ranks Windows Vista first, Red Hat second, and Apple third. I find this report rather interesting because Symantec typically spits agenda along the lines of political scare-tactics with PC users to make sure they’ve purchased Norton. As the world turn, not even Norton can protect you any more. Further, he suggests that Microsoft has over 40,000 security engineers who make certain our favorite OS isn’t plagued with hacks.
Ubuntu, which is a community developed spawn of Debian, was only issued 213 Secunia advisories since 2005. A majority of those problems were minor to medium risk and all of them — yes, 100% — have been fixed by the vendor. Secunia is an independent computer security firm who assesses security risks in the IT industry.
Microsoft, which produces popular operating systems such as Windows XP and Vista, has 183 advisories for Windows XP and eight Windows Vista advisories dated from 2003. The average risk of the issues is “Medium/High,” so the severity of these issues and the impact is significantly higher than Ubuntu. However, there is still a current unpatched 16-25% of all advisories that currently exist.
For completeness of this entry, I decided to take a look at OpenBSD, a free Unix-based operating system. Since 2003, there have been a total of 81 advisories related to OpenBSD, and 100% of those have been successfully patched. Those advisories have been rated “Less to Moderate” in terms of criticalness of the issue. OpenBSD prides itself on security and it is clearly evident by those statistics.
So the lesson learned here today, is that is not how many vulnerabilities you have or how many security engineers you throw at them — but the overall impact on what the vulnerabilities have to users and how a vendor patches them. Microsoft which is historically the most insecure operating system, is always playing catch-up in terms of security and the facts are quite clear they still have more to go.
You could potentially have 100 vulnerabiltiies, but they won’t do one bit of damage of 100 are patched. By that rule, Linux and Unix are the obvious winners in this comparison.
What do you think about the suggestion that Windows is the Most Secure OS ever? Share you thoughts (and facts) in the comments!
[tags]Windows, Microsoft, Ubuntu, Linux, Security, Comparison, WTF, OpenBSD[/tags]
It is the most secure, just be careful with your animated cursor
sodix
April 16th, 2007