Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   But I still think it's fair to say that Linux is safer than Windows. Why?
> For the simple reason that Linux is not such a popular *target* for attacks
> and malware as Windows is. For example, basically 100% of email virii and
> http exploits have targetted Windows. I'd bet at least 99.99% of more
> traditional virii out there work only on Windows (and the older ones in
> DOS). Almost 100% of malware (spyware, adware, trojans, rootkits...) target
> Windows. While I have no idea how popular Windows as a target is among
> crackers, I bet it's well over half of them for the simple reason that
> Windows is way more widespread than Linux. (The only place where other
> systems might rival Windows as a target of crackers is in the web servers
> and other such servers, because there other systems are more popular than
> in desktop computers.)

I dare to disagree - I'd even postulate that Linux poses a *higher* security
risk than Windows.

Why?

Because Windows has its highest popularity on Desktops. Yeah, that makes great
targets, and a great number of them to set up bot networks.

But Linux systems, being the more popular among Web servers and such, are
typically a good deal closer to the infrastructure.

If you can infiltrate the very infrastrucuture of the web, this makes
infiltrating the end-user computers much easier.

So if some infiltrated Windows systems would be an inflammation, I'd liken some
infiltrated Linux systems to a sepsis.

Note that Web servers have already been infiltrated as meta-targets in order to
infiltrate end-user computers; if these attacks become more common and
sophisticated (and I expect they will), I'd care more about a secure Linux
kernel than I'd do about a secure Windows kernel.

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