Worms versus Bots

Wed May 5 10:04:58 UTC 2004

On May 5, 2004, at 5:13 AM, Paul Jakma wrote:

>
> On Tue, 4 May 2004, chuck goolsbee wrote:
>
>> So maybe they WOULD be better with a "WebTV" model.
>>
>> Or a Macintosh.
>
> or a cheap Lidel or WalMart PC with Fedora 1 on it. Epiphany,
> Evolution and OpenOffice would keep vast majority of the basic
> computer users happy. Distributions like Fedora[0] are pretty much
> invulnerable to mass, automated worm infections[1].
>
> Automated worms would literally be a thing of the past if everyone
> switched to Fedora, RHEL or if the current dominant OS vendor adopted
> similar measures (apparently they will be). Judging by the amount of
> packets (couple per s) I get in to common vulnerability ports, there
> are a lot of worm infected machines out there:
>

We have all been through this before.  Linux out of the box is 
generally no more secure than Windows.  Linux can also be misconfigured 
and hacked.  The reason why you don't see as many linux virus/worms is 
because there aren't as many linux desktops.  Once Linux becomes a real 
player in the residential desktop OS market you'll see more and more 
worms/viruses running around because of it.  Now, I love Linux,  I have 
30 linux servers in production but it isn't the be all, end all to mass 
user security.