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Old 01-22-2005, 02:18 PM   #1
shamrock_uk
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http://www.mi2g.com/cgi/mi2g/framese...ess/021104.php

An interesting article:

Quote:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment

London, UK - 2 November 2004, 02:30 GMT - The most comprehensive study ever undertaken by the mi2g Intelligence Unit over 12 months reveals that the world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin. This is good news for Apple Computers(AAPL) whose shares have outperformed the benchmark NASDAQ, S&P and Dow indices as well as Microsoft (MSFT) by over 100% in the last six months on the back of revived sales and profits. The last twelve months have witnessed the deadliest annual period in terms of malware - virus, worm and trojan - proliferation targeting Windows based machines in which over 200 countries and tens of millions of computers worldwide have been infected month-in month-out.

Sample size and breakdown

The latest mi2g Intelligence Unit study analyses 235,907 successful digital breaches against permanently connected - 24/7 online - computers across the globe. The nearly quarter million digital breaches carried out by hackers span twelve months from November 2003 to October 2004. Global proliferation data from over 459 malware species since the start of 2004 has also been analysed.

The sample of breached computing environments is holistic and possesses some anti-virus protection and basic security at the very least. It consists of micro entities - homes and small offices without a separate firewall unit; small entities - organisations with a turnover of below $7 million with a separate firewall unit; medium entities - organisations with a turnover between $7 million and $40 million with a separate firewall unit and basic intrusion detection; and large entities - organisations with a turnover in excess of $40 million with firewall layers, intrusion detection systems and dedicated computer security staff.

In 2004, 32.7% of all digital breaches were carried out against micro entities including home-based individuals with 24/7 online computers; 58.8% of all digital breaches were against small entities; 6.1% of all digital breaches were against medium size entities; and only 2.5% of all digital breaches were against large entities - businesses, government agencies and non-government organisations inclusive.

Most breached computing environment - Overall

The study also reveals that Linux has become the most breached 24/7 online computing environment in terms of manual hacker attacks overall and accounts for 65.64% of all breaches recorded, with 154,846 successfully compromised Linux 24/7 online computers of all flavours. The number of successful manual hacker attacks against Microsoft Windows based online computers has remained steady and accounts for 25.19% of all breaches recorded, with 59,419 successfully compromised Windows targets of all versions. In sharp contrast, the number of successful hacker attacks against Mac OS X or BSD based online computers has demonstrated a declining trend and accounts for just 4.82% of all breaches recorded, with 11,370 successfully compromised BSD targets of all flavours including Apple.

Most breached computing environment - Governments

In a remarkable switch in top rank within the Government computing environment over the last twelve months, the most breached Operating System for online systems has now become Windows (57.74%) followed by Linux (31.76%) and then BSD and Mac OS X together (1.74%). This is in stark contrast to the situation six months ago, when Microsoft Windows was significantly lower in terms of recorded government server breaches in comparison to Linux. The number of recorded breaches against government online computers running BSD or Mac OS X worldwide remains very low.

Malware proliferation

The recent global malware epidemics have primarily targeted the Windows computing environment and have not caused any significant economic damage to environments running Open Source including Linux, BSD and Mac OS X. When taking the economic damage from malware into account over the last twelve months, including the impact of MyDoom, NetSky, SoBig, Klez and Sasser, Windows has become the most breached computing environment in the world accounting for most of the productivity losses associated with malware - virus, worm and trojan - proliferation. This is directly the result of very insignificant quantities of highly damaging mass-spreading malware being written for other computing environments like Linux, BSD and Mac OS X.

Global economic damage estimate

In 2004, the overall economic damage from hacker perpetrated overt, covert and DDoS digital attacks worldwide is estimated to have been between $103bn and $126bn by the mi2g Intelligence Unit. These figures exclude malware attacks through viruses, worms and trojans which account for an additional estimated damage of between $166bn and $202bn worldwide.

Economic damage is calculated by the mi2g Intelligence Unit on the basis of helpdesk support costs, overtime payments, contingency outsourcing, loss of business, bandwidth clogging, productivity erosion, management time reallocation, cost of recovery and software upgrades. When available, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) violations as well as customer and supplier liability costs have also been included in the estimates.

Conclusion

"More and more smart individuals, government agencies and corporations are shifting towards Apple and BSD environments in 2004," according to DK Matai, Executive Chairman, mi2g. "For how long can the truth remain hidden that the great emperors of the software industry are wearing no clothes fit for the fluid environment in which computing takes place, where new threats manifest every hour of every day. There is an accelerating paradigm shift visible in 2004 and busy professionals have spotted the benefits of Apple and BSD because they don't have the time to cope with umpteen flavours of Linux or to wait for Microsoft's Longhorn when Windows XP has proved to be a stumbling block in some well chronicled instances."

Important note

For the record, neither mi2g Ltd nor the mi2g Intelligence Unit have a business relationship with Apple Computers and we do not own any shares in that corporation. Previously, the mi2g data for one month was considered to be too small a sample and not representative of the global environment within which different types of entities - micro, small, medium and large - exist. We have addressed those concerns in the new study. The critics were against the previous study which also came out in favour of Apple and BSD, because the entrenched supporters of Linux and Windows felt that mi2g was guilty of 'computing blasphemy'. In subsequent months, mi2g's reputation was damaged on search engines and bulletin boards. We would urge caution when reading negative commentary against mi2g, which may have been clandestinely funded, aided or abetted by a vendor or a special interest group.
[ 01-22-2005, 02:19 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]
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Old 01-22-2005, 06:46 PM   #2
Vaskez
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I've only just scanned the article, but does it actually look at the percentage of systems that use Linux? Linux may have by far the most breaches running on servers (connected to web 24/7) but that's because most servers in the world use Linux. Surely if you look at the number of breaches as a fraction of the number of servers running Linux, it's not the highest?
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Old 01-23-2005, 10:03 PM   #3
Sir Krustin
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It's possible that's the case. Linux servers are by far the most common on the internet, and servers account for the majority of 24/7 machines out there.

One thing that should be noted is that "manual attacks" are usually things like DDoS attacks, which are by definition no reflection on the stability or overall strength on the host OS.
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Old 01-24-2005, 10:34 AM   #4
philip
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If manual attacks are dos attacks this says actually nothing, except that the creators of the report are idiots who can't explain results properly. But you can find articles for or against anything you want and no OS is 100% secure. This kind of stuff is pretty useless.

Further in linux it depends on which programs you've got running so it's not only linux in itself that could be the problem. In windows things are so built in you won't be able to do much. These tests would be a lot more accurate if you look at which programs were exploited or even which kind of attack was done.
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Old 01-24-2005, 12:08 PM   #5
Vaskez
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Yeah it also doesn't define "breach" very clearly.
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Old 01-24-2005, 01:38 PM   #6
SilentThief
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Yeah, these reports are pretty much bunk.

If windows is run on the majority, Sure, then there will be more malware made for that OS.

IMHO we must not put blind faith in windows. I have seen the wretched "blue screen of death" waaaaayyyy too many times to actually LIKE windows, I just tolerate it. (But since I know nothing of linux or any other OS, I dunno if they are better or not. To me the grass looks much greener elsewhere.)

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Old 01-24-2005, 01:50 PM   #7
philip
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Quote:
Originally posted by SilentThief:

If windows is run on the majority, Sure, then there will be more malware made for that OS.
That's not always the case. Compare Apache web server and you'll see that it's used a lot more and has a lot less bug/flaws etc. There also was some article around which proved that it was wrong.

And the grass isn't always greener it depends on what you want. I'm still using both though I prefer and use linux like 95% of the time.
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Old 01-24-2005, 02:03 PM   #8
Vaskez
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Well Linux is also inherently safer, if you follow standard advice and use it with a user (not root) account for daily business. This way, any malware, spyware, viruses etc. that ARE downloaded, have no access to the important system files etc.

As for being breached, as stated, that's usually more to do with the applications that run on it, not the Linux kernel.
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Old 01-24-2005, 06:50 PM   #9
LennonCook
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Quote:
The most comprehensive study ever undertaken by the mi2g Intelligence Unit over 12 months
So... where is their report?
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Old 01-24-2005, 09:12 PM   #10
Seraph
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Quote:
Originally posted by LennonCook:
quote:
The most comprehensive study ever undertaken by the mi2g Intelligence Unit over 12 months
So... where is their report? [/QUOTE]If you scroll down to the bottom of the link that was provided you'll note "Full details of the October 2004 report are available as of 1st November 2004 and can be ordered from here." and if you click there you'll note that it costs Ł881.25.
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