[maemo-users] Unix vs Windows security (was Re: Nokia device usage)

[From: Samer Azmy]

That is completely correct, there are major difference between *nix
operating system and Windows. not even on the technical leve but on the
quality of deisgn and approach

Regards

Samer Azmy

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 7:24 AM, Farrell J. McGovern <
farrell.mcgovern at gmail.com> wrote:

> ScottW wrote:
> > The Mac and *nix world needs to stop gloating about their clean record so
> far and keep an eye out for what is to come.  Dues to the learning curve of
> the OS, the users were more "enlightened" than the common computer user, but
> now these are  more wide spread and the common user will be using them.  The
> conspiracy theory people say that Antivirus companies are the ones making
> most of the viruses so that they have a product to sell, well there is a
> market out there just waiting to be tapped.  Norton AV for Mac is on the
> shelves even though there is only really 1 documented virus, and people buy
> it.
> >
> > The good ole saying: "The devil's greatest accomplishment was to convince
> everyone he does not exist"... well the Linux virus does not exist.
> >
> You are, of course, making the classic mistake of not understanding
> security on computer operating systems. Popularity has little to do with
> how vulnerable a system is.
>
> Fact: Windows XP is about 12 years old, Vista/Windows 7  maybe 5. Unix
> is 40+ years old.
>
> Face: Unix was designed for a mult-user, multi-processing environment,
> Windows was designed for a single user, single application  at a time
> environment, it has  had mult-user and multi-processing added on to it.
>
> Thus, most everything that can affect Windows today was probably seen
> and corrected on the architectural level decades ago in Unix. Even the
> simplest thing of making the user work in a non-privileged workspace is
> one of the basic things that Unix has done for decades, while it is a
> relatively new idea in Windows.  Thus, if you compromise the workspace,
> you don't compromise the system.
>
> Next, you have the fact that to make things really fast in Windows, you
> have graphics primitives in the kernel. This means that to compromise
> the entire system, all you need to do is compromise a graphics
> routine...and as almost everything is graphical in Windows...compromise
> the Browser, you can own the system...compromise the mail reader, you
> can own the system...compromise  an editor you can own the
> system...compromise an ERROR MESSAGE, and you can own the system.
>
> With Unix, very few things can access the kernel. If you compromise the
> Browser, you may compromise the user's workspace, but the system remains
> compromised.
>
> Generally, in Windows  it's a single  set to compromise the entire
> system...on Unix, it takes usually two more more steps, first you must
> compromise the userspace, then you must compromise the kernel.
>
> Ultimately, it takes a lot more work to compromise a Unix system than a
> Windows system. And that makes Unix and systems derived from Unix
> inherently more secure than Windows.
>
> ttyl
>     Farrell McGovern
>
> --
> Computers make very fast, very accurate mistaeks.
>
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