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Topic: a new virus? |
Jack Stoner
From:
Kansas City, MO
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Posted 16 Jan 2001 4:06 am |
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Mike, this sounds like a commercial for your favorite operating system, not a "new virus".
Remember, our forum was down for over a week because a hacker got into it. The forum runs on Linux not NT.
It never ceases to amaze me, I've been in computers for over 40 years and started out in the 'big iron' and the industry leaders get slammed everyday. Back then it was IBM that was the bad guy, but everyone wanted to be IBM. Not is's Gatesland but everyone wants to be Microsoft or wants to say they are better than Microsoft. At one time steel guitar builders were all saying their guitars were better than Emmons, etc.
There may be "holes" in Microsoft products, but considering that the largest percentage of operating systems are Microsoft any problem will affect many more systems. My old Commodore 64's basic operating system had virus attacks, just fortunate that was a floppy disk operating system.
One OS no one mentions, that worked well, was OS/2. Just typical IBM that they didn't market it properly or we may all be using OS/2, or some version, instead of MS Windows. Same with IBM's PS/2 microchannel PC's. Where I worked, the PS/2's were the most reliable PC's we had. |
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Bobby Lee
From:
Cloverdale, California, USA
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Posted 16 Jan 2001 9:21 am
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Windows web servers are just as vulnerable to hack attacks as Linux web servers. The problem with the Forum server was that the default Red Hat Linux installation is not a very secure configuration. This is common knowledge among Linux people, but I had to learn it the hard way. Today the server is so secure that physical access is the only way to break into it.
The introduction of HTML-formatted email brought with it a wide variety of problems. HTML web pages have become a "shell" for scripting languages, applets and other kinds of programs. Keeping those things from damaging computers is not an easy task.
Most viruses are aimed at Windows because Windows rules the desktop. If you want a program to be widely distributed, you will target Windows. Email attachments that run on other operating systems are rare. It would be very easy to write an email attachment that would bring a Linux machine to its knees, but how would you sucker a Linux user into running it? Windows users click anything, just to see what will happen. Linux users typically won't run a program without researching it first.
Microsoft has a powerful macro capability written into their Office suite of programs. Using Visual Basic, the power user can create documents that have wonderful interactive capabilities. But along with that power comes the danger that someone can send a destructive program in an innocent looking document. A Word .doc file or an Excel .xls file can be as destructive as an executable program!
The design of Windows gave Microsoft developers the power to open Office documents right there in the email window. This is very cool - until you hit a destructive macro!
Linux email clients are pretty dumb compared to Outlook. They really don't know how to open anything but email. If you get a program in email, in any form, you have to make a very conscious effort to run it. Linux doesn't do much "automatically". There is an underlying philosophy that puts the user more in control of what is going on.
The security holes in Windows are the direct result of the philosophies that made Windows popular in the first place. Windows programs hide technical details from the user, who often doesn't know the difference between RAM and disk space. Office documents move freely between applications in the suite. There are common, well-established protocols for programs to communicate with each other behind the scenes.
The entire Windows architecture was in place before the Internet came into widespread use. All of this security stuff is a retrofit in Windows. I'm amazed that it works at all!
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 Bobby Lee - email: quasar@b0b.com - gigs - CDs
Sierra Session S-12 (E9), Speedy West D-10 (E9, D6),
Sierra 8 Laptop (D13), Fender Stringmaster D-8 (E13, A6) |
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Abe Stoklasa
From:
Nashville, TN
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Posted 16 Jan 2001 2:45 pm
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I just wish they named viruses something like "banjo" or "banjo solo" - Then nobody would open them!
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Abraham - MSA D-10 Pedal steel, standel amp, George L 10-string bar, 2 finger picks and 1 thumb pick.
My Website!
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