Is there anything which stops Microsoft simply imitating Linux security features?
Thursday, August 19th, 2010 at
07:36
Why doesn’t Microsoft just copy the kind of features which Linux has to prevent viruses?
In that case, isn’t the answer to have a large number of different O/S’s rather than just a couple of big ones? And then to compile each application on each O/S?
Tagged with: Linux • Microsoft
Filed under: Microsoft
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It’s almost becoming a moot point. So many viruses and other malware these days attacks not the O/S, but the weakest link in the entire eco-system…the end-user.
The vulnerabilities that are being exploited today are increasingly found in the user himself.
Unlike 10 or even 5 years ago, the typical user that puts a computer on the public internet is functionally computer illiterate, knowing little more than how to click a bookmarked link to navigate to Facebook or YouTube. People of this ilk are the "low-hanging fruit", easy pickin’s for those that use social-engineering techniques to distribute malware. And there are plenty of them on both the distribution and consumer side.
Tricking the user into allowing a download and installation of malware is becoming a trivial task.
If Ubuntu were to become the dominant O/S tommorrow, within a week Linux versions of the old Windows social-engineering techniques of…"You must install this ‘codec’ to view the free porn clip", "Your computer is INFECTED, click here to download and install "anti-virus" software, you need this Java ‘update’ to play this free game" would be all over the internet
Sure, using Linux, the user will need to take a couple more steps to install the malicious program, but the user could still be easily tricked into willingly downloading and installing malware. The lure of "Miley Cyrus, free topless pics and all you need to do is "upgrade" your Flash Player" is just too great.
Don’t you know that if Microsoft Windows is like Linux then Linux will also be susceptible to virus? The reason Linux (and OS X) rarely gets infected is because not too many virus programmers want to waste their time making virus on an OS that has a very small market share.
That’s not the problem at all. The reason Linux has exceptionally few viruses is because it’s what’s called "open-source". Open source software is free, available to the public, and you are allowed to distribute it and edit it. Anyone can make their own copy, or "distribution", of Linux by using the basic Linux coding. Anyone can view the coding (the "kernel", the boot up files and basic framing), play with it, test it, and add on to it. Because of this, literally MILLIONS of computer programmers and engineers around the world have looked at Linux and submitted their editions of it to improve it. As a result, because so many eyes have looked at Linux and worked on improving it and making it a better operating system, there are virtually no holes in the operating system which would allow a hacker to create a virus for it. In short, you would think that because anyone can see the coding of it, anyone can make a virus for it, but in reality, it’s been skimmed through so many times and so thoroughly through the years that it’s literally bulletproof now.
Microsoft is a corporation. It is 100% ILLEGAL to even view the source files of the operating system, nonetheless edit them or make them public. This is why there are so many viruses – Microsoft has only a handful of programmers that work on it, and so only a handful of brains and eyes to skim through it and try to fix the holes. However, there are millions of blackhat (bad) hackers that create new viruses for it each day, simply because they can, and because Microsoft can’t fix it in time to keep up.
Therefor, in a hacker’s mind, why would you waste so much time trying to create a virus for Linux when it won’t make that much of an impact anyway, when you can just easily create a Microsoft virus and impact millions?
The good news is, Linux is just recently coming out of the nerd closet and into the general public. Thank God Dell was the first company to make factory-set Ubuntu Linux-disto laptops and netbooks. Hopefully the public will learn from this and start switching to open-source…besides, if you buy a Linux laptop from Dell and your computer crashes, it’s completely free to repair the operating system rather than spending hundreds of dollars for a new CD.
Linux is a Unix-like operating system like Mac OS X. Windows is not Unix based so it is incompatible with many Linux features. Also, Linux is under the GPL so if you use any of it’s source code in a program that program must also be open-source which would kill microsoft’s evil empire. Also, since Linux is open-source it has alot more people looking at the code which means bugs and vulnerabilities are reported and fixed much sooner. Plus, there are hundreds of Linux distros and only one windows7, so it is much easier to infect one windows machine from another. Linux also uses a repository for downloading software, whereas windows users get stuff from their browsers that could be full of malware. Windows tries it’s best to keep people from using other OS and people are too lazy to try any thing new which is why we have one this problem in the first place.
Operating System popularity, dictates the amount of virus, malware, Trojans, worms and other Operating System irritations. MAC (an Enhanced Unix operating system) and Linux, just do not have that big of a popularity computer wise. They probably could if they quit using .com and .exe files. These are the easiest files to attack, modify and change to do something else.
They have, its their new program called Microsoft Security Essentials. It is a combination of a Virus Scanner and Malware Scanner. When you install it, the first thing you want to do is use the update feature. Then do a full scan of you computer to make sure everything is safe. Who better than Microsoft to protect their Operating Systems. At least this is a step forward in the right direction.
You want a real shocker, Microsoft is one company who hires the greatest number of MAC programmers. Go figure this one out. Your additional details is interesting, but if it went that way the Computer market for manufacturers, software vendors and those who create operating systems would collapse.