[OT] Browsing the internet... It is safer from Linux?

[Bob Sneidar]

Peter, with all due respect, in every case except the most recent, the "hacks" involved convincing a user to "click here on this button, enter your admin user name and password and click OK. Don't worry we are only trying to help." 

I don't deny that there have been vulnerabilities related to browsers, java, even PDF's and Flash. But these are (for the most part) doors opened by someone else's software, NOT vulnerabilities in the core OS. 

The other (and primary) avenue of exploitation involves downloading and installing "cracked" software that a user gets from a warez site or some such place. Those who get hacked by this route are imbeciles and deserve to have their bank accounts razed (showing restraint in the words I choose here.) Let's eliminate these as "hacks" since the users willingly install illegal software, and no one would put up for a moment an OS that refused to do what you told it to do because it thought what you were telling it to do was "dangerous". 

So look here, can we all just agree that anything requiring a user to enter his admin credentials is NOT A HACK? Can we agree at least that this is NOT A VULNERABILITY? Secondly, can we agree that vulnerabilities in software that is NOT a part of the core OS is not a flaw in the core OS? 

If you agree to these things, then you cannot possibly characterize Mac OS X as a "dead duck" fairly, without also admitting that every other OS ever written or will be written is by the same token exactly as "dead a duck" as the Mac OS. 

Let's play fair when talking about such things. In such matters, truth is more important that who's side you take, or whose OS you prefer. 

Bob


On Oct 31, 2010, at 2:22 AM, Peter Alcibiades wrote:

> 
> Yes, the interesting question, don't know the answer, is if you set up
> windows in the same way Linux is normally set up, limited user accounts and
> so on, how much more vulnerable would it be?  Those hack fests they have
> every so often suggest that OSX is a dead duck almost right away, Windows
> not long after, and Linux holds out longest.  But I don't know what the
> starting setup is on the windows installation.
> 
> Peter
> -- 
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