MyndPhlyp wrote:

"Martin 53N 1W" <ml_news@ddnospamddml1dd.co.uk.dd> wrote in message

[...]

The 'unrestricted access' that viruses (and malware) can exploit on
Microsoft products is very greatly and securely restricted on all other
multiuser OSes.

Like BSD? HPUX? SCO? ULTRIX? Linux? Sun?

http://www.insecure.org/sploits.html

(Yeah, it's old news but it illustrates that exploits are all over the
place, although I will admit M$ does tend to have more than its fair share
of the market!)

Indeed, various exploits abound on all complex systems. (With the exception of the old well hardened VMS? Also, BSD is a very tough nut to crack.)

The big difference is that things very quickly get exposed and fixed on the various *nix systems. Also, the potential to cause damage is limited by the various levels of built-in security. There have been very few successful 'test' viruses on unix. There are no viruses 'in the wild'.


In the world of MS, the virus game runs into very big numbers and is active 'in the wild' now and unabated. Very silly and costly.

Take a look at current malware activity:
http://www.us-cert.gov/current/current_activity.html

Four of the five active security alerts are for MS viruses/worms on MS systems only. The fifth concerns defacing websites via a php exploit and that has already been fixed.


Considering that the main Linux distros offer good functionality and good applications, and sometimes beyond what MS can offer, it seems very silly to still suffer the MS problems and costs.

Regards,
Martin