Gizmodo
Uh oh. You've done it this time, Jeff Jones. As the security strategy director in Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group, you've just made the bold claim that Vista, from a first year on the market comparison, has been more secure than Windows XP, Red Hat rhel4ws, Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, and Apple Mac OS X 10.4.
Your argument seems to break down the difference between researcher-reported vulnerabilities, the number of released patches and the amount of actual vulnerabilities left standing by the end of one year. And you gave us this sexy chart to examine.
In every category, Vista is either the lowest, or tied for the lowest. And since your argument seems to boil down to the logic: the less vulnerabilities, the less fixes, the more secure, Vista wins. Of course, from what our tiny brains make of the case, such an argument doesn't take into account factors like just how many people are trying to exploit a particular platform/vulnerability, or just how damaging each exploit can be. But from that strategic commander chair, you seems to think that these issues balance themselves out. Maybe you are right.
But I'm not waiting in the open to find out. I have an emergency bunker prepared specifically for such occasions because pissing off the Mac and Linux communities at the same time is a funeral I'm not attending...like that time you said Firefox was less secure than IE. Things got messy and someone cried. [JeffJones via darkreading]
Comments
Do not piss off the TUX! Dooby dooby doo.
Its seems to me that Microsoft has only a 50% fix-ratio, compared to 80-90% for the others. That makes me feel much saver!
...what a non-sense statement from this guy...
Doesn't Vista fall into that "no one's using it" category? Of course there's no reported bugs if all your users have moved back to XP...
Nice, by that logic you just have to not discover and fix security holes! Wish I'd thought of that =P But of course no one actually use Vista, so thats the best security right there:
"Uh, we don't actually have any installations in the field, and therefore we aren't really vulnerable."
For his next trick he's going to announce that Microsoft is selling more Zunes than music players from Apple, SanDisk and Creative combined. Then he's going home to sleep with his wife....Mirgan Fairchild. Yeah, that's the ticket.
For his next trick he's going to announce that Microsoft is selling more Zunes than music players from Apple, SanDisk and Creative combined. Then he's going home to sleep with his wife....Morgan Fairchild. Yeah, that's the ticket.
*Morgan
//damn
Well I'm glad this is finally settled.
I believe it. Vista is definitely more secure than OS Leopard.
Didn't some other non-MS magazine or review site some to the same conclusion last year?
I really think you cannot compare the security of Vista with the User Account Control on. No one in their right mind uses Vista with UAC on.
Every time one of our students graduates from here with a marketing degree and goes out into the world, I feel guilty. It's as if I just dropped a larvae into the atlantic that will some day grow into a huge multi-limbed, parasite-ridden, people-eating monster that will prey on the populace.
More patches doesn't mean that there were more vulnerabilities; it just means that more potential vulnerabilities were fixed.
And it has to be mentioned here that Linux developers tend to patch what are almost always non-issues. Considering how easy and painless patching every single app in a, say, Ubuntu install, they can patch much more regularly. There's also the fact that a typical Ubuntu installation has much, much more bundled with it to patch than Windows Vista.
When there is a patch for Windows, it's because it's either a freakin' gaping hole in their security or because they amassed a huge amount of smaller holes.
After reading the above news bite - it just dawned on me that I have no energy to jump into a mac/windows arguement for the forseeable future_
But the "pretty" chart above is interestingly labeled "Year 1" for the software titles_ So does this mean that Vista in 2006 was more secure than Ubuntu in 2004 and Red hat in 1994 and OS X Tiger in 2005 ?
That seems a likely conclusion based on his own logic_
you do in a corporate environment once you get the applications and profiles set up correctly and deployed.
seriously it makes one hell of a difference.
Aaaannd, even though the sales figures are fudged (what goes out is not always whats installed) i bet theres more installs of vista floating around than OSX.
I'd like to know what year 1 means though.. is it comparing the first year each os was released? they cant be seriously talking about this year?
What the hell's wrong with my post?
XP user, just a clean install with SP2, no updates, no virus protection, just windows firewall in their security center and a google toolbar, on network about 5 hours a day, using explorer. No problems ever. Am I just lucky?
@baltwade: Gizmodo's posting mechansim has seemed a bit touchy lately_
1) just how many people are trying to exploit a particular platform/vulnerability
This first thing actually doesn't logically have anything to do with how "secure" a program is. If a thousand burglars are trying to get into your house instead of just one, each still has the same basic chance of getting in. It's simply that there are more rolls of the dice. But this is not something Microsoft can control, so making this part of your security argument is kind of dumb.
2) or just how damaging each exploit can be
This is a sensible argument.
@Lizard_King: Seriously - In testing applications on Vista for work I've actually had to turn UAC off to just install the app. Why bother turning it back on and rebooting yet again?
I heard from a guy that it also whitens your teeth and makes you more attractive to women.
What they dont mention is that the flaws they found in Linux and OSX don't actually hurt the user unless they are able to gain Root access. This seems to be one thing Microsoft is good at. Making it look like they are the safest lol.
@Pope John Peeps II: Also props for the good points.
...so in Jeff's little world WINDOWS is the best and LINUX and MAC are teh evilz.
And that's why MICROSOFT is still MICROSOFT.
That chart really hits home the fact that statistics can be used to prove any side of any argument.
@TheCyberBob: 84% of people disagree. Jerk.
@xint:
Yeah, because we know Steve Jobs just goes around praising Windows all the time.
What a moronic comment, of course he says Windows is the best, that's what he's paid to do.
When you think about what he said and (more importantly) look at the numbers, it makes sense. The fact that you posted a much more... hyperbolic headline than Engadget did is kind of disappointing. He didn't say ever. He said over the first year of their respective releases. Then he provides numbers to back it up.
Don't let the trendiness of Windows-bashing keep you from considering that his statement, qualified as it was, could very well be right.
What no one says:
A good home router does more for internet security than an operating system could ever do.
Vista Ultimate Retail = $319.99 & protects only 1 PC.
High Quality Home Router (D-Link DGL-4500 Xtreme N Gaming Router - Retail) = $169.99 & it protects every PC in the house.
Now I'm not saying a router protects you against spyware or virus, you are on your own there. But a home router usually has a better built in Firewall than any software can provide.
I use a router + manual scans of spyware and virus software. I don't have to load a bunch of "resident" system tray applications that slow your machine down. I have yet to have a spyware or virus problem working this way, and my PC is thankfully devoid of resident apps. Vista is slow enough already without a bunch of useless apps clogging up its RAM.
"I believe it. Vista is definitely more secure than OS Leopard."
except for the viruses its already had i assume you mean lol vulnerabilities and the real world are two completely different things.
You can prove anything with statistics especially those from a very interested party.
And did anyone stop to think that the reason that Vista has less fixes is because they don't really care about the final product they put out?
Also, what were the fixes for?
@speakerwizard: This sentence doesn't make sense. Please re-write and re-submit by the end of the week, or you'll fail this class.
If apple had posted the same story touting the safety of OSX, Giz and the rest of the sites would be blowing jobs left and right.
Pardon me but this is the same crap Apple has been feeding us for years. "Mac has almost no viruses and less security holes" well, could it be because its less attractive to write a virus (or find a hole) for something a couple of designers use while drinking double mokkafrapuccinos at starbucks? (ok i took that one a bit too far, but the point stands!)
I have had vista the entire run and have had virus's try to infect it and they can't. This may be due the 64bit or just because it is written well I am leaning on 64bit IMHO. but all in all I love vista I have not had any problems out of it. It runs fast and smooth.
Hey, if Bush can say that the economy is fine right now then this fellow can say Vista is safest!
IMAGE18301 --That made me laugh.
@ HYRUU
The 64-bit part only affects a few spyware/viruses. Unless you're using an itanium architecture, the 32-bit programs should run fine. The UAC does help *somewhat*, but it reduces usability to a degree that's not acceptable to most people.
Yes, MS fixed less security flaws than OS X or most Linux distros. However, that says nothing about the actual risk posed to the system. MS fixes primarily exploited flaws, not all security flaws it finds. Linux and OS X typically fix all or nearly all detected security-related flaws. Also, there's a big difference between a security flaw that may let a local program read memory of another local program with the same access rights, versus a security flaw that lets a remote user (think Internet) control your computer or install malware. To MS, those flaws are apparently the same severity.
Counting vulnerabilities is a natural way to measure security.
If you're a retard.
@speakerwizard: Umm, what?
@speakerwizard:
point me to a vista specific virus, please!
*chuckles*
it adds a lot to the creditability that the report is written by microsoft
reminds me of an arabic proverb;
"no one says their water is murky"
except when bill gates said that vista sucks (:
@axiomatic:
I think you comment was really stupid, honestly.
So Vista Ultimate is $319 (I bought the OEM @ $250 over a year ago)..OK.
Vista will not protect your system as good as $169 router.
What good is a router if you don't have computer with an OS to use it???
A good Firewall/virus software is $60~$70....
What good is the software if you don't have an OS to run it under????
The $319 analogy is stupid, plain and simple. You are getting an OS!... with basic protection.
You need to get protection somewhere else.
BTW, if MS was to completely close the loop and install antivirus software, etc in Windows for free... everyone in the industry would cry foul and sue them.
Symantec, AVG, McAfee, Neo32, etc... would be obsolete companies. Why would you buy their products when the OS could include them free?
Then MS would be the bad guy, a-g-a-i-n, wouldn't it?
@Crazymonkey: Vista's market share is second only to Windows XP.
@aec007: +1
axio just got pwnt!
@speakerwizard: Viruses are generally just executable code that do malicious things. Other than the default privileges assigned to processes (Fixed in Vista, by the way.) there's nothing that an operating system SHOULD be doing to stop them.
It's just as easy to write a virus that assumes user-level priveleges on OSX as it is on Windows. The problem is that it's rarely done because a user-level virus is generally orders of magnitude easier to get rid of, and limitted in what it can do. Thanks be to Vista's notion of process Integrity Levels, however, executing code doesn't start with Admin priveleges unless it explicity requests it from the user, which is a good thing for security.
@Brookespeed: You may just be unaware of the trojan that is presently eating your system from the inside out. Just wait until activation day and all your data are belong to us.
Marketing Dept: Quick! Get some statistics together to prove Vista is the most secure operating system before the whole project sends us bankrupt!
@Brookespeed: As Napoleon Dynamite would say... "LuucKY!"
A few things I take away from this:
1. Yes, you really can cut numbers any way you like to prove any point.
2. Admittedly, I have read on many fronts that Vista has many less security problems than any other modern commercial OS. And yes, it is at least partially due to the fact that no one uses Vista.
3. I should knock on wood when I say this, but credit has to be given to all of the operating systems. It has been quite a while since the love-letter type wide-scale virus attacks.
All of which is to say -- interesting reading, but ultimately, who cares?