A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies - Oscar Wilde
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Most security products are a waste of time
A VERIZON REPORT claims that more than 80 per cent of security products fail to perform as intended when first tested and generally require two or more cycles of testing before being unleashed on the real world.
The report, with the catchy title ICSA Labs Product Assurance Report (PDF), co-authored by the Verizon RISK team, looks at lessons learned the hard way over the last 20 years.
Most failures were because the product does not adequately perform as intended. Across seven product categories core product functionality accounted for 78 per cent of initial test failures.
Another reason for failure was the inability to accurately log data. Incomplete or inaccurate logging of who did what and when accounted for 58 per cent of initial failures.
Logging is often considered a nuisance and undervalued particularly when it comes to firewalls. Almost every network firewall or web application firewall tested experienced at least one logging problem.
Just under half of security products had problems with their own security and were capable of being used to attack the very system they were supposed to be protecting.
George Japak, managing director of ICSA Labs, said that in addition to product functionality, logging and inherent security problems, other issues identified in the study include poor product documentation and patching.
More than 20 per cent of security products struggle to accept updates correctly, which is a bit of a headache for antivirus products.
ICSA Labs is an independent subsidiary of Verizon that engages in third party security product assurance testing and certification. µ
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Yeah, I love how when you install Windows, it more or less guides you to setup an administrator account and _maybe_ some limited user accounts for your kids or whatever. They'll never learn. Proper permissions and proper separation of the user and administrator is crucial. Windows is just a wide open door.
Kind of an ironic situation IMHO…a nation of (mainly Microsoft Windows) computer users sitting in their glass (Windowed) houses, all upset and feeling vulnerable, many complaining that the NSA is not doing enough to protect them.
In the off chance that the NSA cannot instantly take every rock away from every nasty rock-throwing hacker, instead of complaining, people certainly could move into better constructed software houses right now (which are free, by the way). Linux is just a download away. Windows 7 is still Windows, and has already been proven to be vulnerable to most of the same viruses/exploits.
I agree with Linuxlovers comments: Linux is a secure system by design, and it is "should" be humbling to know that professional hackers were unable to pwn a Ubuntu box -- particularly when you understand that Ubuntu does not and was not running a firewall at the time (unlike distributions like OpenSuse, which do this by default).
Linux (distributions) do receive a lot of patches (as one reader mentioned), but these typically apply to ALL the components of a Linux distro, and many are just correcting various bugs in functionality that have been reported by users (who are also free to suggest code changes, due to the nature of open source code, which can be audited and verified by all users for security problems). Security issues are typically patched fast (and do not wait until "patch Tuesdays"), but the tremendous isolation between root system processes and user space in Linux guarrantees a much higher level of security than any version of Windows to date.
Reference? I doubt it. How long was it that it took MS to getting around to fixing that URL spoofing security hole in IE? I believe it went unfixed for _years_ after it was discovered and documented.
FWIW, Pwn2Own contestants couldn't crack Ubuntu, despite it being open source. The person that cracked the Mac stated afterward that the Mac is actually more secure than Windows, despite his breaking it so fast (5 seconds). He already knew about the exploit and how to do it before entering the contest.
last i checked, linux had more documented and unfixed bugs than windows.
just sayin.
Spoonmonkey, I never said it was impenetrable. I'm not one of the Ubuntu fanboys, either. However, if you even attempt to tell me that Windows is just as secure, I'll laugh in your face. Linux runs the majority of the backbone that is the internet, and exists in a minefield. It's security is hardened. However, home users likely won't know how to setup that level of security.
Windows security is a joke, and the amount of extra money you have to spend yearly in an attempt to make it secure is an even bigger joke.
do you want me to shoot holes in all the predicatble points of your arguemnt, or shall everyone that has a brain just leave you alone cradling your ubunto install disks, rocking gently backwards and forewards, whispering "my precioussss"?
I was starting to get worried that Nick took a particular interest in writing unfair and inflammatory articles about Apple. I no longer feel that he is singling out Apple and suspect now that this is just his style.
Why bother wasting your money? Just use Linux, instead, and avoid the "gotchas". Choose one: Mandriva, OpenSuse, Fedora, Ubuntu, Mepis, Linux Mint, Debian, Sabayon, PCLinuxOS... Lots of choice, all safe from all known viruses, trojans, worms, spyware...