Judging by figures alone, Vista is more secure than Mac OSX and Linux? I somehow find this a rather strange claim, I guess these things are always subjective.

Most numbers can be moulded into any shape you want, and can show any result you like.

According to the numbers given in a new report from Microsoft, Windows Vista has blown away all the major enterprise Linux distributions and Mac OS X as far as having the smallest amount of serious security vulnerabilities in the six months since its release. The numbers were compiled by Jeff Jones, the security strategy director in Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Group.

“The results of the analysis show that Windows Vista continues to show a trend of fewer total and fewer High severity vulnerabilities at the 6-month mark compared to its predecessor product Windows XP (which did not benefit from the SDL [Secure Development Lifecycle] and compared to other modern competitive workstation OSes (which also did not benefit from an SDL-like process),” Jones wrote in a blog posting about the report on June 21.

I’ve heard some things about this report though, for example flaws in Firefox WERE counted under Linux, but flaws in IE were NOT counted under Vista.

In the report, available as a PDF download on Jones’ blog, Jones compares the number of vulnerabilities of critical, medium and low severity that have been discovered in Vista with those found in Windows XP, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Workstation, Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, Ubuntu 6.06 LTS—Reduced Component Set, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10.8, Novell SLED 10—Reduced Component Set and Apple Mac OS X v10.4.

The score, according to Jones: In the first six months of the Vista life cycle, Microsoft has released four major security bulletins that address 12 total vulnerabilities affecting Windows Vista.

Plus the amount of software packages included in these linux distributions are 100x times more than those in Vista, so it’s not really a fair comparison is it? I’m sure you if you counted core services and OS system files, the figures would look a lot different.

It’s a pretty comprehensive article, so do check it out and let us know what you think.

Source: Eweek

Cyber and computer laws are always a grey area, they tend to be very vague and don’t cover specific technologies.

Spam is a good example, look at how long we’ve been getting spammed, and it’s been a SERIOUS problem for at least the last 5 years, spam legislation has only started coming in to effect in the last 1-2 years seriously..

Now it’s time to look at Spyware?

Even though security technology is improving, spyware legislation is still needed from Congress because many consumers don’t use all the tech tools available to them, antispyware groups said Thursday.

Antispyware groups including the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and StopBadware.org called on Congress to pass antispyware legislation during the last days of the 2006 session. Although some studies show a small decrease in the amount of spyware on PCs, the use of spyware that logs keystrokes seems to be going up, said Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the CDT.

“The issue is everyone’s still making money doing this,” Schwartz said during an antispyware discussion in Washington. Spyware distributors identified by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or the CDT can pull in tens of millions of dollars in revenue annually, he added.

It’s true, sad, but true..The developers of spyware and making millions from it every year.

Antispyware technology can work, but 81 percent of home PC users don’t use all three common security tools — antispyware software, antivirus software and firewalls — according to a survey published in December by AOL LLC and the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA).

“We still think consumers are not protected,” said Ron Teixeira, the NCSA’s executive director. “If they don’t take these three core measures, it doesn’t matter what we do.”

So what to do?

Source: Computerworld