Vista Security Claims Debunked

An anonymous reader writes "Apparently Microsoft still hasn't learned that counting vendor acknowledged vulnerabilities isn't a good way to establish the security of an OS. As an analysis of Microsoft's claims on Full Disclosure shows, we see that the methodology used was badly flawed. A bug in Firefox (not to mention emacs), counts as a flaw for Linux, while IE bugs get ignored on Vista's chart. Then we see that vulnerabilities aren't vulnerabilities when they're security-challenged features such as Vista's Teredo. Also, there's far too little consideration given to severity, given that it stoops to counting even extra access restrictions on a file in OSX to have something to show. In short, the original Microsoft analysis was good PR and poor research."

Microsoft found making PR-FUD-ing research

In other news, scientists have confirmed that water is, in fact, wet.

Re:Microsoft found making PR-FUD-ing research

Microsoft isn't calling Vista the most secure OS ever; they are calling it the most secure Windows ever. It's not hyperbole. Each of the ones you mentioned was slightly more secure than the one before it when it came out, so it is accurate to say each time that the new one is the "most secure Windows ever".

Re:Microsoft found making PR-FUD-ing research

Windows Vista is "dramatically more secure than any other operating system released", Microsoft founder Bill Gates has told BBC News [bbc.co.uk].

(Emphasis added.)

Re:Microsoft found making PR-FUD-ing research

MY absolute favourite security falsehoods are the various ways "researches" compare one system security to anothers

Such straight forward conclusions are impossible to make. Based on the following points.

- If many people are analysing code, you will find more bugs. If you don't review your code (or for example, don't have peer review - which closed source often lacks.) Then no bugs at all will be discovered.

- The existing number of unfound bugs is related to the number of discovered bugs. Well no not really: The number of found bugs is actually related to how long and how many researchers have been testing and actively looking for the bugs and second to that is how buggy the software is. I can assign a team of one researcher with no experience and they'll never find any bugs in the poorest of software.

- A difficult and obscure to exploit bug (one that requires a perfect storm of conditions) is as important as a bug that is easily exploitable(e.g. drive by downloads). Also with that: Bugs that bring down the whole system versus bugs that only fail a single service.(E.g. blue screen versus failing to display a JPG correctly.)

- Differences in reporting models: Total lack of transparency versus an open forum. E.g. Microsoft vs Linux reporting. You can only compare reporting from the same kind of reporting models. E.g. You can compare kHTML versus Mozilla (as they are both open and have similar review structures), but not Windows vs BSD (the dissimilar reviews allow misrepresentation via favourable skews and different classification paradigms.

Re:Microsoft found making PR-FUD-ing research

If many people are analysing code, you will find more bugs. If you don't review your code (or for example, don't have peer review - which closed and open source often lacks.) Then no bugs at all will be discovered.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Microsoft found making PR-FUD-ing research

- If many people are analysing code, you will find more bugs. If you don't review your code (or for example, don't have peer review - which closed source often lacks.) Then no bugs at all will be discovered.

- The existing number of unfound bugs is related to the number of discovered bugs. Well no not really: The number of found bugs is actually related to how long and how many researchers have been testing and actively looking for the bugs and second to that is how buggy the software is. I can assign a team of one researcher with no experience and they'll never find any bugs in the poorest of software.

There's a good discussion of this from software metrics guru Norman Fenton at http://www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/~norman/papers/metrics_r oadmap.pdf [qmul.ac.uk], which shows that the existing number of unfound bugs is related to the number of discovered bugs. It's related negatively. In one sense this is a "well, duh!" finding -- that the more bugs you've discovered, the fewer are undiscovered. But much software quality assurance is founded on the assumption (which realise is what you were really challenging) that number of bugs discovered is positively correlated with number of bugs undiscovered. The empirical data says otherwise.

Microsoft "Research"

Bears are Catholic. The Pope shits in the woods.

Re:Microsoft "Research"

... and this is, scientists have concluded, Sparta.

The really sad part....

MS has the resources to actually generate amazingly good products and dominate on a level playing field.

Unfortunately they seem to be so obsessed with winning by FUDing and spinning that they end up making crap. This is a great disservice to the whole computer industry.

Re:The really sad part....

After all these years it surely must be clear to everyone that MS is fundamentally a marketing company. It stopped being a technology/software company nearly twenty years ago. Since marketing is basically legalized distortion and lying, no one should be surprised.

Re:The really sad part....

Perhaps because Windows XP and Vista don't show BSODs anymore but rather just restart the whole system silently, leaving it up to the user's imagination what has caused this?

Right click on My-Computer, select properties. Click on Advanced System Settings. Under the advanced tab, click settings for Startup and Recovery. Uncheck Automatically Restart.

Alternatively, press F8 during bootup and disable automatic restarts.

I am not trying to rant (well.. okay, partially I do) but how exactly does stability issues concealment count as good engineering?

Unless you are in a reboot loop, or have a persistent failure of your system, you generally want to restart the computer if there's a STOP error.

Re:I'll call bull

>1. I've had that disabled for years, and I've had exactly one instance of BSOD-ing so far. (The reason was a crappy driver. Yeah, that's so MS's fault. A Linux user >would be _so_ able to continue using their KDE programs if the video drivers crashed. Not.)

I call BS too. I used to have an unstable video driver (open source ATI stuff) and I more than once ssh-ed into my box to restart X-windows.
At least on Linux you still have a chance to recover. At least I have open and closed drivers, at least I have a choice.

BTW, the only time I ever had a kernel panic on Linux was when I had faulty RAM... about 7 years ago.

Re:Heh

Heh. So basically you can keep the kernel running, but your X programs are fucked anyway. Well, gee, that's so different from rebooting the system.

Heh, you've never used any *nix before, except as a toy. There's a fucking mountain of difference. Does your box run any services for the network? Does it share any printers or disks? Does it have any other users logged into it? Does it run any scheduled tasks or background jobs? If you're doing *any* of these things, then there's no way in hell you want the system to reboot. If you're not doing any of these things, you're not running Linux, you're running a bloody X-terminal.

Re:The really sad part....

I would contend that they were very much an engineering shop back then. It isnt reasonable to compare MS products of the early 90s to Vista/Leopard/Whatever today. Back when windows 95 shipped it was head and shoulders technically better than the other operating systems targeting average everyday folks. Although in retrospect its pretty obvious that it was a mistake, noone at MS or anywhere else really worried too much about things like security on consumer PCs. It wasnt bad engineering so much as it was just not an issue at the time. Virtually all companies didnt see the consumer security problems coming, not just MS.

Unlike most people here I do like Vista, but I honestly think that compared to their competitors they have lost a lot of ground in engineering strength compared to what they once were.

Re:The really sad part....

Back when windows 95 shipped it was head and shoulders technically better than the other operating systems targeting average everyday folks.

No it wasn't. OS/2 was waaaaay ahead of win95 in pretty much every way.

Thing I learned in the marketing class I failed:

Marketing is cheaper than R&D.

Re:Thing I learned in the marketing class I failed

Marketing is cheaper than R&D.

You haven't read an annual company report recently, or ever for that matter?

Even in sdoftware - or pharmaceutical companies where one would assume that a lot is spent for research the R&D budget is usual ~18% (which varies, of course) while sales and marketing usually eats away approx. half of the costs.

Sales, marketing and distribution is horrendously expensive and gets a far bigger chunk of the budget then R&D.

This is a generalisation, of course, but true for the vast majority of companies.

Not cheaper ...

Marketing is cheaper than R&D.

It's not cheaper (quite the contrary), but the effects of marketing are much more immediate than the effects of research. And it's the quarterly report that counts, not how the company is doing in three years.

Microsoft is about making money ... not products

It may be sad, but it's really straightforward: Microsoft is a typical profit maximizer. That's their aim. Every activity they do, be it product development, marketing, or plain PR is aligned with that central business goal.

This means simply that Microsoft will generally pour just enough resources into a product to beat the competition and dominate the marketplace. We saw that with the browser war. When it had to overtake Netscape it came up with a good product. After it killed Netscape, and there was practically no other comparable browser, resources were taken off the browser product because it was good enough and there was no sense whatsoever in improving it.

We saw it with the IDE's. When Microsoft had to compete with Borland {Borland Pascal; Borland C/C++} it came up with the 'Visual' IDE. Visual C, Visual Fortran. It was a good IDE, and it won against Borland. After that ... it languished. Now ... now that we're seeing the Eclipse IDE and SUN's IDE ... suddenly Microsoft floors the accelerator again.

The same holds for the Operating System itself. Windows was systematically tailored to capture the eye of consumers and businesses, which it did very well. Never mind that the internals were {and still are} cludgy. What the user sees is the user-interface; that's what sells. Security flaws? Well ... as long as there is no competitor to which people can switch while retaining their investment in software and training ... security flaws aren't a show-stopper. Getting their own stuff to work was {previous Windows version have so many tightly coupled components that you never knew what would break next when you changed or added anything}, and that's why Jim Allchin very sensibly steered towards a properly engineered Windows. Vista in other words.

Given that we're seeing Linux, OS-X, and Open Solaris competing in more or less the same market we also saw an increased effort from Microsoft to tart up the user interface. Those transparant windows thingies.

This is something fundamental you have to understand about Microsoft. They are calculating folk, and never ever were trailblazers. Tail-light chasers, yes, but never trailblazers. 'Good Enough' is their goal, and their yardstick is ... the competition. Why? Because to Microsoft 'Good Enough' means 'Good enough to win in the marketplace and bring in revenue'. That's how Microsoft became so rich.

Re:Microsoft is about making money ... not product

We saw it with the IDE's. When Microsoft had to compete with Borland {Borland Pascal; Borland C/C++} it came up with the 'Visual' IDE. Visual C, Visual Fortran. It was a good IDE, and it won against Borland. After that ... it languished. Now ... now that we're seeing the Eclipse IDE and SUN's IDE ... suddenly Microsoft floors the accelerator again.

Kind of like Intel vs. AMD, eh?

x86 made only incremental gains from the 486 to the Pentium IV. Suddenly, wham! AMD comes out with the 64-bit Opteron and Athlon 64 and they kick the crap out of Intel on price, performance, and power consumption for a year or so.

Now we've seen a ferocious flurry of innovation from Intel, which has suddenly been pouring money into R&D and taking advantage of its superior manufacturing processes. We've got Intel vs. AMD to thank for quad-core, low-power, hardware virtualization... and best of all, $59 dual-core 64-bit processors from Newegg :-)

Now AMD is falling behind fairly rapidly, and we can expect Intel to slack off its R&D correspondingly. But in a year or five, AMD or someone else (VIA? IBM? MIPS?) will be back with something new and send Intel scrambling again.

Re:Microsoft is about making money ... not product

x86 made only incremental gains from the 486 to the Pentium IV. Suddenly, wham! AMD comes out with the 64-bit Opteron and Athlon 64 and they kick the crap out of Intel on price, performance, and power consumption for a year or so.

I think you need to seriously revise your x86 history.

That is not to say that x86_64 wasn't a significant improvement, but to basically suggest the Pentium, Pentium Pro/II/III and Pentium 4 were just faster 486s is ludicrous. Each of those CPU families represents a serious increase in the design and capabilities of the x86 platform and they all came from Intel. Indeed, one of the main reasons x86_64 was so significant was because it repesents one of the few times AMD has been the leader, not the follower, in the last few decades.

Re:Microsoft found making PR-FUD-ing research

Au contraire - Gartner Group just released a study which concluded MS Water(tm) was not, in fact, wet*, unlike GNU/Water or H2O-BSD.

(*) MS Water(tm) tested at temperatures below 0 degrees C and above 100 degrees C, GNU/Water and H2O-BSD tested between 0 degrees C and 100 degrees C.

As Gunnery Sergeant Hartman would say

Well... no shit...

Shocked!

I am totally shocked. I just bought 10 licences too and threw away all my Linux computers!

You don't need to see our identification.

These aren't the droids you're looking for.

Re:You don't need to see our identification.

MOD PARENT DOWN!

1. I think we all know where the quote is from.
2. Except you.

Not surprising

Never believe anything MS says, they are untrustworthy.

Don't accept abuse. MS apparently lied.

MOD PARENT UP!

Quote from the Slashdot story: "In short, the original Microsoft analysis was good PR and poor research." It amazes me how easily people accept abuse, and give excuses for being abused. It was not "good PR". My best understanding is that Microsoft's analysis was an intentional lie.

My rule number one in dealing with Microsoft: Unless forced by circumstances, never upgrade to a new version of Windows until the second service pack is released. Let other people have the grief. The huge number of bugs in Windows XP before SP2 was very expensive for us. If I remember correctly, SP2 fixed more than 630 bugs, and some of the fixes were not documented. It is not only the vulnerabilities that are expensive.

Quote from the link in the Slashdot story: "Also, the entire networking stack was rewritten for Vista, and that means lots of new bugs are present. I have already spoken to other researchers who have not disclosed such flaws publicly. However, a good start for learning about some is the Symantec paper that analyzed Vista during the BETA phases and revealed numerous issues."

Microsoft has, in my opinion, a long, long history of not allowing their programmers to finish their jobs. There were even security vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Help protocols!

Re:Don't accept abuse. MS apparently lied.

I thought that PR was lying... isn't it?

I don't think it has to be. Let's consider a hypothetical case: suppose you had an chemical plant that for years spewed toxic effluent into the river, and which got a deservedly bad name for this. Then, let's suppose, the cleaned up their act and stopped dumping toxins, maybe compensate the people living locally.

At this point, the company still have a bad image, even though they are now good neighbours, so it's a legitimate tactic to get a PR crew in to address the image problems. You've seen the sort of thing: take some film crews around the plant, make some commercials with lots of pictures of sunlight, ripe wheat, green trees and healthy babies.

On the other hand, they could do pretty much the same thing if they haven't got rid of the toxic effluent, or if they solved the problem by venting it as vapour through the air conditioning system at the nearest school.

The trouble is that companies seem to have figured out that they get about the same effect whether they fix the problem or not. So why spend money fixing the problem if the PR is all that's needed?

So, yeah, PR is pretty much the same thing as lies. It needn't be, and it shouldn't be -- but on the whole, that's the way to bet.

Re:Don't accept abuse. MS apparently lied.

My rule number one in dealing with Microsoft: Unless forced by circumstances, never upgrade to a new version of Windows until the second service pack is released. Let other people have the grief. The huge number of bugs in Windows XP before SP2 was very expensive for us. If I remember correctly, SP2 fixed more than 630 bugs, and some of the fixes were not documented. It is not only the vulnerabilities that are expensive.
Better yet:
Wait until the service pack is out and independent reviewers are happy with it. Because if people stick to the rule "after SP X things are fine", it is merely an incentive for Microsoft to rush the service packs until the number X in question is reached.
In the case of Vista, it seems Microsoft was already organizing the beta testing for SP1 before the OS was released to end users:
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-6152704.html [com.com]
That article was from January 23rd. Looks like the beginning of a trend to increase the SP count as fast as possible.

Not that surprised...

Given the previous FUD Microsoft has put out about Linux (235 patents? Which patents?), I'm not really surprised to see this.

Of course, if anyone should be counting browser flaws as OS flaws, it's MS. MS makes the case that they can't remove IE from the OS since it is integral to it working properly, yet doesn't count them on the vulnerability list.

Meanwhile, FF doesn't even have to come with a Linux distro, and a bug that compromises FF as an app is much less likely to compromise the OS as a whole.

Looks like more FUD to scare non technical people from "illegal" and "unsafe" Linux.

The Microsoft guy did a second report

with the non-Core Linux components no longer listed because of based on the feedback.

This just debunks the first report.

Re:The Microsoft guy did a second report

Does it, or does it debunk the second report? It was my understanding that the first report included absolutely everything available for the distro, while the second report included less stuff, but still tons of stuff that isn't included in a base "windows" install.

Regardless of whether it does or does not the claims are as silly and irrelevant as the slashdot stories 'proving' that Linux is more secure.

The number of bugs is not relevant, it there is one bug the system is vulnerable. What matters is the window of vulnerability. The time between discovery of the bug by the bad guys and fixing it by the good guys.

UNIX used to be known for its insecurity. Richie and crew invented the buffer overrun bug, Tony Hoare was referring to this blunder in C when he gave his Turing Award lecture he brought up the fact that the first principle of ALGOL 60 had been security.

The perceived level of security of a system has much less to do with familiarity than any actual objective measure. None of the systems that are on the market today is built well enough for its supporters to start challenging others to this type of dick size measurement contest. Its silly and unhelpful.

Now...

Does that sound like a people_ready business to you?

Teredo

The rest of the complaints aside it may have very well been appropriate not to count Teredo as a vulnerability. Here's why: assume that windows was technologically backwards and couln't get on the internet. Would you then agree that Linux was less secure, because the possibility exists to hack it over the internet while that possibility does not exist for windows? No, that wouldn't be an appropriate assesment of security. To evaluate security we need to in a sense "divide by" the ability of the system to access other things. Teredo gives Vista the ability to get to ipv6 from behind a NAT, so vista has the ability to access more things (in this one limited way). Thus it should not be counted as a vulnerability unless Linux has a way to do the same thing, in which case we can compare the security implications of Linux's method versus Vista's method. But until then Terendo should be set asside when doing a security comparison (vesus an independant vulnerability assesment).

Submit Macro

"I need a submit macro"

You mean like the "Preview" button right next to the "Submit" one?

Depending upon your definition of "security", yes.

Here's why: assume that windows was technologically backwards and couln't get on the internet. Would you then agree that Linux was less secure, because the possibility exists to hack it over the internet while that possibility does not exist for windows? No, that wouldn't be an appropriate assesment of security.

Actually, it would be appropriate.

If you can remove an avenue of attack, you have increased the security of your system.

Now, by removing it from the Internet you have also reduced the FUNCTIONALITY of your system.

So you end up with a less functional, more secure system.

Security is all about evaluating the possible threats and reducing their effectiveness.

Teredo gives Vista the ability to get to ipv6 from behind a NAT, so vista has the ability to access more things (in this one limited way). Thus it should not be counted as a vulnerability unless Linux has a way to do the same thing, in which case we can compare the security implications of Linux's method versus Vista's method.

No. If it is an avenue for attack, it is an avenue for attack.

If it is vulnerable, it is vulnerable.

We've been over this before with Firefox's avoidance of ActiveX. Sometimes, increasing your security simply means NOT including some functionality.

Re:Teredo

It's not about reality, it's about what they will say, how they will spin it

Look, Windows can't even compete on features against Puppy Linux.

No Microsoft sales droid will ever get in a pissing contest against a full blown Linux distro with more than 20,000 packages installable. They'd just end up with a wet leg and a deep-seated sense of personal inadequacy.

Remove the power cord too

After extensive research we found that having the computer powered up was the source of all the security flaws. Don't blame MS - they don't make the power cords!

er

what ges me is that very few security researchers ever get the chance to examine MS code like Linux allows, who knows how much code is a security risk, millions of lines of code that only its creators can really examine. there also exists the problem that in addition to security flaws in the code its self, there is the fact that most of MS users dont really take care of their OS like they should. very few people avoid IE, update their software, have a firewall or any security smarts [ie cant resist the free wallpapers/ringtones/random spyware infestations] It is better to have a good user on a flawed system than PEBKAC on a good system.

Re:er

Very few people avoid IE, update their software, have a firewall or any security smarts

Vista updates by default. It is nicely built into the shutdown interface. By default you "update and shut down" if an update is available. Firewall is also built in and seems to be relatively well designed. Very honestly I am impressed with Vista's default security.

The rest of your post I agree with. For example will this help my sister-in-law who loads every toolbar and screensaver known to man? Nope. If a user downloads flaky spyware software, there isn't an OS that can help. But Vista truly is a step in the right direction for the majority of folks who just want to browse and email.

Strangely, It Doesn't Matter

Most Microsoft customers will take the "research" at face value.

I work in a Microsoft shop. And while I have a great boss, (really, no kidding) the company is Microsoft all the way. There is zero logic at play.

But that's the way it goes. I'm old enough to remember when "Made in Japan" was the cultural equivalent of today's "Made in China." That had little basis in reality then, just like Microsoft customers today just aren't ready to comprehend **buying** something other than a Windows box and just take Microsoft's ridiculousness as fact. In time though, I think that can change. Just like the Japanese and their cars.

Get The Facts

Why wasn't my tag "getthefacts" selected? Honestly, that's all this is - a continuation of the "Get The Facts" campaign.

Re:Get The Facts

Well, no doubt CmdrTaco carefully sifts through all the tags submitted for every story, and diligently evaluates them for selection. He even, I'm certain, cross-references tags for relationships to other projects to see if one is just an unlabeled continuation of the other. After such fastidious examination, and only then, does it make the grade. A grade which your most impressive tag passes with ease.

Given Slashdot's exemplary editorial standards, how could it possibly be otherwise?

This is clearly a gross oversight on Taco's part, and will be looked into with the gravest of concern, there can be no doubt. I suspect your well-crafted tag will don the front page in no time, perhaps even in an extra-crisp font to make up for any negligence and mishandling involved.

I look forward to it with heightened eagerness, and commend you on the alacrity and aplomb you've shown in this, your all-important tag-choosing endeavor.

Godspeed, you will prevail.

Not fair?

You mean to tell me, counting all the vulnerabilities for anything that runs on Linux (Including software that is not developed by Linux), and then only counting the vulnerabilities that live in the core of Windows Vista doesn't make a fair and accurate comparison?

I can't believe it either

You mean Microsoft misrepresented the facts? I just wont believe it.

Seriously though. If not actually providing security, I'm glad that they're at least worried about it. There should be about 500 posts to follow arguing the virtues and failures of Vista related to security and performance. Microsoft, Joe Average, and Grandma will read 0 of these. They'll still have the computing world by the balls tomorrow because they're the status quo and have the (second?) best marketing, a near lock on hardware vendors, and all the PC games.

Joe Average got the fake stats without hearing any dissenting opinion, because he doesn't really care and it gave him warm fuzzies over that wad of cash he dropped. Also "Linux is hard/You get what you pay for" and "Macs are for sissies/Ignore that get what you pay for thing." Meanwhile his social security number just got a new loan and he's the spam king of the neighborhood by accident...but damn that was a good porn site.

Nothing short of Microsoft's own (in?)actions will bring that beast down in the near term. Luckily they're doing a decent job of it. It seems like a few are trying to apply the brakes, and it may pay off. Hopefully the consumer can stop getting reamed sometime soon.

And here I was...

riding a flying pig on my way to get a sweater at the store 'cause I heard Hell had frozen over. At the gamestop next to the sweater store, some kid was playing Duke Nukem Forever, which I thought was an amazing game. ...so what do you mean the report isn't true?

No, this is still good

Okay while no one on Slashdot feels this is news and the debunking was completely expected, it's useful for the "linux representatives" that many of us inevitably become in casual conversation with our Windows-evangelizing peers. Typical situation:

In this narrative, Josh is the typical One-Trick-Pony, Microsoft MC## who blesses Microsoft every day for making his income so easy to come by and truly believes that Microsoft is the hammer and everything looks like a nail. Gunter is an all-around generalist who is unafraid of anything "computer" and knows enough to work on routers, networks, servers and workstations of just about all varieties which happens to include Linux among others.

Josh: "Hey, just read this security assessment comparing Vista and Linux... Vista won by a mile."
Gunter: "Yeah, I saw that... I also saw -->this-- article exposing the flaws and inconsistencies in their comparisons."

The point here is that being readily armed with a rebuttal is handy.

woohoo if only it gave the right reason

It doesn't matter if the vulnerability counts are vendor acknowledged or third party. Vulnerability counts only tell you how many flaws were found and fixed. There is no particular reason to belive this correlates to how many were found and exploited by 'the bad guys'.

It's flimsy but I suppose you could say that recognizing reported flaws and patching them quickly shows a project or vendor takes security seriously but that is all these vulnerability reports are good for. You could say that more reported vulnerabilities means that a program became that much more secure but even that is dubious. And of course it goes without saying that claiming a program is more secure because it had fewer vulnerabilities reported defies all logic.

FUD all around

That was a sloppy report on Microsoft's part, no doubt, but the Slashdot title is misleading too. It is still helpful to remember that there has been only one exploitable vulnerability discovered on Vista in the past six months, compared to several a month on XP. Vista's OS-level security features (NX, ASLR) do in fact perform as advertised. Vista is immeasurably more secure than OSX (with only one security feature to speak of) -- not a single application security expert has made a claim to the contrary. Noticed all those OSX advisories coming out lately? That's because we appsec people are as tired as the rest of you of Apple and smug Mac assholes.

Armchair critique

This report from Microsoft's Jeff R. Jones is ludicrous...

This isn't a debunking.

I feel Jeff really needs to perform another less exaggerated analysis.

It's an armchair critique of someone else's work.

[...] a good start for learning about [Vista flaws] is the Symantec paper that analyzed Vista during the BETA phases and revealed numerous issues.

A competitor (see Live OneCare) wrote an article about an early BETA of a new OS saying is had some issues? Shocking!

Even though OS X claims to be secure, researchers have obviously shown that Apple will have flaws too. This is nature of software, and it affects all code.

What are you saying here, Kristian? Bugs are inevitable, so we should just give Apple a free pass on their share of problems because, well, it affects all software?

Ok, that's enough of that.

I feel Kristian really needs to perform his own research and analysis, and draw his own conclusions.

PS: Don't mod this as flamebait until you read Kristian's entire post. Really.

This was fairly obvious at the time.

The Jeff Jones reports [csoonline.com] are complete crap. This was obvious at the time. He pretty much showed himself a fool by claiming that XP had less critical bugs than the current Ubuntu, SuSE and RHEL, and thus was more secure. He seems to think that he can compare security based on the number of public and critical bug reports between a company that does not release bug reports to the public and companies that do.

Any observer from a tech background would know that this would turn his results to shit, but he is;

1. A Microsoft Employee
2. A Blogger

so that never mattered anyway.

It's like they always claimed about linux:

No users = no vulnerability reports.

They said hard but not impossible

Microsoft is looking into both vulnerabilities, which were made public last week. Neither of the flaws has been used in any attacks and exploiting the issues is hard, a company representative said.

Hard is what makes crackers salivate.

qz

Vista on Firewalls...

I haven't seen Cisco jump to run Vista on their Firewall Machines. So, maybe, just maybe, they had a reason to stick to *nix.

Where is the debunking?

I read the article pretty carefully. I don't see any actual numbers to back up this "debunking".

If you're going to bash Microsoft for using fuzzy math, at least have the courtesy of supplying some of your own.

Also, can somebody explain the issues with Teredo? Sorry, but simply declaring that there are lots of bugs in Microsoft's new TCP/IP implementation with absolutely no evidence to back this up doesn't help your argument.

Re:Where is the debunking?

I read the article pretty carefully. I don't see any actual numbers to back up this "debunking".

That's because you are gullible enough to believe the hype, aggravated by your lack of will to perform a basic search for the facts. Here is a bit of debunking from a quick google search.

From Secunia's advisory atatistics:

• Microsoft Windows Vista [secunia.com] has 2 unpatched vulnerabilities, highest rated not critical
• Microsoft Windows XP Home [secunia.com] has 27 unpatched vulnerabilities, highest rated highly critical
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional [secunia.com] has 30 unpatched vulnerabilities, highest rated highly critical
• Apple Macintosh OS X [secunia.com] has 5 unpatched vulnerabilities, highest rated less critical
• Ubuntu Linux 7.04 [secunia.com] has zero unpatched vulnerabilities
• Ubuntu Linux 6.10 [secunia.com] has zero unpatched vulnerabilities
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 5 client) [secunia.com] has zero unpatched vulnerabilities
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 server) [secunia.com] has zero unpatched vulnerabilities

Those are real world facts supported on real world evidence which is freely available to the public. It isn't a random blog entry which is based on god knows what data which is only known by the author and possibly doesn't even exist. So where in fact is there a need to "debunk" a moronic, unsubstantiated claim made by some microsoft employee, specially when there is all that evidence right in front of everyone's face?

Submitter incorrect

It's not "good PR and poor research". It's lying.

I Am So Amazed That MS Would Deceive

I mean, in their entire history, when has Microsoft ever done ANYTHING untrustworthy?

Like literally copying/stealing other people's code line for line and putting it in their OS? (Stacker)

Like putting in software hooks to see if competing office products were running and then crash them or make them run slow? (WordPerfect)

Like swapping code in an OS and a browser to make it appear that the browser was integral to the OS to weasel out of antitrust issues? (Win98 / Explorer)

Naw... I just can't believe that MicroSoft would stoop so low as to try to promote its "ground-up" new OS (that amazingly has many of the exact same vulnerabilities as XP) as being hardened and more secure than Linux and OSX>

They wouldn't do anything like that, would they?

Ha...what else is new

Definitely no surprise here. Stupid Mircrosuck.

Please, no more Microsoft stories.

do you people not understand what you're doing? No, I'm not concerned about Microsoft. I don't care about Microsoft.

But... think of twitter. This can't be good for his health.

oh, wait. Right. Keep posting these "M$" articles, then.

Microsoft Security Reports...

...Proved to be inaccurate. Video at 11.

oh no!

But I've been allowing full access to my Vista machine in which I store text files containing my bank account, social security and blood type! Whatever will I do?!

*barf*

Slander and Libel

"the communication of a statement that makes a false claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may harm the reputation of an individual, business, product, group, government or nation."

Stuff like this seems very close to being Slander and Libel [wikipedia.org]. I'm sure a more informed reader will know why it isn't, but even then, it just seems quite close to being so. There are many organizations and individuals with an invested interest in the promotion and sale of Linux.

Brandon Petersen

simple

go to http://www.us-cert.gov/ [us-cert.gov]

type in "windows"
Results for: windows Document count: windows (2543)

then,
type in "linux"
Results for: linux Document count: linux (2301)

well, no news is good news!
A differential of 242 reports is not that much! And I'm even a Linux admin!
this doesn't account for severity either, but it just goes to show you, don't trust security reports in any form.

The bug about emacs...

...was well counted, after all, it's a nice OS with a poor text editor.

Emacs is a bug?

A bug in Firefox (not to mention emacs), counts as a flaw for Linux...

I like text editor wars as much as the next guy, but calling emacs a bug...

Trying to find a "neutral" base

It ain't easy. If you don't count emacs, you pretty much can't count a lot of "basic" Linux tools. You'd have to strip both systems to their bones (which is arguably easier with Linux, granted), but then, you're comparing two very artificial sets without any meaning in everyday life. I can't imagine Linux being very useful if reduced to the kernel, and I highly doubt it's even possible with Windows.

Here's my way of counting: Take the average customer PC. To faciliate things, let's take a "standard" Windows install as the base. I.e. a system where you have a calculator, an editor, a webbrowser and so on. Then, take of every kind of program in that install base the one with the least security holes (i.e. in case there is one in notepad, use a different but similar editor with fewer bugs as a "replacement"), same goes for IE or FF or Opera or... whatever (just to settle this once and for all). No, Lynx is NOT a valid replacement for IE since it cannot display graphics. It has to be a replacement that offers at the very least the same amount of functionality (thus, technically Opera would not be a valid replacement for IE, unless they finally accept some sort of plugins).

And of course you would have to create different sets. A server needs very different program groups installed than an office PC, or a gamer PC. Yes, that means you can't just take one set and say that this is the valid comparison for every kind of setup there is.

I'm aware that is not easy and it takes a lot to assemble, research and test that. But unless something like this is done, every kind of comparison will be crooked in a way or another.

Total bullshit

The original "research" and the so-called "debunking" are total crap, to say the least. What the "research" shows is "Linux guys fixed more bugs than Microsoft's, and that means Vista security is good". Some kind of reverse Microsoft logic, or what? Given that Vista is closed source and Linux is open and considering the means for finding holes in proprietary software the number of vulnerabilities found should be at least tripled.

Now the "debunking". Just vague declarations. Only propositions like "they rewrote all the code so there MUST be more bugs". Well, maybe, but it's not a fact. Also the "debunking" really doesn't have ane figures. The microsoft guy at least shown some numbers on which he or we may base our conclusions. But debunking... It's not a debunking. We need an independent research like the MS guy did but we need to do it right. So that match is drawn at 1:1, but the time hasn't run out yet.

Turnabout is fair play

Micrososft are merely playing the same game OpenBSD have been playing for all these years... Apply the loosest standard to yourself, and the strictest to your competitors, and you're bound to come out smelling of roses.

Was that a whiff of manure in the background?

And my Porsche has an annoying leak

The piece of shit Taurus I also have has no leak therefore it must be a better car than my old Porsche. And it's true that if every car in the world were my old Porsche then all the cars in the world would have that same annoying leak. Ergo the world is a better place for all the piece of shit Taurus's on the road.

See it's not about theory, fanboys. It's about practical outcomes. Per person per unit per second per whatever the practical outcomes of MS 'security' are disaster and failure compared to everything else. Period full stop. And if all the fanboys in the world, got off /. put down the fucking cheetos and hammered out code it still wouldn't make any difference because that train's already left the station.

You can wave your MS flag in my face all.fucking.day. telling me about the theoretical import of security gaps in some other widget and it won't amount to anything because the effect of these gaps is maybe 0.0001% of the effect of yours.

So suck it up, my pimpled minions - your God is a cardboard God.

The correct way to count

As both firefox and emacs runs on windows (via cygwin) bugs in both programs should be counted as windows bugs.
But as MSIE does not run on Linux it should not be counted as a Linux bugs.

In fact I could write a small visual basic program here now in the comment, with a serious bug, and you can count that to. :)

Anyway, I don't know why I'm writing this. After several hundred comments, few people will ever read this, and the people who is counting will live in ignorance forever...

Firefox

A bug in Firefox (not to mention emacs), counts as a flaw for Linux, while IE bugs get ignored on Vista's chart.

So when I use Firefox on Windows, that's a Linux bug?

Num 1 problem with Non OSS

PEBCAK (#1 Issue Regarding Any version of Windows) P - Problem E - Exists B - Between C - Chair A - And K - Keyboard ID10T error. BSOD STOP 0x4d534655 KERNEL_REALLY_SUCKS_WE_KNOW_N_WILL_PATCH_LATER ==> (MSFU)

Certainly Scared Me!

So, here I am, running a small network (10+ computers) in a home business environment.

I do have 2 instances of Windows 98SE and 1 instance of Windows XP SP2 deployed (the Windows 98SE for desktop activity and XP for some testing and support roles). I presume that because network access is proxied, cleansed, firewalled and NAT'd, that things are fairly secure.

And, they are. I cannot allow the XP machine directly onto the internet, due to regulatory security concerns (and my business does involve other peoples codebases).

I am thinking of deploying Vista; indeed I almost have (one client wanted some Vista work done). And now, BANG!, I learn that Vista will convert my carefully proxied, cleansed, firewalled and NAT'd system into Swiss cheese, by default...

Thanks, Microsoft. I sure hope that you had the best security people in the business pore over that feature. But still, no warantee -- so I guess any Vista installation will have to be COMPLETELY off-net for a while.

But, that can't be done, because it needs to validate. I guess I would need to turn OFF my network, let Vista validate, and then take it off-net... But that won't work (it does for XP, thank heavens); as I understand it, Vista will need revalidation every 6 months or so...

So, what I need to know is -- how do I safely and prudently deploy Vista, with the assumption that it is a hostile component? Or, can I disable Teredo completely? And, are there other components in Vista that are equally bizarre?

My clients are going to start demanding Vista work any day now...

Re:What do people expect???

while it's true it'll require a beefier pc to run, upgrading to a newer pc like a core2 will result in power SAVINGS.

Obscure? And the 2nd study is just as bad!

How are they obscure? You can't know much about security at all without knowing about people like insecure.org, SecuriTeam, or the Full-Disclosure mailing list. Or maybe you meant the author, Kristian Hermansen? They're a security researcher at Cisco, FYI. But even then, what does obscurity matter if their criticisms are valid? You could be an anonymous coward and make a valid point, after all (alas, that's merely a hypothetical because you do not).

Then you claim that the second report addressed all those issues. That's not at all true. Sure, it doesn't count Firefox bugs any more, but that's not the real problem with the study. The real problem is that counting vendor-acknowledged bugs isn't a security metric at all! That's right, it's not the least bit useful for giving either an academic or real-world measure of security. You can't rescue the original study from that flaw without redoing it and abandoning the original premise.

But I guess you wouldn't know that, because you don't know these "obscure" sites that people who know about computer security do. I mean, next thing you know, people will be citing virtual unknowns like Bruce Schneier as if they knew anything about security! Or maybe Fyodor, I bet he doesn't know a damn thing about networking. What did he ever do? Make up that silly fake application they used as a "hacking" tool in the Matrix movies? [/sarcasm]

Re:Obscure? And the 2nd study is just as bad!

The point is simply that number of disclosed bugs is not a valid comparison. It matters not if he "did his best".

"The numbers" would certainly look very different if Microsoft adopted the methodology used by most open source projects of fully disclosing every bug. Or if open source projects mirrored Microsoft's practices. It is very well known that Microsoft does NOT fully disclose all bugs and many cumulative patches silently fix MANY problems. The severity of bugs is also classified very differently.

You are right about one thing, it is all a numbers game. But you are WRONG that it means anything, even that Microsoft is improving. It means NOTHING. Nothing at all. It's only a numbers game. Even if someone else games the numbers differently and Linux-based systems look better, it still means nothing to compare numbers of bugs when very different philosophies and practices govern which bugs are fully disclosed and how their severities are rated.

Re:What do people expect???

Maybe not, but it would be more honourable to not say anything than to tell outright lies. (PR is supposed to be about mis-direction, not blithely lying. Never is though.)