Courtesy of Ian over on Jerkface, and he has a point.
First it was the Blue Screen Of Death, but my Windows computer only ever did that (back in the ’90s) about once every six months, so it didn’t affect me.
Next it was “Oh noes, the viruses!” but my Windows computer only ever caught one (Conficker, as I recall). It didn’t affect me much.
Microsoft, being evil and corporate and greedy, decided that they weren’t going to fix Windows XP (well, not beyond SP2, anyhow). They came out with Vista and Windows 7 instead, because, er, it made them more profit in some obscure way that only a Freetard would understand.
I think we are now in a position where the two and one tenth desktop platforms are fairly equal from a security perspective — certainly orders of magnitude beyond whatever demented web browser (and these are intentionally sandboxed, for what that is worth) can manage.
OSX? Linux? Windows 7? All susceptible to viruses.
But Windows Viruses Are Worse.
They have to be, don’t they? Otherwise the entire argument disappears. And, you know the Loons. The phrase “I was wrong” is not in their lexicon.
Comments
I know a few Linux people irl who tell me all the time about security, yet ironically none of them has ever used Windows > XP and ironically they don’t know either what ASLR or SEHOP or SDL or EnhancedGS or MIC or conhost or CNG or [... insert a lot more here …] could be.
But itsa insecure!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conficker – largest computer worm pandemy so far
Patch: October 23, 2008
Worm first discovery: 2008-11-21
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_Slammer – second largest worm
Patch: July 24, 2002
Worm first discovery: January 25, 2003
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasser_(computer_worm)
Patch: April 13, 2004
Virus first discovered: April 30, 2004
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaster_worm
Patch: July 16, 2003
Virus first discovered: August 11, 2003
This is a notable example, because in this case author has been found and author admitted, that he have reverse engineered security update – not Windows code itself.
DrLoser, didn’t expect that you don’t update your machine.
@Linsuxoid
All these viruses were targeting unpatched versions of Windows. Patched versions did just fine. You know, Linux and OS X need patching against newly discovered security flaws too. The only people who get Windows worms are teenagers with pirated versions of Windows that have the updates turned off. In order not to be caught by the big bad MS who dares to ask people to pay for their copy of Windows so they can afford to hire professional software developers.
Here is your average conversation with there guys:
Teen: OMG i tried to access awes0meporn.com and my computer got infected, i hate you windoze!!
Me: Have you made sure the updates are on?
Teen: Lol what? You are such a noob. Updates must be off so that Microsoft won’t know my Windows is warez, this is what the uber leet hacker that gave me my warez copy told me. I don’t need on stinkin updates.
Me: With just 100 euros you could have bought a genuie version of Windows (DSP license) and you wouldn’t have to worry about getting caught or infected for the rest of Windows 7’s life. Sounds like a good deal, right?Who is the noob now?
My mistake: it was some form of Sasser.
It wasn’t actually on my machine; it was on my mother’s machine. Sometimes it’s best to omit irrelevant details in a (futile, for me) attempt at clarity.
The basic point remains. Windows in 2011 is, to all intents and purposes, equally as secure as OSX and Linux — and with a 90% market share, that’s quite an achievement.
I think Ian’s suggestion was that, in the absence of a quantitative superiority, Loons now have to claim a qualitative superiority. No real surprise there. Since they rarely have metrics for anything (leaving the laughable Phoronix out of the equation), they’re always happier with unfalsifiable assertions.
@KURKOSDR
> All these viruses were targeting unpatched versions of Windows
That’s exactly my point. ALL major pandemics were through user stupidity. MyDoom is probably the most awesome one. Not installing updates (at least security ones and especially regarding the fact, that updates are enabled by default) counts as stupidity too.
And as for linux, it’s funny that installing updates doesn’t protect you from being pwned through PATCHED vuln. So much for security
@DrLoser
> The basic point remains. Windows in 2011 is, to all intents and purposes, equally as secure as OSX and Linux — and with a 90% market share, that’s quite an achievement.
The point is that, Windows is WAY superior (security-wise as well) to both OSX and Linux.
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