On Bugs, Viruses, Malware and Linux|TechNewsWorld
Is security a sword of Damocles hanging over Linux, just waiting for its popularity to reach critical mass? That’s one persistent argument in the Linux vs. Windows debates, but it’s just wrong, according to those who know Linux well. For reasons both technological and behavioral, they say, Linux really is more secure. “If the anti-malware industry has anything to offer GNU/Linux,” challenges blogger Robert Pogson, “let them step up.”Among all the reasons geeks choose Linux, security is often near the top of the list.And no wonder — personal preferences aside on all the other many relevant issues, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest our favorite operating system really is more impervious.A study published in The Register a few years back, for example, not only concluded that Linux security then was even better than had been thought compared to Windows security, but also went on to label as “myths” and “logical errors” many of the most common arguments to the contrary — most notably, the oft-repeated idea that Linux suffers fewer attacks simply because it has fewer users than Windows does.Yet when news came out last month that an attack by the “NULL Pointer” bug could exploit even a fully patched Linux kernel, a new cloud of dust was kicked up. Those on both sides of the operating system fence struggled to understand what it meant. “The headlines for this Linux security hole read like the apocalypse,” Slashdot blogger yagu told LinuxInsider. “The reality is much less severe.”First and foremost, “to fully take advantage of the exploit, a user must have physical access,” he explained. “By definition, physical access is already a compromised system. Any security issues past that point is simply splitting semantic hairs.”Linux is far more secure than Windows, yagu asserted.
