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allenmaher on 07 October 2013
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vlad321 said:
allenmaher said:
vlad321 said:

Security comes from one place, and one place only. The user. It doesn't matter how secure a vault can be, if the guy opening the vault makes a hole in it to get in better, it's not secure. By default, Linux can be hacked into just as commonly as the other systems. It also was the first to get hacked through in a hacking competition not too long ago (years). Let's not even get into all of the repositories of exploits to gain root.


Zero refrences, pure conjecture, and a lot of inflated hyperbole.  One of the links above shows a recent hacking competition in which a linux derivitive was not penetrated despite considerable money on the line.  If you are such a super hacker why have you not claimed the prize linked above? You sir are full of something.

Ok, links. Say hello to metasploit:

http://www.metasploit.com/

Oh and sorry I was mistaken, it was OS X, a Unix system with an Apple coat of paint on it that was hacked in 10 seconds, 4 years ago:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9129978/Researcher_cracks_Mac_in_10_seconds_at_PWN2OWN_wins_5k

I didn't say I can hack things quickly if I wanted to, I just said you kind of sort of half-assedly know what you are talking about. Those two require vastly different amount of knowledge.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/29/linux-becomes-only-os-to-escape-pwn-2-own-unscathed/

If you look at the history of these hacking competitions Windows and Mac OS get violated every year, but linux (when it is in the competiton) does not.  So your statement "Linux can be hacked into just as commonly as the other systems" is simply unfounded.

At no point did I assert that Mac was good.  It has the same bad track record as windows of leaving security holes unpatched for long periods of time.  I did not claim that all unixes are secure, at no point did I mention IRIX, AIX or any other derivitive.

Am I a security expert, no.  But I really don't think you are either.  Ican tell the difference between linux and OSX.  Your link to a network penetrating stie... I still fail to see the relevance and how that supports your claims. After reading it I failed to find anything relating to your claim there, feel free to provide a more direct link.

At no point have I defended bad users.  In fact I said that users suck from a security point of view, they are the main source of vulnerability in a system.  Yet since all computers have users this is not a point of comparison between them as far as determining which OS is more secure.  I would venture some conjecture even on that topic, the linux user base has a large portion of paranoid and technically sophisticated users (tin foil hats are gratis with a stuffed penguin it seems) so I suspect (without anything beyond anecdotal evidence) that even that may be less of a problem in the linux world.  However, I am willing to grant that one user pretty much equates to another.

Just because users suck does not however mean that all OSs suck equally.  A bad user on a good system is less vulnerable than a bad user on a bad system.  Conversely, a security concious user on a bad system will have to go to great lengths to secure it, while they can achieve good results easily on a good system, hence why DOD and NSA have special secure linux distributions for these purposes (see links in the thread previously).  

It is not justifiable to take one aspect out of context, that users suck, and then extrapolate that  into a false equivellency that all OSs are insecure because they all have users.