Virus Issue 2

[Shawn Christopher]

> Maybe Longhorn will prove to be different as it is supposed to be a
> rewrite from scratch, but we will have to see.

Longhorn is different. I have Alpha'd longhorn and it works on the
matter of protecting it'self from alot (basically any changes) you have
to agree to allow the change for anything to happen. And as with the
services I have found that if you want to manually change them you have
to login as administrator.

> > 
> > Be critical of MS, by all means (I am, and no longer use a single MS
> > product, for anything). But advocacy is  at its most powerful when it's
> > fair.

I'm in the same boat. But fair is fair you have to give the developers
some slack as I'm sure marketing (as I see for the company that I work
for) signs their paychecks

> 
> I know that Windows can be managed quite well and secure, especially
> with servers, as you don't have to deal with enemy #1 : users.  (I
> mean, that users don't fiddle with the system)

MS tried to make a difference with XP with the way that it disables
administrator by default but then never protected the Kernel and just
gave "su" rights to everyone. Again ease of the user

> But I still think that the design of certain parts of Windows is just
> opening up doors for virus writers, etc.
> You can use VB to write a program that can do anything on a system by
> using ActiveX controls and OCX components.

This is true...however again for the ease of the user. My company does
alot of activeX and we do the most "hands off" production items so the
members don't have to

> Linux has been designed to not allow stuff like that.  The application
> needs to be run as root to have access to any system resources, except
> if there is an exploit but in Windows you don't even need an exploit
> to do this.
> 
> It does look as if Windows 2003 is a big attempt to counter this, but
> the security is still not applied by the kernel of filesystem, but
> rather by applications runnning close to the kernel or plugged in to
> the kernel. At least this is the way I understand it.
> 
> I am not out to just bash Windows, I am just trying to explain why I
> think viruses has been running wild on Windows, but on no other
> operating system.
> Hopefully MS will really put an effort into security with Longhorn, as
> all thier previus attempts has proven to be futile.
> Or am I wrong here?
> 
> -- 
> Andre Truter | Software Engineer | Registered Linux user #185282
> ICQ #40935899 | AIM: trusoftzaf | http://www.trusoft.za.org
> 
> ~ A dinosaur is a salamander designed to Mil Spec ~
>