NT vs Unix on the Internet

[BVE <bve () quadrix com>]

     Date: Mon, 04 May 1998 09:46:13 +1000 (EST)
     From: Peter Jeremy <peter.jeremy () alcatel com au>

     I'm currently engaged in an internal NT vs Unix debate and trying to
     insert some facts into the debate.

     One point that has come up is along the lines of `most Internet sites
     that have been hacked have been running Unix therefore Unix is
     insecure'.  Can anyone point me to some figures showing what sorts of
     sites have been broken into and what they were running, compared to
     the Internet as a whole?

     Note: I don't want to start a flamewar here.  I'm just after some
     defendable figures in place of FUD.


I don't have the numbers, but look at some of the recent CERT advisories,
regarding the widespread use of teardrop-related attacks against large numbers
of sites across the Internet.

..And in the editorial dept.:  I've had to set up both Unix and NT machines for
shared hosting platforms, and I am currently quite stymied by several issues
under NT, especially the high cost of keeping up-to-date with the MANY hotfixes
(use NTbugtraq.com to help with this! -- Thanks Russ! ;-).  Also, I find it
difficult to add any additional layers of protection -- basically, you have to
count on the software not having bugs.  Finally, if you think MS's software is
bad, wait until you try to configure other products, such as Net Objects'
Fusion, Cold Fusion, etc. for shared use.  It is practically impossible to keep
one client from having access to another's stuff, and equally difficult to
separate program data from transient data.  Again, you simply must rely on the
software to work right.

Does anyone have some suggestions for solving these problems?  This is
off-topic, so responses should probably not go to the list....

-- 

                                     -- Bill Van Emburg
                                        Quadrix Solutions, Inc.
Phone: 732-235-2335                     (bve () quadrix com)
Fax:   732-235-2336                     (http://quadrix.com)
        "You do what you want, and if you didn't, you don't"