Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: Re: Microsoft Security, baby steps ?
From: "Daniele Muscetta" <daniele () muscetta com>
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 12:52:55 +0100 (CET)
Dave Horsfall said:
On Wed, 17 Mar 2004, Daniele Muscetta wrote:....I know, you roughly have some 26 Megabytes of patches to be installed POST-SP4 and POST IE60SP1 on W2K. Is any other OS any better lately ?OpenBSD. FreeBSD. NetBSD. BSD/OS. See the pattern?
Yes I do. Even if patching of a BSD box is not something that anybody can do, just like everyone uses windowsupdate / up2date / yast / apt-get and similar.... ...you know what I mean: grab the source code patch / diff file, patch the code, recompile... and possibly recompile everything that is statically linked to that component/library....On big server farms this could still be annoying... not to say the obvious, like I cannot imagine my mum managing being able to do ANYTHING with such an OS, while she CAN windowsupdate (and she does) :)
I had a BSD/OS box exposed to the Net without a firewall for *years*; it was quite funny watching Penguin/OS exploits against it.
Indeed it is :) There are people out there who just attack anything which has an IP address, without even verifying if it is exploitable of not (or worse, if it is for the right OS). In this regard I also observe FrontPage server extensions exploits against some Netware server running Apache :) That will of course never work. It's just plain silly. Still they try. But in those cases I see the same exploit being tried on several contiguos addresses, which means is like a 'sweep' scan of the entire subnet, most likely.... Anyway, I personally don't know FreeBSD, but I can talk for OpenBSD. This has also to do with other two factors, IMHO: 1) less software shipped in default configurations; 2) smaller 'market penetration' (assuming you can talk of a 'market' for OpenBSD - even if I'm one of those who keeps buying the official CDs to support the project !) - but in the end is more used by 'geeks' than by 'companies'... This is not meant as an attempt to diminish BSD strenght. I also have an OpenBSD box on the internet, and it is awesome. The choice of shipping LESS software by default is a very wise one (and many linux distros in this regard are copying windows too much, enabling everything by default to facilitate the user - and the cracker). With 'smaller market penetration' I don't want to say that that code is less looked at (most likely it is indeed better code), but mainly that the crackers go usually after QUANTITY: they search to compromise AS MANY boxes as possible.... so they go after the most used OSes. IMHO, of course.This has been shown in the increase of linux compromises, anyway.... Why should they bother having a hard time trying to compromise a super-hardened BSD box which belongs to a savvy admin (who's most likely going to spot them soon if they succeed), rather then just trying to shoot their exploits against everything, and hope to get as many as possible ? Let's not start with the 'holy war of the OSes' again... is one of those never ending question.... we are already off topic, I believe. If you like, continue with mailing me privately. Best Regards, Daniele _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html
Current thread:
- Re: Re: Microsoft Security, baby steps ?, (continued)
- Re: Re: Microsoft Security, baby steps ? Paul Schmehl (Mar 16)
- Re: Re: Microsoft Security, baby steps ? Luke Scharf (Mar 17)
- Re: Re: Microsoft Security, baby steps ? Daniele Muscetta (Mar 17)
- RE: Re: Microsoft Security, baby steps ? Andrew Aris (Mar 17)
- Re: Re: Microsoft Security, baby steps ? Nick FitzGerald (Mar 17)
- Re: Re: Microsoft Security, baby steps ? Blue Boar (Mar 16)
- Re: Re: Microsoft Security, baby steps ? Geoincidents (Mar 16)
- Re: Re: Microsoft Security, baby steps ? Daniele Muscetta (Mar 17)
- Re: Re: Microsoft Security, baby steps ? Dave Horsfall (Mar 17)
- Re: Re: Microsoft Security, baby steps ? Daniele Muscetta (Mar 17)
- Re: Re: Microsoft Security, baby steps ? Ron DuFresne (Mar 17)
- Re: Re: Microsoft Security, baby steps ? Daniele Muscetta (Mar 17)
- Re: Re: Microsoft Security, baby steps ? Guido van Rooij (Mar 18)