I guess a lot also depends on how paranoid you are. I run an intrusion detection system constantly and I am always watching what packets are going in and out. I do not leave my machine connected to the web unless I am sitting at the keyboard and I do not open attachments or mail from people not on my approved list. It's quite a job to get past my router firewall, then my IDS, then IPTables rules and still be able to do all of this without me being alterted and blocking (and possibly counter-attacking) you. In fact, you aren't going to do it...period. When a cracker exploits a home machine it is, more often than not, for the purpose of using your machine to attack a remote host and thus hiding the crackers IP from his target. If he is randomly scanning for exploitable machines and runs across a UNIX box he is most likely to move on to greener pastures. After all, why expend such resources to own a UNIX box when there are millions of XP boxes out there saying "come hither and join with me"?

Security is simply a matter of being ever-vigilant and ever-aware of the nature of the internet. Most people crank up a machine and never once open a packet to see who their programs (or worms) might be communicating with. They do not keep a watch on the size of their executable files either. A machine is only as secure as it's administrator is vigilent. This goes for any Operating System. Whether I am running Gentoo-Hardened or Windows 3.11 for workgroups makes no difference if I am watchful.

I do feel that Linux is more secure than Windows and a lot of this is due to Windows' TCP/IP stacks...but even more of it is due to the fact that Linux users are generally more alert and computer literate than your average Windows user. I have one machine running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition and it will consistently score a 9,999,999 NMap difficulty rating and will handle everything Nessus can throw at it. Of course, it is tweaked a bit but is still far and away the most secure OS Microsoft has ever made (for $4,300 it ought to be).

It is still unequal to Linux though.

NO!!! i don't think id steal it (depends who it is tho), id just take it and burn it!, unless i needed it, but id rather set it on fire!!!!!!!!!,,,


now why are people using frontpage for websites?, if M$ gets hacked for some pointless piece of software they might have made... then let em get hacked!!!,,,, theres really no point to having frontpage, so I'm glad its gotten hacked... another id rather they hacked into www.msn.com and set up a news article about how crappy M$ and there software are, and list alternatives!!!, that would be funny, people waking up to what looks like M$ admitting there a piece of crappy hot air


and if you still don't think week organizations like M$ shouldn't get hacked, then recall the simple fact of life, the week will die - well, so will the strong, so why not laugh when you get the chance?

Are you talking about next week or the week after that or could it be another week later in the year or a week that comes after another week before the other week.

My lamp fell over last week because the table it was sitting on was many, many weeks old and over time it became WEAK!!!

Maybe you all forget when debian got hacked a while ago? Same with Gnome? Are those shitty companies with crappy software? Maybe you should actually put a bit of thought into a post before posting it.

BajaNickops,,, they looked the same to me

Pauli: do Debian and gnome advertise there products as invincible unfriendly programs?, and no one else is better then them?,..... one of the things i find funny is seeing people that act and see themselves as invincible get beat, then they get all pissy about it for no reason..... as far as I'm concerned its good M$ got hacked, that way they can learn, its good Debian and gnome got hacked to, they Will learn (and since nothing bad happened, its all OK..... unless something bad happened )

Actually, they took down the debian servers.

With gnome, they could have really done harm. They are lucky as hell the guys who hacked it were doing for amusement (I think) and not to cause harm.

And I have never seen people act like MS is infincible, perhaps you should learn that OS's really dont make things infincible. If you have a decent firewall and a good Virus checker, that is what makes a system pretty secure, having an OS wont do shit.

I have never recieved a virus on my machine. The only thing my virus checker found was VNC which I was using. So, considering it, I think windows is pretty damn secure as long as you arent stupid. Download shit, youll get shit. Open attachements, your gonna DIE. I mean come on here, the real reason things CAN take advantage of windows is because of user stupidity and ignorance.

I was just playing around

Yet recall what tricky says about posting in the right forums, thats not rocket science neither and yet people still do it constantaly. Tells ya somethin

Pauli you're 100% right. As time goes on and as you have been on the forum longer you learn where to post specific topics, where to ask the questions, etc. But people new the forum post where they think it might go, without actually realizing it doesn't belong there.

Just the same, as people realize they get a virus after opening attachments from spam emails, their mind has to evolve!

Darwin's Survival of the Fittest prevails again! lol.

I think people won't learn very quick though, by the time they DO learn, the viruses will not be in attachments but with something else. It is how quick you adapt and learn thatll tell ya if you will die or not

But recall, if Linux was the mainstream desktop the same stuff would happen. People are dumb, always remember that

I can see it now...

I open go to check my email, see spam, open it. There is an attachment, says its important. I download it .... Extract it from the .tgz file. It's a shell script. I run the attachment.

What? Hmm, must have been trying to access something important. Lemme try this again.

Nah, even a retarded monkey with a brain the size of a leprocauns left testicle wouldn't do that one I can't say what they would do, but I assure you, if hackers spent as much time on linux as they did for windows, linux would have just as many viruses out there.