Welcome!

Virtualization Authors: Jamal Mazhar, Maureen O'Gara, Reuven Cohen, John Savageau, Greg Ness

Related Topics: Open Source, Linux, Virtualization

Open Source: Article

Linux Infections Rare, Says Report

Linux Infections Rare, Says Report
By Maureen O'Gara
Article Rating:
July 30, 2004 12:00 AM EDT
Reads:
 16,858

Evans Data polled a bunch of Linux developers and says 92% report never being infected by a virus. And 78% of them said they had never been hacked.

Presumably Google, with its gargantuan Linux server farm, wishes it could say that, but, alas, it can't - after it was taken down the other day in a denial of service attack.

Anyway, of those surveyed that have been hacked, roughly 7% said it had happened three or more times and 23% attributed the intrusions to internal users with valid IDs.

By contrast, Evans says three in five "non-Linux developers" - by which we take it they mean Microsoft people - have reported security breaches and 32% said it had happened three or more times.

Evans says the main reasons Linux sites are breached are: inadequately configured security settings, vulnerabilities in their Internet service and flaws in their Web servers. Evans says the main reason Linux is more secure is the open source development process.

Of course, according to some detractors, the open source process itself is a security hazard, but the faithful discount that threat.

Published July 30, 2004 – Reads 16,858
Copyright © 2004 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

More Stories By Maureen O'Gara

Maureen O'Gara the most read technology reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025.

Comments (0)

Share your thoughts on this story.

Add your comment
You must be signed in to add a comment. Sign-in | Register

In accordance with our Comment Policy, we encourage comments that are on topic, relevant and to-the-point. We will remove comments that include profanity, personal attacks, racial slurs, threats of violence, or other inappropriate material that violates our Terms and Conditions, and will block users who make repeated violations. We ask all readers to expect diversity of opinion and to treat one another with dignity and respect.