Re: Linux security

Stephen R Laniel wrote:
I'm certainly a big fan of sudo. But what it does is protect the OS itself, the system files. I don't want to diminish sudo, but it doesn't protect your data files.

That's a rather narrow conception of the ways that people
can access or destroy your data files.

It is? Since any program you run has read/write access to your data files anyways, sudo offers no protection that I can see.

A great many security
problems in Windows occur because a vulnerability allows
arbitrary code to run with the privileges of the current
user.

I'd be interested to hear an example. Honestly. This is useful information. How does Windows' weak separation of priviledge make it more vulnerable to viruses? I can guess that it should, but I can't actually suggest a typical use case where this Windows bug makes it easier to lose your data. As far as I can see all it does is create more hassle because you have to re-install Windows.

Unless you're running bind or Apache under chroot,

Apache is a web server. This is very far from the use case I presented. I'm talking about viruses and malware for a desktop user. I know why Linux is more secure on a server, and on a multi-user environment. I'm asking about "regular users".

2) Ordinary users. These people probably don't care much
about security, or else they would have bailed on Windows
long ago.

How about ordinary users who do care about security and are wanting to know why it is that Linux is more secure than Windows? They'll probably say "I hear that Linux isn't any better, but it's just less targeted". I'd like to tell them that it actually is better independently of market size.

Tell me, do *you* think that Linux is less inherently less vulnerable to viruses than Windows? Why?

Best,
Daniel.
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