[CS-FSLUG] Five Linux Security Myths You Can Live Without

[Don Parris]

On 4/25/05, Josiah Ritchie <jritchie at bible.edu> wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-04-24 at 20:40 -0400, Don Parris wrote:
> > But even at the basic level, you're
> > probably more secure than WinXP (I don't know about how it compares
> > before and after SP2).
> 
> I don't think this is accurate after SP2. My experience with it suggests
> a solid firewall that is reasonably secure considering it is mostly
> automated. Flexibility is near zilch, but a home user doesn't need much
> more than that.
> 
> MS is getting better in the security field. 98se has no hope as it will
> never get these upgrades. XP has improved significantly. They realize it
> is neccesary to squash the security issue now that Linux has brought the
> true nature of it to light. It may not be too little to late. 2003
> server is much more solid. Each shutdown requires a record for the
> reason, the web browser is locked out of all pages by default and no
> service is automatically started without specific need. These are all
> significant improvements over 2000 server.
> 
> Don't worry, I still prefer Linux. I just don't want us to base
> decisions on outdated information. The windows crowd does enough of that
> for the both of us. :-)
> 
> JSR/
> 
> _______________________________________________

Does SP2 lock down the filesystem?  I mean, on my system at work
(shared with 3 others), everyone has write access to the system
folders by default.  I can't do that as a regular Joe on SUSE Linux
(nor any of the others I've tried, for that matter).  On a Win system,
anyone with regular user privileges can write a big bad virus anywhere
they want (assuming they've gotten access to a regular user login). 
By my understanding, they might mess up the regular GNU user's
account, but can't necessarily get past that without gaining root
access.

Any input here?


-- 
DC Parris GNU Evangelist
http://matheteuo.org/
gnumathetes at gmail.com
Free software is like God's love - 
you can share it with anyone anywhere anytime!