[CS-FSLUG] NI: Comparing security on Windows and Linux

[Fred A. Miller]

"A more objective method of rating security is to track the number of bug 
fixes issued for a particular software suite. When compared to Linux, Windows 
appears to be more prone to flaws by this measure. Recent U.S. Computer 
Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) vulnerability metrics reported 250 episodes 
for Microsoft Windows, 39 of these having a severity rating of 40 or greater. 
With Red Hat Linux there were only 46 episodes, of which only with only 3 
scored over 40. There are thousands of reports that compare the two operating 
systems but reports like this by an independent government body, on the 
relative number of critical flaws between them, should be given greatest 
consideration.

There are good reasons for this difference in security. For instance, Linux's 
open source methodology of software development helps to expose errors more 
easily. This is an advantage Windows doesn't possess. Another disadvantage 
with Windows is that many of its core applications rely on the use of remote 
procedure calls (RPC), a method of inter-computer communication that 
unpredictably and dynamically assigns communications channels. This forces 
firewall rules to be less rigid than they need to be in comparison with 
operating systems like Linux that limit the use of RPC."

http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci1102680,00.html?track=NL-301&ad=521552USCA

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