[CS-FSLUG] For you Journalists

[Nathan T.]

I get some of my best ideas when I'm arguing with people :-)

Here's a great idea for an article:

Just about every time you see an article pointing out a security flaw,
no matter what operating system, you get contests between Windows and
Linux users. The Linux users argue that they're operating system of
choice is more secure, and often the Windows users consider themselves
satisfied at claiming that the roles would be reversed if Linux and
Windows had their user base sizes switched around. After all,
malicious crackers (or hackers if you prefer) want to go after the OS
with the bigger user base right? Here is why that theory is wrong.

By using that argument, the Windows defenders are automatically
implying that any OS would be as insecure as Windows given the same
user base, therefore it must be assumed that they can be broken into
(or hacked if you prefer) just as easily. Remember this for later.

I don't know the exact number of users for each operating system, but
they cannot be any lower than 10 thousand right? How about 100
thousand or 1 million for Linux alone? Those numbers aren't very
small, although sure they are outnumbered by the Windows users. Things
seem to be in favour of the Windows defenders' argument so far. *But*,
out of the number of Windows users they cannot all be average, surely
there must be several of them who can keep their boxes safe enough.
That narrows down the available market a little now doesn't it, and
when you consider that each vulnerable computer is going to be
subjected to multiple attacks and is going to accumulate a lot of
garbage that will reduce the performance and make it an unattractive
target for further viruses and malware you start to see competition
over the remaining attractive and vulnerable boxes.

But what about the supposed virgin market of Linux and Mac OS X boxes?
The ones that are secure only because of obscurity according to some
headstrong Windows advocates, and would be just as easy to break into
otherwise. Why wouldn't a market of hundreds of thousands or a million
equally vulnerable yet clean systems be an attractive market. Why
wouldn't they be as infected as the Windows machines? Why would
someone building a botnet ignore thousands or millions of computers
they wouldn't have to compete for in favour of going after vulnerable
Windows machines they would have to compete over?

It's my opinion that the reason Linux and Mac OS X manage to stay
clean today is because they are tougher platforms to crack, after all
an ample market full of systems which should be just as vulnerable as
Windows but isn't being competed over sounds too good to ignore.

There you go. I'm not a very good writer, but I think this would be
great in the hands of some of the list journalists. If any of you like
this as much as I do I would like to see it put into a professional
article. I ask for no royalty or credit in return, I just want to see
this spread beyond my little corner of the web and backed by someone
who knows more than I do and can use it to it's full potential.

Any takers or comments?