“As the latest mass-mailing worm spread across the Internet on Monday (“‘MyDoom’ Windows virus spreads rapidly; Macintosh unaffected”), infecting many tens of thousands of Windows PCs with a program designed to attack the servers of Unix vendor SCO Group on 1 February, Gates stressed the importance of security to his company’s products, but said that competing vendors — such as SCO — were courting danger by sitting back,” Matt Loney reports for ZDNet UK.
“‘A high volume system like [Windows] that has been thoroughly tested will be by far the most secure,’ Gates told the audience at the Developing Software for the future Microsoft Platform conference at London’s Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre. ‘To say a system is secure because no one is attacking it is very dangerous,’ said Gates, referring to operating systems that have a smaller share of the desktop market, such as Apple Mac OS and Linux,” Loney reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’re tired of your lies, Mr. Gates. Are you scared of something, Bill? You sound it. Mac OS X is simply more secure than Windows and you know it. Nice try with the Mac OS X “security through obscurity” myth, but we all know the truth here, sorry. We went though all of this with the last Windows virus nightmare. Mac OS X and Linux are much more secure than Windows XP.
Well if you think Bill is bad read Paul T’s take on this.
“A new email virus dubbed MyDoom is rapidly spreading across the Internet via UNIX mail servers, bringing with it a dangerous attachment”
Yes it is spreading via UNIX mail servers Paul. Kinda like saying the FLU spreads thru the air.
If it wasn’t Unix servers, it would be Windows servers that would be infected and then spread even more and leak all sorts of confidential emails everywhere.
Like how he specifies that it spreads via UNIX serves, almost makes you think it is really due to bad UNIX writing and not Windseave.
AARGHHH
You can fool most of the people some of the time. Come on windoze users, WAKE UP. I wonder what the actual balance sheets would really look like for business if they factored in all the IT time and resources costs spent on viruses and security issues. Would their Duh-ell computers actually turn out to cheaper? I think not.
Not to mention lost productivity while their computers are down.
NoPCZone:
As a Brit, I don’t like Royalty, Nobility or titles either. It’s a relic of a different age. Plenty of Brits would gladly lose the monarchy.
Having said that, these awards are just awards. America gives The Presidential Medal of Freedom. It’s given by the head of state. The British head of state is The Queen, so these things are equivalent.
There are campaigns here to distance these awards from the Monarchy and from the out-dated ‘British Empire’. Many people refuse the awards offered due to these associations. The most recent of note was poet Benjamin Zephaniah. Shortly afterwards, Independent journalist Yasmin Alahbi-Brown returned hers. These people appreciate getting an award for outstanding efforts, but would prefer one not seeped in undesireable history.
Where is Joe Mc when these sort of things happen? His computer down?
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“Security through obscurity” is not a nonsense. The term I believe was first used by OpenBSD group to describe the security model of Windows. MS claimed by preventing people from looking at the source code, hackers will have more difficult time to break. Thus,their claim was open source OS like Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Darwin will be easier to break in. The originator of term countered MS’ claim by stating that “security by obscurity” is not secure. They claimed by opening up the source code, more people can examine the code, thus the OS become more secure.
If one remembers back few years, Linux (version 1.x) was very insecure OS. Since then it has been examined and corrected by thousands(?) of programmers and it is now a very secure OS (at least based on the statistics of break ins). So, who was right? MS or Open Source group.
Doesn’t this amount to an explicit attack against Apple and Linux distros? In any other part of the market, if a company attacks another, they have to have the proof to backup their claims. Where is Bill’s proof that security through obscurity is valid and that non-windows systems are just as insecure as windows?
This is industrial lible (spelling???). Not that apple or SCO (hahahaha) would sue over it, but its still a bad business practice for MS to engage in.
MDN, Gates is right. A high volume system that is _thoroughly_ tested will be more secure. He implies Windows is, but Windows hasn’t been thoroughly tested. He also says just because no one is attacking, doesn’t mean it is secure. That is true, we have tons of other reasons Mac OS X is more secure than Windows. However, if Apple were not doing anything to improve security, Windows would eventually become more secure.
Most secure?
Windows is “deeply flawed,” was never intended for secure use on the “Net,” and in it’s current existing incantations, will never be fixable. see Bill Joy http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/billjoy.html
The guy is in denial… amazing.
Here is a quote from an article at CNET (MS’s lackey, no less)
“”We don’t really care what this guy got,” said Adler. “Security doesn’t rely on the secrecy of the algorithms. We’re all a bunch of cryptos (cryptographers) over here, so we know there’s no security through obscurity.””
‘To say a system is secure because no one is attacking it is very dangerous,’ said Gates, referring to operating systems that have a smaller share of the desktop market, such as Apple Mac OS and Linux,” Loney reports.
Brother Bill is implying that no one has tried to attack MacOS X or any other operating system, thus resulting in an artificial appearance of security. Apparently everyone is out to get poor, persecuted Windows.
IMO, to state that an operating system is “by far the most secure” when it is successfully attacked on a routine basis is beyond reason. When you are forced to resort to hyperbole in an argument then you clearly have no logical/factual basis for your assertion.
Security through obscurity worked well for Gene Hackman in Enemy of the State ; )
Just read the full story on news.com. Bill says that hackers have made their system even more secure because it’s allowed them to put measures in place to make things safe. That’s a laff. All those Windoze computers look safe to me today…
Also, he talks about this ultimate security OS called Longhorn, scheduled for release later in this decade. I don’t see a whole lot of people going “Whew, Longhorn will be safe. I will be really glad to see that in 5 years. I guess I don’t need to worry anymore.”
Hey man, you don’t want to f**k her, she’s never been f**k and she makes you wear a condom. She ain’t secure bro.
Now come check my babe out, why she has done a heck more out. Why back in 84 when she was a cheerleader she was doing both football teams, while some dweebs were watching a TV commercial.
And holes filled, my man, this b***h will take it in the ears and through her nostrils, I tell you, you want to secure a good time ya gotta do it with her.
Ya don’t even have to wear a condom.
Naw, don’t worry, she’s clean, we f**k, I mean test her hourly.
Bill didn’t say that Windows IS the most secure, he said it “WILL BE” quite abit different.
“That’s funny. Anyone can get source code for both Linux and MacOS X (Darwin). Only limited people has access to Windows code. So, which OS is using security through obscurity?”
Apparantly that’s not stopping the virus coders, there are over 91,000 viruses for Windows and Zero for Mac OS X.
You would think by now someone would write a malicious program just to be the first one to do so on a Mac, but it don’t happen.
Why? because BSD Unix is the MOST SECURE public operating system in existance. Unix is used extensively by the US government, the military and scientific establishements.
You want security? You get Unix, and if you want a excellent user interface on top of that, you get Mac OS X.
You Windroids don’t seem to understand, your OS is obsolete and has been for quite some time.
No web master in their right mind runs Microsoft. Just you poor deluded fucks who can’t buy a decent well made computer.
Change will occur, it always has. Remember DOS?
We Macheads got you to use a GUI, didn’t we?
Windroid FOOLS, go wallow in your sorrow and patch, patch patch!
(nothing like a nice troll to beat up on, thanks)
I would love to see Bill and co. put that in writing or on their advertisements and then see what happens, esp over in Europe.
lol @ Pimp Gates… but i thought our arrangement was private and now u go blabbing to the whole world! :p
How does HE know no one is attacking it (Mac OS)? The most he can say is that no one is attacking it SUCCESSFULLY, since we have no reports that indicate that. Unsuccessful attacks wouldn’t be reported because, most likely, they wouldn’t be known. In effect, it seems he just made the case FOR Mac OS security rather than cast doubt on it.
Free shareware virus for the Mac:
echo “echo “Please cut and paste this line into email to all of your friends.””
So now the Mac has a virus. Thank you for your participation.
BG is correct stating that an OS needs to be fully tested before it can be mature and secure.
BUT, BSD has been around since 1978 which was based on UNIX which was based on UNICS.
Here is a nice flowchart about UNIX, BSD, NeXTStep, and OSX as well as the evolution of most OS’.
http://www.levenez.com/unix/history.html#09
and
http://www.levenez.com/unix/
It has been updated to 2004.
You exepct the truth from him NOW???
Naive foolishness.
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Gates is full of himself.
Re: DakRoland’s comment “Funny how Al Gore had the same problem during his “Global Warming” speech. Remember, that happened to on the coldest day of the year in NYC. Interesting gaff, that.”
Actually, the scientific fact of global warming predicts extremes of temperatures. The gaff was from media morons in the pocket of big businesses which are terrified of the implication and their lack of understanding of what global warming brings. Respectfully, your “gaff” was to repeat it without determining if it was accurate. Sort of like the media repeating Bill’s lie that Windows was more secure than other OSes.
Not only that, but even Microsoft products for the Mac are more secure than any of them on Windows!
Entourage (in all its versions, AFAIK) will pop-up a dialog box if any sort of script attempts to do a mass emailing, making sure that’s what the user really wants to do. Outlook Express for the Mac does not offer this feature, but I seriously doubt anyone currently active on the Internet still uses it.
Googling around, I’ve even found instructions to have Entourage delete virus warnings automatically, posted by a UCLA, because obviously they realize Mac users need not concern themselves:
http://www.bol.ucla.edu/services/email/virus/docs/mac/entourage.html
Look at Internet Explorer – no ActiveX since (IIRC) version 3 on the Mac. All the Office apps have a macro protection feature that asks if you really want to run macros.
I think the only way a Mac user could spread a virus would be by constantly pressing OK and ignoring several warnings or indications of suspicious activity.
This may only be my opinion, but I think because there are less of them, and the ones that exist have more meaning, I think Mac users are more likely to read and respond to a dialog box whereas Windows users are more likely to just try to dismiss it with whatever means possible.