The latest email virus that has been filling up our inboxes is brining all kinds of bad press down on Microsoft (and rightly so). However, I have seen one, however tiny and insignificant, gesture that Microsoft should be lauded for.
The Microsoft.com home page, as of this writing, features as the most prominent page element, a large item linking to information about the Mydoom virus (here’s a screenshot of the home page, as I’m sure it won’t stay up there for long). While this is, of course, the least Microsoft can do, it’s nice to see them putting the information that people are actually looking for right up front.
What’s he smiling about? “Yeah, a virus! Weeee!”
It’s interesting to see that reporting of viruses is changing from “infects PCs” to “infects Microsoft products” or “infects Windows operating systems”.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3441525.stm
As a Mac user, it really cheeses me off when the media reports that all Personal Computers are affected by a virus, when it’s clearly not true.
Problem is, most people don’t even know that you can run any other system on a desktop computer other than Windows (opinion based purely on my own experiences). So it would be even better if virus reports stated “Windows affected, Mac and Linux completely unaffected” – might get a few Windows users to migrate, and shame Microsoft into doing more about security than just issuing press releases!
Does offering a $250,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person who started the MyDoom.B virus count as doing something more about security than just issuing press releases?
I’m not a tech person, so forgive my ignorance, but are Mac and Linux operating systems safer than Windows because they’re more secure and better designed or are they safer because they make up such a small percentage of computer users that virus creators just haven’t bothered going after them yet?
Last I checked, SCO‘s website also had an advertisement about the virus. It was much along the same lines providing information about email safety and the like. Their interest in the virus is spurred by the fact that the virus is targeting their website for a DDOS attack.
I’m not suite sure why they chose to put this type information on the SCO page. It doesn’t seem likely that a person potentially affected by the virus will go to the SCO site for information, and the virus itself is not spread through computers using SCO’s UNIX operating systems.
As a likely tribute to the virus’s success (good or bad), the SCO website is unavailble at this time.
“are Mac and Linux operating systems safer than Windows because they’re more secure and better designed or are they safer because they make up such a small percentage of computer users”
I’d say it’s a bit of both. I’m a user of Linux, Mac and Windows. While it’s true that, if (say) the Mac had as large a market share as Microsoft currently does, it might be attacked by malware as Windows is, my own feeling is that it wouldn’t fare as badly.
Why? Because of the executable bit in Unix (which MacOS X is based on). Basically, this means that the user has to actually change the permissions of a file in order for it to be executable, whereas Windows assumes anything with a .exe, .com or .bat file extension is executable.
Thus Windows is insecure by design.