Why is Windows (apparently) less secure than other OSes? Also re: NTFS fragmentation.

wth, every time i make a comment here i am either, stupid, trolling or need to leave the forum :(
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Generally because what you say is far removed from the truth.

groen said:
windows 7 is even worse, they have built in security flaws. m$ say it is feature. i believe they call it internet explorer...
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What security flaws does IE8 have then?

NathanE said:
Nor was NT 4, 2000, XP, or Vista :p Why single out W7 :confused:
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XP had it's issues, a few more than it deserved though, probably due to extended life cycle. I really had 98/ME in mind which were awful.
 
groen said:
what are you saying that ie8 does not have any security issues ?

i am not sure what we are arguing about as a quick google search comes up with a lot of results for ie8 exploits.
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I'm saying it has no more exploits than any other popular browser. It's not just about number of exploits either, it's about what that exploit can lead to. With IE protected mode, it's much more difficult for an exploit to have system wide ramifications.
 
groen said:
what are you saying that ie8 does not have any security issues ?

i am not sure what we are arguing about as a quick google search comes up with a lot of results for ie8 exploits.
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Anyone can use Google and claim to know what they're talking about when it comes to security.

FYI, IE8 paired with Vista or W7 is pretty much universally respected in the security industry as the most secure current web browser.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
XP had it's issues, a few more than it deserved though, probably due to extended life cycle. I really had 98/ME in mind which were awful.
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No that's a fair point. XP did have a bit of bad patch around the MSBlaster era. But Microsoft *did* respond quickly (they had a patch out 3 weeks before MSBlaster struck, but of course back then Automatic Updates were opt-in rather than opt-out, and the Windows Firewall was off by default).

XP was always going to be a bit of a mare though as Microsoft focused on maintaining compatibility with 95/98/ME because back then they wanted users of those operating systems to upgrade.
 
NathanE said:
No that's a fair point. XP did have a bit of bad patch around the MSBlaster era. But Microsoft *did* respond quickly (they had a patch out 3 weeks before MSBlaster struck, but of course back then Automatic Updates were opt-in rather than opt-out, and the Windows Firewall was off by default).

XP was always going to be a bit of a mare though as Microsoft focused on maintaining compatibility with 95/98/ME because back then they wanted users of those operating systems to upgrade.
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That's one of the key reasons they invested so much time in Vista's security model, but I think I'm preaching to the converted :D
 
groen said:
news to me... the "security industry" that i am aware of would laugh at that statement. but hey maybe i am behind.
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If you were the slightest bit knowledgable in this area you would have come across this article from 1st March.

It may shock you to learn that security experts are putting their reputations on the line by singling out IE8 as a secure browser.

http://www.oneitsecurity.it/01/03/2010/interview-with-charlie-miller-pwn2own/

There was also this report which was well received last year:

http://nsslabs.com/test-reports/NSS Labs Browser Security Test - Socially Engineered Malware.pdf

Of course, these are just second hand URLs. A real knowledgable person in this area would figure it out for themselves that IE8 with Vista/W7's UAC/Protected Mode's sandboxed environment is of course going to be more secure than anything less.
 
i stopped using IE after 6.

this new sandboxed environment, is that just a normal IE with activeX and flash and everything useful disabled ?

yea as i thought. i agree that the other browsers are just as secure or unsecure. I can't wait till everyone on the net stops using flash, i hate the codec, but taht is another topic.

i was just trying to be funny when i said "windows 7 is even worse, they have built in security flaws. m$ say it is feature. i believe they call it internet explorer... "

but i do stand by my claim that windows 7 or 2008 server or which ever release is unsecure.
 
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But they're not. They really aren't.

As an aside, there is no "virii" in Latin. Latin does not have a plural form of virus, but if it did it would highly likely to be "viruses". :)
 
groen said:
i stopped using IE after 6.

this new sandboxed environment, is that just a normal IE with activeX and flash and everything useful disabled ?
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No, no it's not. Your making your ignorance very obvious now.

groen said:
i was just trying to be funny when i said "windows 7 is even worse, they have built in security flaws. m$ say it is feature. i believe they call it internet explorer... "
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Don't give up your day job.

groen said:
but i do stand by my claim that windows 7 or 2008 server or which ever release is unsecure.
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Fancy backing up that statement? No, I thought not.
 
The only things I can think of are due to the masisve number of confgurations windows needs to run on, but then that makes no sense and that should affect Linux too.
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Great point

Also the same question with defragging, why is the NTFS format worse with fragmentation than other types of drive formatting?
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I have thought about this many times, it would be great to have a FS that needed no defragging by the user.
 
Windows 7 does it automatically. User never needs to manually defrag.

EDIT: I have just read that the ext4 filesystem will come with a defrag utility. etx3 keeps fragmentation to a minimum, but it does get fragmented over time.
 
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Amp34 said:
Also the same question with defragging, why is the NTFS format worse with fragmentation than other types of drive formatting?
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It isn't. Even the "hip and cool" names like ReiserFS need defragmentation.

NTFS is a general purpose and high performance journaling file system. If NTFS spent any more effort at minimising fragmentation in real-time then it would start hitting performance too much.

There do exist very specialist file systems that put incredible efforts into minimising fragmentation (some even simply don't allow it at all). But they lack in other areas, such as performance, scalability and hell even just reliability (non-journaling).

SiriusB said:
I have just read that the ext4 filesystem will come with a defrag utility. ext3 keeps fragmentation to a minimum, but it does get fragmented over time.
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Same as NTFS then. Except that NTFS has supported defragmentation since NT 4.0 and a native defragger was included since Windows 2000.

NTFS is actually, probably (and I don't want to come across as a Microsoft zealot here), the most advanced file system that exists today. No other file system provides journaling, transactional operations, fine-grained security ACLs with inheritence, shadow copies, file compression and/or encryption, user/group quotas ... whilst still maintaining a high I/O performance. It works excellently for both servers and workstations/desktops with pretty much no changes between the two environments at all.
 
Yeah, i was just pointing out that Linux filesystems do get fragmented, just as any other filesystem. I have met people who really believe it doesn't. Etx4 coming with a defrag utility is rather a good bit of proof they are wrong! :p
 
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