Why Vista is more secure than the rest

All written by Microsoft and usual tosh from MS. Jeff Jones's results have been proved to be floored in many ways, many times.

If you've posted this and are serious then......wtf? If you posted this to put a smile on my face then :)
 
Bash said:
All written by Microsoft and usual tosh from MS. Jeff Jones's results have been proved to be floored in many ways, many times.

If you've posted this and are serious then......wtf? If you posted this to put a smile on my face then :)
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Q: You work for Microsoft, so why should we believe anything you say?
The other variation on this is “would you have still published if the results for bad for Microsoft?”

People may be surprised to learn that I always like it when I get this question. The real answer is that I was not really worried about getting bad results. A better question might be why I was confident enough in the results to initiate the project.

Think about it – Microsoft has been investing heavily in security improvements for products for about 6 years now. The commitment to security is real – I made myself as sure of that as I could before I joined the company. Others may believe that or not, but I’ve been here for five years and observed the executive commitment and hard work first hand. I’ve had the pleasure of working with some great security people like Mike Howard and David Cross. I was here as the team grew and we attracted great industry experts like James Whittaker and more recently, Vinny Gullotto.

Because of that, I can say what I always so. Be skeptical! Assume I’m “spinning” things if you wish and try to go find out for yourself. That is ultimately my goal – to get people to actively question and dig into why the results turn out the way they do. All of my sources are identified in Appendix B: Sources and Methodology, so anyone can work to duplicate the analysis in this report. I am happy to discuss findings with them.
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mr.sly said:
I am happy to discuss findings with them.
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But he doesn't. When asked and pressed he does not answer the question. His methods of obtaining the results are holy inaccurate. He argues that balck is white when questioned about it. If you search a little more you'll find the evidence.
 
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Bash said:
All written by Microsoft and usual tosh from MS. Jeff Jones's results have been proved to be floored in many ways, many times.

If you've posted this and are serious then......wtf? If you posted this to put a smile on my face then :)
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I posted it and are serious :) Why is it so hard to believe? You can do the research yourself if you like and you'll come to the same conclusion. Net conclusion will be that Vista has had significantly less and less severe vulnerabilities in general than XP at this stage in its lifecycle.

So are you saying that Vista has had more severe holes than XP? Is that what you intended to say? Surely not? I don't think even die hard open source advocates would be that fatally misguided.
 
NathanE said:
Net conclusion will be that Vista has had significantly less and less severe vulnerabilities in general than XP at this stage in its lifecycle.

So are you saying that Vista has had more severe holes than XP? Is that what you intended to say? Surely not? I don't think even die hard open source advocates would be that fatally misguided.
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Well, its not something I would have thought would impress anyone. Hey! Vista has less vulnerabilities than XP at the same stage of lifecycle. Comparing it to XP isn't something to be proud of. Why would I even care if it is less vulnerable than XP? It wasn't the point I was making?

Anyway, I would probably agree with him and you on that point. My point eariler was that there has been good arguments as to to why his statements are inaccurate in the way they are formulated and the results he obtained when stating that Vista is less vulnerable than other OSes. Are die hard Microsoft advocates usually fatally misguided and believe the Microsoft published propaganda?

I believe most industry "experts" consider Vista as a bit of a joke. Pretty bad one so far.
 
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If Vista is a joke, its a pretty damn good one.#

I completely love it, 4GB of ram and a quad core on vista feels stupidly smooth. Photoshop feels beautiful to use, game performance ain't bad at all, and the entire experience just feels a lot more "polished" than XP. XP feels clunky (for lack of a better word) in comparison. I am dual booting between XP 32 and 64 Vista BTW.

You said that we shouldn't compare it to XP - I am curious what do you want us to compare it too ?

vistafirstyearvulnerabinc5.jpg


That beats Mac, and many open source Distro's too.
 
That graph would suggest that Ubuntu is the most secure OS as it has the least unfixed vulnerabilities. The graph is of course completely pointless as it does not demonstrate how serious each individual vulnerability is. Not to mention that you didn't mention the source...

I'm not saying that Vista is more or less secure than any other OS, just that there isn't really any clear metric which allows you to measure security.
 
You've misenterpreted (sp?)

What the graph shows is how many vulnerabilities each OS had in the first place and how many of those have been fixed.

Vista had the least amount of all in the first place which is why it is the most secure OS.

Whereas Ubuntu had almost 4 times as many vulnerabilities which then had to be fixed.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
Looks like you believe the propaganda from the other side of the fence.

Burnsy
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But even Linus Torvalds commented a few months ago saying that Vista's security appears to be holding up much much better than XP's did :)

IMO this isn't about propaganda. It is about facts. The Microsoft document clearly states all of its sources/references so that others can duplicate the research and, hopefully, come to the same conclusion. Obviously that doesn't automagically make the research correct though... and I dare say that the Linux distro's could have been stripped down a bit more from all their default install bloat. He commented in the article that he only disabled packages which he "felt" users would disable... that is wide open to opinion. But TBH you could write a whole thesis on just how to go about comparing Windows and Linux in security terms... and IMO that's not really the primary concern of the research.
 
"slinky" said:
You've misenterpreted (sp?)

What the graph shows is how many vulnerabilities each OS had in the first place and how many of those have been fixed.

Vista had the least amount of all in the first place which is why it is the most secure OS.

Whereas Ubuntu had almost 4 times as many vulnerabilities which then had to be fixed.
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No it shows DISCOVERED vulnerabilities . There is a huge difference. Not to mention most distros release patches in a few days (some are better than others though), they are usually fully disclosed in patch notes, i've seen a lot of large scale security fixes pushed under the carpet by MS, and some they refuse to even acknowledge till their Tuesday patch day.

As also mentioned the scale of the vulnerability isn't mentioned either so they could be anything, that graph is useless.

I would also consider that Ubuntu is a Linux distro, therefore Linux is the kernel and core utilities and Ubuntu adds on all the other packages, Vista is the kernel, the system utilities, the GUI and all the other crap. You can bet Ubuntus figures include every package installed on it (but not written or maintained by the Ubuntu team..) whereas Vista just counts the base OS'.
 
Ethics said:
No it shows DISCOVERED vulnerabilities . There is a huge difference. Not to mention most distros release patches in a few days (some are better than others though), they are usually fully disclosed in patch notes, i've seen a lot of large scale security fixes pushed under the carpet by MS, and some they refuse to even acknowledge till their Tuesday patch day.

As also mentioned the scale of the vulnerability isn't mentioned either so they could be anything, that graph is useless.

I would also consider that Ubuntu is a Linux distro, therefore Linux is the kernel and core utilities and Ubuntu adds on all the other packages, Vista is the kernel, the system utilities, the GUI and all the other crap. You can bet Ubuntus figures include every package installed on it (but not written or maintained by the Ubuntu team..) whereas Vista just counts the base OS'.
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Or in other words, it doesn't support your viewpoint so cue random unproven accusations and praise...

Are you trying to say there are huge numbers of undiscovered vunerabilities in vista? What evidence have you got to support this claim? The rest is pretty much just FUD...
 
Bottom line is, for a reason I can't figure some people just dislike Vista.

I remember just as much crying and whimpering when XP was released. "I will never leave 98! XP sucks. blah blah blah"

Some things bug me about Vista, but overall its faster (assuming you have the right hardware) more secure (will get on to that in a minute) and just as stable (more so in fact for me than XP has been).

The new way it draws the screen, new networking stack, better (read night and day difference) between memory management, Aero, completely reworked networking stack, and more just make me love it.

As for security, I am the first to admit MS slipped up on XP, and I really do believe they are improving their standings on Vista. I have read an article a while back stating that Vista's security holes are actually patched and responded to far quicker than XP's ever was. (remember the RPC exploit, where if you connected to the net your PC was likely to shut down, or the messenger spam? all XP problems).

I am not saying Vista is the holy grail, it has faults, but as I type this now, I feel a lot more confident that my system will not crash, and will not get as much random crap installed thanks to the inbuilt security layers in Vista.

Oh yeah, and what about Mac and the linux distro's?

Well, first of all, MS have a far larger user base, which presents 2 problems.

1. People who know little about PC's will more than likely do things to compromise their security. I have seen it tons of times on XP. Annoying as UAC is (thankfully it can be made silent very easily) its very good for novice users because it warns them constantly.

2. Windows has a far larger share than Mac and Linux. This leads to:

A: More likely users will be infected through random viruses because they aren't protected and no little to nothing about PC's (Mac has as many less skilled computer users perhaps, BUT their numbers are far lower because of the amount of users compared to windows.

B: Because windows is so large, a lot of Viruses and exploits are written. Why write something for Mac when the percentage is a fraction of windows, for example?

With all of that said, do I prefer Vista to XP? Well yes I do. Do I think it's as good as it could be ? no, it has room for improvement. But still, to me MS have made a few steps in the right direction of Vista.
 
NathanE said:
But even Linus Torvalds commented a few months ago saying that Vista's security appears to be holding up much much better than XP's did :)

IMO this isn't about propaganda. It is about facts. The Microsoft document clearly states all of its sources/references so that others can duplicate the research and, hopefully, come to the same conclusion. Obviously that doesn't automagically make the research correct though... and I dare say that the Linux distro's could have been stripped down a bit more from all their default install bloat. He commented in the article that he only disabled packages which he "felt" users would disable... that is wide open to opinion. But TBH you could write a whole thesis on just how to go about comparing Windows and Linux in security terms... and IMO that's not really the primary concern of the research.
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I did a little random googling last night, and the amount of random blogs and tech sites which agree with MS is staggering.
 
It's slightly unfair to compare Vista patches to OSX / Linux distros. Because their updates incude updates for all the bundled software too, which for some of them can be literally thousands of packages.

I'm still dead happy with vista in general, though. :)
 
I decided to give Vista a chance, and whilst it uses more memory, I think its a lot better than XP.

It depends whether your a member of the "lets hate MS club"
 
Moredhel said:
It's slightly unfair to compare Vista patches to OSX / Linux distros. Because their updates incude updates for all the bundled software too, which for some of them can be literally thousands of packages.

I'm still dead happy with vista in general, though. :)
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What facilities does the average linux distro or OSX provide that Vista does not that would make it unfair to compare? what additional functions, features and programs are provided?
 
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