Tag Archives | Linux

Windows v. Linux security: the real facts

Operating System Security, a Clear Winner.

  • Nicholas Petreley (The Register): Windows v Linux security: the real facts. “Reliance on a single metrics is a major feature of Microsoft’s Get the Facts campaign, and this is perhaps understandable if we consider what the campaign is. It is essentially a marketing-driven campaign intended to ‘get the message across’ with data used to back up the message (note that Microsoft would not necessarily disagree with us here). However, by their nature marketing campaigns push specific, favourable headline items and magnify their significance. They do not necessarily (even usually) accurately reflect the underlying data, and frequently outrun it by some distance. And this process is actually easily illustrated by the Forrester report we linked to earlier on. Get the Facts pulls out the 100 per cent fix and fewest vulnerabilities bullets, while the report itself talks of its use of three metrics and (if we’re doing headline items) also says: “ICAT classified 67% of Microsoft’s vulnerabilities as high severity, placing Microsoft dead last among the platform maintainers in this [high severity] metric.”
  • From Dan Gillmor’s eJournal

    Hacking the LinkSys WRT-54G

    LinkSys manufactures a router-switch-wireless access point that’s a spiffy little computer on top of being a cute computer peripheral. The machine sports a 200 MHz ARM processor, 4 Mb of Flash RAM and 8 Mb or RAM. (Their new GS models doubles both of these). It is managed via a web interface. Not surprisingly, the device runs Linux. Since they base their code on Linux, the GNU Public License requires them to publish the source code as well. Naturally, this leads to third parties offering enhancements and replacements. Cool stuff includes:

    • Sveasoft offers a replacement with the BusyBox command shell, DropBear SSH server and dozens of other tools, as well as many bug fixes.
    • BatBox is a set of add-on tools for the standard LinkSys firmware
    • Folks at SeattleWireless.net document the router on their wiki and have a fascinating website about creating community wireless nets. They also highlight NoCatSplash, an “Open Public Network Gateway Daemon” in case you plan to offer a community site with a sign-on or “I Agree” click-through.
    • OpenWrt takes a different tack, offering a base distribution on top of which you can customize your own tools
    • Portless Networks offer their eWrt distribution, a fork from an earlier version of the Sveasoft software, with a goal of developing a stable distribution for ISPs and other network providers.
    • HyperWRT focuses on boosting the broadcast power, a great idea if you are not in a dense urban environment and want maximum broadcast range

    So, why would you hack a working appliance just to put your own custom software on it? 1) It’s cool. 2) Bug fixes 3) More features 4) Why not?

    User Guide to Using the Linux Desktop

    A free user’s manual, the “User Guide to Using the Linux Desktop,” published by the International Open Source Network
    (IOSN), a subsidiary of United Nations Asia-Pacific Development
    Information Programme (UN APDIP), includes training materials and
    presentation slides in OpenOffice.org format, intended for spreading
    the word that Linux is suitable as a no-cost desktop operating system.
    Looks like their site has been totally overwhelmed by being featured on Slashdot and ZDNetUK, but check the site out in a day or two, when it has recovered.

    Installing and Tuning OpenOffice on Mac OS X

    Marc Liyanage supplies this great page on “Installing and Tuning OpenOffice on Mac OS X.” I’m running OpenOffice.org cross-platform on Windows, Linux and OS X, and I’m working at finding the optimal configuration to produce sharp PDF files.

    Alex Feldstein syndicates his Visual FoxPro Tips and Tricks pages

    [Alex Feldstein]
    blogs: “My VFP Tips & Tricks have an RSS feed. My Visual FoxPro
    Tips & Tricks pages which I have been maintaining for years, now
    have an RSS feed…I publish them in English and Spanish. You can find
    both feeds at the following links:[Spanish] [English]Enjoy!”

    Very cool! I notice that Alex is also generating the list in ListGarden
    as well. I’ve been very pleased with it, as well. I’ve got it installed
    in three places: locally on a Windows workstation, in server mode on a
    Linux intranet server and on my OS X iMac. All work well. Imagine that!
    Cross-platform, compatible, standards-compliant Open Source. Remarkable.

    FM Radio -> MP3 on a schedule? Personal Audio Recording on your PC

    Very cool. Years ago, I picked up a D-Link DSB-R100
    – a USB-powered radio that’s an antenna and FM tuner with an audio jack
    for output. Sadly, it doesn’t look like D-Link is selling them any
    more, but they only cost $29 originally, so you might be able to pick
    one up cheap second-hand (there’s one on eBay today). Originally, the
    software it came with only ran on Windows 98, although D-Link is
    offering drivers for other Windows versions now. However, Open Source
    advocates got their hands on it, and provided software for Linux and for Mac OS X. Now, I can write a simple script to capture my favorite shows and listen to them at my leisure.

    Linux updates at tr.com

    Upgraded the tedroche.com web server from Red Hat 8 to Fedora Core 2 using the yum updater, following the instructions here. Installed the vsFTPd ftp server so that I could move updates more quickly to the server. Reviewing security issues, found this page, which had some good stuff on it. In fact, the entire YoLinux.com seems rich with hundreds of links (page down on the home page) and dozens of tutorials. Reconfigured and updated WebMin, including adding in a 3rd party module for vsftpd. Man, the richness of material available on the web is amazing!

    Dan Bricklin releases ListGarden, simple RSS feed generation

    Sounds great! I know several folks for whom this would be perfect!
    The Doc Searls Weblog reports Well sown.

    “Dan Bricklin has released ListGarden,
    an RSS feed generator. Looks like an ideal way to extend easy RSS
    generation from blogs to everything else: newsletters, private
    websites, whatever. It’s a free-standing utility that runs as a local
    HTTP server app or through CGI on a remote server. No need to know XML,
    HTML or RSS details. Runs on Linux, OS X and Windows. Open source
    (written in Perl), released under the GPL. Launches a new category,
    methinks.

    Very cool.”

    How much would you pay for a favorable opinion?

    From Dan Gillmor’s eJournalOpinion Laundering Thrives.

    • Tim Lambert: When Think Tanks Attack. Why
      are all these think tanks so down on Open Source? Well, the Small
      Business Survival Committee is concerned that using open source will
      expose small business to the risk of lawsuits. Citizens Against
      Government Waste is concerned that the Government might waste money on
      Open Source. Defenders of Property Rights is concerned that Open Source
      might be a threat to intellectual property rights. However, I was able
      to detect a common theme to all their criticism. They all seem to be
      funded by Microsoft.

    “This piece isn’t absolute proof, but it’s another layer of circumstantial evidence that Microsoft is continuing its campaign of what I’ve called “opinion laundering” to make a case against LInux and other free software. (See previous  looks at this subject here, here and here, for example.) Microsoft is hardly alone in this activity, of course. Lambert’s article looks into the tobacco archives and shows how major think tanks were paid by tobacco companies  and took positions congruent with the tobacco interests’ own views. The bigger problem is that we often don’t know who is funding which think tank, and many won’t tell us. Even the ones that do say they’re getting some money from companies like Microsoft won’t say how much. If the “contribution” is .001 percent of annual funding, that’s trivial. If it’s 50 percent, that’s not trivial. But we are never told this relevant information. None of this is illegal, but it’s definitely sleazy. We need laws, not that this Congress or administration will every touch the topic, to force think tanks to reveal the sources and amounts of their funding in amounts over, say, $500. That would let individuals continue to contribute in privacy, but would shine a needed light on the opinion laundering that is now so prevalent. In the meantime, when a think tank takes any position on just about anything, your first instinct should be to ask, “Did someone pay for that opinion?” — Dan Gillmor

    Some people accuse me of being an “Open Source zealot” (thanks, btw), but at least my opinion is not for sale to the highest bidder.

    GNU Bash reference

    MacOSXHints points out a really useful reference for Mac OS X, Linux or Windows CygWin users, for that matter – the GNU Bash Reference.
    Written by the authors of the shell, this book covers the concept of
    the shell, its commands and variables in 180 pages. The book can be
    purchased for $29.95 or downloaded in PDF from their website for free.

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    This work by Ted Roche is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.