Id10Ts and the €conomic$ of $ecurity

[steve.milner]

You don't think that Apple are slipping him a bung by any chance?

Do you?

Steve

[tin.roof.rabbit]

The closest thing to a Mac I will own is my iPod. Not because I don’t like Macs, I think OSX is an awesome os, but because I don't like the appliance approach to the PC market. I also don't like that the monopoly they have on their hardware. I see Macs as more constrictive to their users with a big brother mentality hiding behind the smugness of obscurity.

That said, there is a place for Macs and PC (of all flavors) and people need to choose what is best for their style of computing and I would really like to see this debate after Vista has a year’s worth of face time in the market.

Ciao

[rcgreen]

My Debian desktop.

[nihil]

OMG! rcgreen those AO leprechauns have stolen your desktop icons, not your greenies!

Where is the Outlook Express icon? how can you have a meaningful and memorable internet experience without OE and its famous VTP technology (Virus Transfer Protocol)?

And you do seem to have a rather sick apple in there? perhaps you should turn up the central heating?

[rcgreen]

the way I see it, when the trojans arrive on my computer, they'll
see that desktop and get confused???

[wheaty_bytes]

Talking of *nix security, have you guys heard back from the guys at gluck about the hacked debian server (see http://www.linuxsecurity.com/content/view/123560/65/). I think it goes to show that no matter how secure an OS is claimed to be, the security is in the user, not the OS. Users need to understand the underlying OS to make it truly secure (although I can imagine the guys who run that particular server are very good at their jobs).

PS - Don't get me wrong - I'm a keen kubuntu linux fan.

[nihil]

wheaty_bytes I do see your point, which leads to another argument against what these "supposed gurus" at Sophos are saying.

OK if you have a home computer which you have already spent a lot of money on and you really want to go for "security through obscurity"..............go and buy Linspire and a shed load of applications. It would be one hell of a lot cheaper that buying an Apple and the same applications.

[wheaty_bytes]

Why buy one? If you go to distrowatch, there are hundreds of distros that are begging you to use them for free.
Going back to what I was saying before, though, I have found that it has been easier to learn about the underlying nature of linux. This is because in windows, you don't need to be exposed to that for day to day working on the computer. Point and click - that's all there is to it most of the time. I think the stats say that 95% of people have never installed an OS, be it windows or whatever. You really don't need to know much to use windows for most tasks. In linux, there is rarely a day when I don't learn something new about the system through checking something on a man page or trying to tweak or fix something. The community is also more into knowing how it works as well. The majority of windows users just want it to work, whereas I think the majority of linux users are technical.

[nihil]

The reason for this discussion is that two senior personnel at Sophos (a supposed IT security company) have recommended that home users (point and click types) should replace their PCs with Apples.

Linux distros are irrelevant.................. we are talking point and click only here. Apples are (overexpensive) point and click boxes.

Lindows is also point and click (it isn't the only one) and looks very much like Windows to the average home user. I would certainly contend that there would be no more culture shock between going to that and going to OS X.

The reason I say buy, is that it comes with CDs, manuals, and applications; just like a Windows PC you buy off the shelf.

The last "bundle" I bought cost $99 and contained everything the average home owner would need. It was directly comparable to a Windows PC bundle, if not better.

So, my argument is that it is vastly more cost effective to get a professional to harden your Windows box than to buy an Apple and all the applications.

If you really want to go for security through obscurity, then Linspire (or similar) is a far less costly solution that does not require purchasing a whole new set of hardware .

[HTRegz]

Hey Hey,

recgreen: Your desktop looks like OS9 though, not OS X... big difference..

nihil: even recommending Lindows isn't the answer... If anything how about ReactOS ... at least with Mac you still get the big names.. Adobe, Microsoft, etc...

My thoughts are begining to lead towards the majority of the members of this site being Anti Mac without ever having used them.... I can tell you from being at RECON (one of the industry leading conferences) which was populated by people from Yahoo, iDefense, TippingPoint, BreakingPoint, Cloudmark and Determina... Members of the metasploit project... hardware hackers... employees from Ernst and Young... and many others... and Macs were the primary computers that these people had with them.. When everyone was sitting at the talks.. over 50% of the people had Macs... Yet here's a forum.. supposedly "in the industry" all speaking out against it...

/me wonders...

Peace,
HT