Grabbed a look at this article over at the Inquirer the other day.Mi2G claiming Linux-based servers are the most hacked, in a review conducted in January of over 17,000 "successful" hacks.

We've all seen figures like these before, most notabily regarding economic damage done by piracy and fast-spreading worms, and most rational people have to call these numbers into question.

Does anyone have experience or currently generate any statistics like these? I'd like to get some insight as to how these numbers are generated - possibly even disect the process a bit.

(if you don't want to discuss it on the board, drop me an email ...

l00p

Article follows:

Linux servers "hacked the most", claims specialist

By INQUIRER staff: Tuesday 02 March 2004, 07:17

DIGIRISK SPECIALIST Mi2g is likely to get right up the noses of open source advocates everywhere by claiming that Linux servers are the most breached online servers available.
The London based outfit said that Linux is the worst, Windows servers had got better and BSDs and Mac OSX were the safest.

Mi2g claimed it had analysed 17,074 successful digital attacks against online servers and networks in January 2004, with Linux accounting for 13,654 breaches, and Windows for 2005 followed by BSD and Mac OS X with 555 breaches worldwide.

But, the company is quick to point out that its figures don't take into account the numerous malware attacks against Windows and mass website defacements were counted as multiple attacks.

A spinner for the company said that since the recent global malware epidemics have not caused any economic damage to systems running Open Source including Linux, BSD and Mac OS X, it ignored them.

The company said that mass website attacks were counted as multiple attacks because although there is a single action on the part of the attacker, economic damage is always done to multiple victims.

The firm estimated the overall economic damage from hacker activity worldwide was between $US2.34 billion and $2.86 billion.

But, according to Australian Age, Mi2g's figures have been questioned in the past. It claimed the MyDoom worm cost the world more than $US38.5 billion a figure labelled "absurd" by Rob Rosenberger, the editor of the Vmyths website.