It is a myth that Windows only gets attacked most because it's such a big target, and if Linux use grew then so would the number of attacks.
False dilemma. How can both be true?
but its design makes it a much easier target and much easier for an attack to wreak havoc.
Of course it does. See if you were writing a virus for Linux, it would only work for a few months before most distros stop using the libs you statically linked. The same things that make Windows an 'easier target' are the exact same reasons that it's so much better as a development platform- a well documented public API that covers everything, Side By Side DLL installations that actually work- generally with many other platforms you are better off to just statically link the library files, rather then just cross your fingers and hope the end user has the lib file. Or, more likely, you just throw the source on the net and let others figure it out.
Windows' widespread (and often unnecessary) use of features such as RPC meanwhile adds vulnerabilities that really need not be there.
No worse t han having world-readable /home directory's, a program preinstalled in some later distros with the express purpose of tracking everything you do. Or how bash keeps the systems root password in plaintext in /root/.bash_history The last one might have been fixed, but the fact that it was ever in production ought to worry anybody.
Linux's design is not vulnerable in the same ways, and no matter how successful it eventually becomes it simply cannot experience attacks to similar levels, inflicting similar levels of damage, to Windows.Windows is harder to secure than Linux. It is the simple truth.
A false truth.
Many IT professionals including RHCEs and MCSEs believe that Linux is more secure than Windows.
Which in no way changes the fact that it's not. I'm sure plenty of otherwise smart people believe all sorts of stupid crap, that doesn't give creedence to it, it just means that they believe some stupid crap. When you have to resort to an appeal to authority to try to prove something, you've already lost. Arguments are made by facts, not by declarations of who said what and what level of education they happened to have.
Linux is secure by design i.e. Linux is inherently more secure than Windows.
There
is no such thing as "inherently secure" software. the term is meaningless. They are just weasel words spouted by FOSS advocates who understand little to nothing about the NT security architecture. Then you have ridiculous defaults like 15 minute sudo Sessions, and that fiasco with OpenSSL. The only systems that are 'inherently secure' are capability-based systems, such as
EROS.
Linux designed as a multi-use, network operating system from day one.
No. Linux was designed for absolutely none of those! It was designed because Torvalds wanted a Unix-like operating system on his 386. That's it. There was no inherent goal for security or networkability. Claims to the contrary are pure fabrications. Linux was not designed to be secure, it just inherited security from UNIX, which itself was not inherently secure since it wasn't designed to be secure from get-go either, it was designed simply to work; all other concerns were secondary, and when you have trade-offs like treating everything like a stream of bytes it's no surprise that secunia's listing for it's derivatives are so high. The thousand-eyes approach doesn't work when the thousand eyes are all fixated on some stupid window chrome.
For example IE / FF bug can take down entire windows computer. However, if there were the same bug in FF it won't take down entire Linux computer.
This is false.
Under windows almost any app level bug can be used to take down the entire system and turn into a zombie computer.
Also false. Again, ignorance of the NT security system does not mean you can make stuff up.
No operating system is secure Both Linux / Windows admin requires same level of skills.
you JUST SAID it was inherently secure! Now it's pretty clear you don't know what that means. Either that- or far more likely- you simply copy-pasted a bunch of search results. The results of which contradict themselves more than I ever could, really.
