Anti-Virus Software ?

[Matthew Miller]

On Fri, Oct 08, 2004 at 02:32:02PM -0500, John Thompson wrote:
> exploits.  If this were true, however, we would expect that in markets 
> where Windows has less penetration -- e.g. internet severs, where 
> Windows servers comprise ~40% of the market -- that Windows should only 
> suffer ~40% of the exploits in this arena.  That is not what we see, 
> however: even with ~40% of the internet server market, Windows still 
> suffers ~95% of the significant exploits.  One can conclude from this 
> that Windows is inherently less secure than other platforms.

One can conclude all sorts of things. :)

But the one you've picked doesn't necessarily follow. 95% of desktop share
might lead to increased incentive and ability to develop exploits, which
then _happen_ to also work when the same OS is used in other markets --
leading to more exploits there than you would expect by looking at that
segment in a vacuum.

-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>