In (rec.radio.amateur.boatanchors), Scott Dorsey wrote:
Brian Kelly wrote:
"Peter Gottlieb" wrote in message ...
Mydoom.F just got into one machine here which had McAfee running and fully
updated. McAfee then could not clean it. The free cleaner from Symantec
(Norton AV) did the job.

You can build up all sorts of defences, or you can switch over to Linux,
which I am strongly considering for this office.

Who sez that Linux is "bulletproof" in this context? In the extreme
assume that *everybody* switched to Linux: How long might you suppose
it would take for the spammers to bust Linux and go on doing "business
as usual"?

It's not bulletproof at all, but it doesn't have severe design deficiencies
at least. They'll still keep finding buffer overrun problems in Linux, but
we won't be seeing the sort of boneheaded design flaws that Windows has.
The real problem is that the Windows issues aren't being fixed, they are just
being patched around and obscured.... and then the next virus comes along.
Until the fundamental problems get fixed, it's not going to get any better.
With Linux, at least there are routes to get that sort of problem fixed if it
should appear. I'm no Linux fan, but it's sure a big step up in terms of
unified design.

To which I'll add that the malware writers are reverse-engineering the
Wondows patches to see what the vulnerabilities are, and then writing
and disseminating exploits for those vulnerabilities, secure in the
knowledge that some large fraction of the Internet-connected Windows
machines around the world will be running unpatched Windows.

Open source is, IMHO, far preferable to that situation. I don't run
Linux at home, and at work we run AIX, FreeBSD or Linux (up-to-date)
on all machines exposed to the raw Internet.

--
Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected
without, I thought, proper consideration.

(Stan Kelly-Bootle)