OT - the final and real story - was Re: OT: Linux most breached OS

[Bill Vermillion]

On Sun, Nov 21 03:28 , John Esak moved his mouse, rebooted for the 
change to take effect, and then said:" 

I say 'final and real' because this post references the original
posting from Mi2g that started the flood of commentary, including
at least 26 different trade publications.

John said:
> Far be it from me to want this to instigate any firestorms...
> :-) Seriously, I'm only posting this so all can experience the
> same impact it had on me when I read it... I am always the
> apologist and defense mouthpiece for MS around here...

You can go back and read the thread this article started, but
looking at things a bit more deeply and not letting the popluar
press filter the story through they multi-tinted glasses, the real core
of the original article appears to have been obfuscated in the press.

I went to the mi2g site and the story that started it all
has one one line in it that Windows is the most breached at
57.74%, Linux at 31.76% and MacOS/X & BSD 1.74%.  But the article
was addressing a different area and that appears to have been
mis-interpreted.

When posters here commented about the original post and followups
they were making guesses on what systems were analyzed and how it
was done - and made some assumptions that don't appear to be true.

To see the original story and follow ups and comments and
interviews Do this:

Goto  http://www.m21g.com.

Select Latest News > Article >   and then start with
News Alert for November 2, [follow any sublinks you choose]
then look at Open Letter on November 6th, and then Open Letter
of November 12th.

Reading the orignal and comments you will see that Mi2g used
small systems [under $7 million with firewalls], medium [$7
million to $40 million with firewalls] and large [over $40
million with firewalls] to gather their statistics.

Largest penetrations were were small systems with 58% of the
breaches [which corresponds with the Security Pipeline comments
that it is the adminstrators who are at the root of the problem,
6.1% of the breaches were against medium sized sites, and only
2.5% were against large sites.

Virtually all of the comments here were based on two reports by the
press after the orignal. At the mi2g site you will see 26 links
to reports just like these, including those quoted in this list.

The problem as I see it is so many in the press interpret things
they way they want to see them based on what they perceive
their target audiences wants to hear - and seemingly [at least at
times] giving the readers what they want and try not to confuse
them with the truth.

So if you want to know "The Rest of the Story" go to the above link
and read the original report and the followups and commentary.

>From my POV this company does not appear to be biased - but many of
the reports seem skewed.

Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com