http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19665 By Nick Farrell 15 November 2004 UK SECURITY outfit Mi2g has gone on the defensive after its report which claimed that Linux was the most manually breached operating system for computers has been panned by open sourcers worldwide. Open sourcers from as far away as the Antipodes waded into the company after it claimed that 65 per cent of the security breaches occurred on permanently connected Linux systems and 25 percent on Windows systems. They hissed and snarled and accused Mi2G of being in league with the devil, well at least his Volish servants. Aussie Cybersource company CEO Con Zymaris said the report lacked any raw data, references to sources and had a broken methodology. He told the INQ: "In pulling apart the limited amount of information that is given by Mi2g it seems that the company did not include automated penetration attacks in its study." Mi2g also failed to factor in viruses and malware, something that open source expert Bruce Perens told Linux Pipeline, here that it was "pretty ludicrous" when even its own study said that the financial impact of viruses on Windows is tremendously greater than the penetration on Linux. However, on the company website here, an Mi2G spokesperson defended the report insisting that manual hacker breaches were more common in Linux. He said that good administration is central to working with Linux and these were lacking in the global market. "Manual breaches can be much more complex and sophisticated than automated ones proliferated through malware." The company is mightily miffed at what it calls clandestinely attacks funded, aided or abetted by vendors or special interest groups. Previously the company stirred up a hornets' net when it came out in favour of Apple and BSD, because the entrenched supporters of Linux and Windows felt that mi2g was guilty of 'computing blasphemy'. Mi2G also felt the need today to remind people that it is a Linux supporter. The mi2g Security Intelligence Products and Systems (SIPS) Engine runs on Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP) architecture. For the record, the company also has no business relationship with Microsoft or Apple either. _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/
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