Windows security

Dave Johnson — Sat, 3 Feb 2007 23:34:15 +0000

Usually I find a couple of contradictory stories every time I read the feeds. Here's a pair from today's session. First via John Gruber.

Bll Gates in Newsweek: Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.

And next, via John Robb, I found:

Spencer Kelly, BBC: We set up a poor Windows XP machine with no firewall or anti-virus software. Connecting it to the internet would be like throwing it into a lion pen with raw meat strapped to its hard drive. How long would it be before we were hit by something nasty on the net? Hours, minutes? As it turned out - eight seconds!

Of course Bill may have been talking about Vista, even though he did not qualify. Maybe Vista is better, but I wouldn't count on it. Initial reports don't sound so good (Vista users: keep your speakers and microphones turned off).

Blogging Roller

Windows security