Bugtraq mailing list archives
Re: LAMP vs Microsoft
From: Darren Reed <avalon () caligula anu edu au>
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 21:06:42 +1000 (Australia/ACT)
In some mail from Bob Beck, sie said:
If the number of vulnerabilities is graphed over time, is either heading down or both heading up or...? - I'm not asking for a "who's better", I just want to know if anyone has a good set of numbers and if they're graphed for easy comparison. p.s. LAMP = Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHPYes, but what are you hoping to prove with those numbers. I think all you're demonstrating is what things get more attention, likely due to their popularity, so they make a more interesting target. I.E. just because you don't find hardly any vulnerabilities for web apps deployed using ANFC (ANFC == AIX, NetCat, Flat Files, and C (please sir can I have another..)[1]) doens't mean those that are aren't rife with them.
I chose those two quite deliberately because I'm pretty sure they both get pretty good attention from hackers. Others have mentioned use some other OS, etc - not interesting.
Just from what I've "seen" I'd guess they were comparable. What does that mean? well, pretty much web applications under Windows or LAMP appear use the same development model for much of their code - first to market with coolest features the fastest. Quality is an afterthought to be dealt with in patches or future releases, which means security is a further afterthought. Do I like running either? No. The graph numbers end up just being nutritionless fodder for trolls and management.
What I'm looking for are trends. Absolute numbers are uninteresting. Or in other words, are people doing development responding (even if it is delayed) to the number of vulnerabilities found ? Are developers increasing the QA of their products in response to increased vulnerabilities, leading to fewer in newer releases ? And I think vulnerabilities disclosed are a much better indicator of the changes to QA/development of products than any hyperbole from those responsible (be it management or developers.) I fully expect that both the Microsoft and Linux based platforms to continue to be the most popular for web deployments and thus the most interesting for hackers to target and vulnerabilities to be found. What would concern me more here is if one platform was on the up whilst the other was on the down. Darren
Current thread:
- LAMP vs Microsoft Darren Reed (Jul 10)
- Re: LAMP vs Microsoft Jarrod Frates (Jul 10)
- Re: LAMP vs Microsoft Bob Beck (Jul 10)
- Re: LAMP vs Microsoft Darren Reed (Jul 15)
- Re: LAMP vs Microsoft Bob Beck (Jul 15)
- Re: LAMP vs Microsoft Darren Reed (Jul 15)
- Re: LAMP vs Microsoft Bob Beck (Jul 15)
- Re: LAMP vs Microsoft Bob Beck (Jul 18)
- Re: LAMP vs Microsoft Darren Reed (Jul 22)
- Re: LAMP vs Microsoft Darren Reed (Jul 15)
- Re: LAMP vs Microsoft George Capehart (Jul 18)
- Re: LAMP vs Microsoft Darren Reed (Jul 18)
- Re: LAMP vs Microsoft Hugo van der Kooij (Jul 18)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: LAMP vs Microsoft Steven M. Christey (Jul 12)