Army Switches to Apple

[mea culpa <jericho () DIMENSIONAL COM>]

[Moderator: As meany colleagues have written in before posting this,
 security through obscurity is not a good road. Further, Webstar
 HAS had known vulnerabilities before.]

http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/zdtvnews/features/story/0,3685,2332011,00.html

Army Switches to Apple

The Army's public affairs office says its websites now use Mac OS servers
instead of NT.

By Iolande Bloxsom   September 10, 1999

Get RealPlayer. In what could be an embarrassing move for Microsoft, the
Army has revealed it's changing website servers to increase security.
Instead of using Windows NT, Army websites now use Mac OS servers running
WebSTAR server software, according to ArmyLINK.

This comes in the wake of several highly public attacks on military
websites this spring. This is the latest in a series of counter measures:
last week, a teen alleged to be a cofounder of Global Hell was arrested.
On Tuesday, another teen hacker, "Zyclon" pleaded guilty to breaking into
several government websites.

ArmyLINK, the public affairs website of the Army, spoke to the website
administrator for the Army Home Page, Christopher Unger. He stated the
Army chose Apple because the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has reported
that it's more secure than other platforms.

ArmyLINK cites the consortium's published reports to bolster the Army's
decision. Macintoshes do not have a command shell, nor do they allow
remote logins. Therefore, the W3C has said that the Mac platfrom is more
secure than its competitors, including NT and Unix. The report also said
the W3C has found no specific security problems in either the software or
the server.

"Government networks are inviting to hackers because of their high
profile," Unger told ArmyLINK.  However, this move may help to counter
claims that the government is leaving its sites insufficently protected.

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