This article brought on an interesting thought.  That's assume for a second
that all web servers have the same number of security bugs in them, found
and unfound.  Let's also assume that there are more instances of IIS on the
internet than any other web server.  In such a world it is much more
efficient for a virus writer to target IIS than any other web server,
because for a given amount of work looking for bugs to exploit the total
number of infections is likely to be higher.  Thus we can conclude that we
would expect far more virus infections of IIS than any other webserver,
therefore IIS is a lower quality web server and we should use something
else.

This is interesting because even though IIS's source code is of the same
quality of the other webservers, its runtime quality is much lower.  In
other words, the code has the same number of bugs, but the number of
exploited bugs is higher.  So it is IIS's popularity that is it's downfall.

An analogy can be made to biology.  If all humans shared the same DNA, then
the chance of the entire population being wiped out by a single
disease/virus/becteria is quite high.  Our diversity keeps us alive.  So are
the recent IIS worms an argument for diversity?  I think so, at least if
security is your only criteria.

Mike

> -----Original Message-----
> From: tclug-list-admin at mn-linux.org
> [mailto:tclug-list-admin at mn-linux.org]On Behalf Of Bob Tanner
> Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 8:17 PM
> To: tclug-list at mn-linux.org
> Subject: [TCLUG] Finally! Gartner says dump IIS!
>
>
> http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201-7239473-0.html?tag=nbs
>
> About time a main stream media knows what we all know.
>
> --
> Bob Tanner <tanner at real-time.com>       | Phone : (952)943-8700
> http://www.mn-linux.org                 | Fax   : (952)943-8500
> Key fingerprint =  6C E9 51 4F D5 3E 4C 66 62 A9 10 E5 35 85 39 D9
>
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