Vista? Hackable. Macbook? Hackable. Ubuntu... still going

from JoeUser Forums

Apparently in the latest hacking contests, Ubuntu is the energizer bunny that just keeps on going, and going, and going.

Where Vista failed (an undisclosed Flash vulnerability), and the Macbook with Safari failed (again, undisclosed vulnerability), Ubuntu kept going and going.

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Read more here: Flash flaw leads to Vista laptop's fall

Ubuntu screenIt's a short article, so I'm not clipping it here.  Read down just a bit and you'll see the note about the Macbook failing after the second day of the testing.  (The base operating system was secure enough, but the additional applications on the system -- in that case Safari -- was fair game and failed the test leaving the system vulnerable).  It took until the third day of the testing when the rules were relaxed a bit more for the Vista system to succumb.  In that case, it was a Flash vulnerability that left the system open enough for the hackers to succeed.

At the end of the test period, the last man standing, still not having been compromised was the Ubuntu system.

I'm a bit surprised at the Mac falling first, and would bet that quite a few Mac zealots would never believe that their favored system was the first to fall.  That Vista eventually fell didn't surprise me much, but the fact that it took longer to find an entry point was somewhat surprising.  I guess some credit should be given to the Vista developers and designers for taking care of business in the security area.  That shows great improvement over earlier Windows operating systems where security was not as evident, nor as apparently important to the developers who worked on creating the systems.  Windows 2000 and Windows XP both have had so many critical updates and patches released to fix security flaws that most people wouldn't be able to count the number without the aid of a calculator.

Windows HackedSad Mac

Nice to know that the open source community (behind Ubuntu) has done such a good job of making the product secure.  Good work guys and gals.

4,034 views 3 replies
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I appreciate Linux distro's and have no brief against them. I believe they add to the sum total of my computing experiences.

However:-

Beyond the rules having to be relaxed, as I understand it, Macaulay claims that his success in Vista was based on a flaw he exploited, which he is quoted as saying "This could affect Linux or Mac OS X." That he concentrated on Microsoft products because of his previous experience of doing contract work with Microsoft. I think there's also a rule that says you cannot take advantage of the same exploit twice.

The only messages I take away from this at the moment are already among the traditional ones:-

Be as tight as with your 3rd party updates as you are with your OS updates.

Watch the Crackers chase the money shots.

I would have found it more interesting to have had a PWN to OWN competition held under the same conditions as day 2, only targetting 3 Linux Distro's with an equally large prize pot for each of them.



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Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I run ubuntu on virtualbox I did this just so I could get familiar with it. It works pretty well on my vista home premium. If anyone is interested in checking it out but doesn't wanna mess with dual-booting, or has never dual-booted before I believe Virtualbox is the way to go. I used this article on learning how to set it up.