The"Biggest Target" paradigm and its consequence

We all know the drill: Whenever we point out that the security of Windows
has an appalling track record, with hundreds of thousands of viruses,
countless critical (and slowly patched) flaws in IE, and a whole slew of
other nigh disastrous problems, the Windows shills come up with the one
Magic Excuse: "That's because it's the Biggest Target, you stoopid!"

According to them, Linux, BSD or MacOS are just as vulnerable as Windows
(if not more, hahaha, the idea!), it's just that hardly any hacker thinks
attacking them is worth the trouble, because perhaps ten percent of people
use these OS'es.
"If Linux would have the market share Windows has, there'd be the very
same massive problems with botnets, spam, and malware", "Linux just isn't
an interesting target at all", "Social engineering makes any OS completely
defenseless. But hackers only go after the largest platform", "Complexity
[to execute arbitrary code] is no deterrent." Et cetera, and so on, ad
nauseam.


Apart from the fact that these people appear somewhat detached from
reality, I found that they're actually digging their own grave.
It's quite simple, really:

Let's assume that these people are actually right, and that Microsoft's
approximately 90% market share is the first and foremost cause of the
current malware and spam crisis.
Well then, this can lead to only one conclusion, and only one solution -
and it's so obvious that even the biggest Microsoft apologist can't but
agree.

Microsoft's market share must be cut down drastically, by forced
government measures if need be.

I propose a phased approach, bringing down the percentage of Windows
computers with 15% annually, to avoid creating instant IT chaos (um, well,
more chaos than today, that is), for five years to come. After this
period, we'll not just have a nice, healthy, heterogenous IT environment,
with vastly less malware and spam, but lots of other benefits as well,
such as universal interoperability, general adherence to open standards,
more choice, cheaper computing, and lots more.

And, of course, I count on the co-operation of all those Windows fans
here - it's their current "Biggest Target" conviction that largely
implies this course of action in the first place. So people, let's go do
some cutting down and diversifying!


Richard Rasker

--
Linetec Translation and Technology Services

http://www.linetec.nl/

On Saturday 30 September 2006 18:30 Richard Rasker wrote:

>
> We all know the drill: Whenever we point out that the security of Windows
> has an appalling track record, with hundreds of thousands of viruses,
> countless critical (and slowly patched) flaws in IE, and a whole slew of
> other nigh disastrous problems, the Windows shills come up with the one
> Magic Excuse: "That's because it's the Biggest Target, you stoopid!"
>
> According to them, Linux, BSD or MacOS are just as vulnerable as Windows
> (if not more, hahaha, the idea!), it's just that hardly any hacker thinks
> attacking them is worth the trouble, because perhaps ten percent of people
> use these OS'es.
> "If Linux would have the market share Windows has, there'd be the very
> same massive problems with botnets, spam, and malware", "Linux just isn't
> an interesting target at all", "Social engineering makes any OS completely
> defenseless. But hackers only go after the largest platform", "Complexity
> [to execute arbitrary code] is no deterrent." Et cetera, and so on, ad
> nauseam.
>
>
> Apart from the fact that these people appear somewhat detached from
> reality, I found that they're actually digging their own grave.
> It's quite simple, really:
>
> Let's assume that these people are actually right, and that Microsoft's
> approximately 90% market share is the first and foremost cause of the
> current malware and spam crisis.
> Well then, this can lead to only one conclusion, and only one solution -
> and it's so obvious that even the biggest Microsoft apologist can't but
> agree.
>
> Microsoft's market share must be cut down drastically, by forced
> government measures if need be.
>
> I propose a phased approach, bringing down the percentage of Windows
> computers with 15% annually, to avoid creating instant IT chaos (um, well,
> more chaos than today, that is), for five years to come. After this
> period, we'll not just have a nice, healthy, heterogenous IT environment,
> with vastly less malware and spam, but lots of other benefits as well,
> such as universal interoperability, general adherence to open standards,
> more choice, cheaper computing, and lots more.
>
> And, of course, I count on the co-operation of all those Windows fans
> here - it's their current "Biggest Target" conviction that largely
> implies this course of action in the first place. So people, let's go do
> some cutting down and diversifying!

Exactly:-)

I go back to the question I posed earlier - "Why did so many Irish people
suffer and die in the potato famine(s) of the 19th century?"