Vista Tops in Security

News Posted 26/03/07
Author: PV5150
Source: PC World


Vista logo

A Microsoft Corp. executive Wednesday said Windows Vista’s first 90 days was a huge security success when compared to the opening three months of Windows XP, the current Apple Inc. Mac OS X, and three flavors of Linux.

Jeff Jones, the strategy director in Microsoft’s security technology unit, tallied up vulnerabilities patched during the first 90 days of Vista, XP, Mac OS X 10.4, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Workstation, Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, and Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10.

“Vista has an improved security vulnerability profile over its predecessor, and a significantly better profile relative to comparable modern competitive operating systems,” Jones asserted in his blog. By his count, Vista has been hit by just one vulnerability since its introduction to enterprises at the end of November. The bug, which was in the anti-malware scanning engine used by the bundled-with-Vista Windows Defender, was patched last month.  By comparison, said Jones, in their first 90 days, Windows XP was nailed with 14 bugs, Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) with 20, Red Hat with 137, Ubuntu with 71, and SuSE with 80.

Even when vulnerabilities that were disclosed but not patched are added in, Vista still comes out far ahead. Its five total bugs — one patched, four made public but not fixed as of Feb. 28 — compared favorably with XP’s total of 18, Mac OS X’s 27, Red Hat’s 201, Ubuntu’s 100, and SuSE’s 111.

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Talking it up so early in the race, or have MS got something genuine to crow about?

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