Click to viewUh oh. You've done it this time, Jeff Jones. As the security strategy director in Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group, you've just made the bold claim that Vista, from a first year on the market comparison, has been more secure than Windows XP, Red Hat rhel4ws, Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, and Apple Mac OS X 10.4.


Your argument seems to break down the difference between researcher-reported vulnerabilities, the number of released patches and the amount of actual vulnerabilities left standing by the end of one year. And you gave us this sexy chart to examine.










In every category, Vista is either the lowest, or tied for the lowest. And since your argument seems to boil down to the logic: the less vulnerabilities, the less fixes, the more secure, Vista wins. Of course, from what our tiny brains make of the case, such an argument doesn't take into account factors like just how many people are trying to exploit a particular platform/vulnerability, or just how damaging each exploit can be. But from that strategic commander chair, you seems to think that these issues balance themselves out. Maybe you are right.

But I'm not waiting in the open to find out. I have an emergency bunker prepared specifically for such occasions because pissing off the Mac and Linux communities at the same time is a funeral I'm not attending...like that time you said Firefox was less secure than IE. Things got messy and someone cried. [JeffJones via darkreading]