ABM Considered Harmful (was: piercing corporate)

[bscott at ntisys.com]

  (ABM = Anything But Microsoft)

On Fri, 6 Feb 2004, at 12:35pm, michael.odonnell at comcast.net wrote:
> I [have] a fairly secure home network (protected by [A] a firewall and [B]
> the total absence of Microsoft products ...

  A word of advice: As a professional admin and security annalist who works
with both Microsoft and FOSS products, I find your attitude toward
Microsoft products to be rather naive.  Yes, their products have serious
security issues and design flaws.  But you have repeatedly and recently
state your opinion that all Microsoft products are inherently and
automatically insecure, and also implied that FOSS is bestowed with magical
security goodness.

  That's bunk, pure and simple.

  Case in point: One of your recent messages made reference to VBscript and
Windows Scripting Host as "Virus Propagation Languages".  If you want to
call them tools for virus propagation, then you must also call Perl, Python,
TCL, and the Unix shell tools for virus propagation.  They all have equal
potential and usage.

  Likewise, just because you have no Microsoft products on your network does
not mean your network is in any way better protected.  I've seen enough
hideously insecure *nix boxes in my relatively short career to know that
your attitude is not just naive, but dangerous.  It's the same attitude that
corporate PHB's take when they buy Microsoft because "Microsoft must be the
best".

  Your network may well be secure for other reasons, but those reasons have
nothing to do with a particular product, but your expertise in knowing you
needed it, and configuring it properly.

  I don't know jack about your current employer's IT staff.  They sound like
that might well not know what they are doing.  But maybe they do, and maybe
the reason they're causing you grief is that you carried the above attitude
into work, they understandably took offense, and decided to return the
favor.

  I don't use Linux because it's not Microsoft.  I use Linux because it's
Linux.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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