Re: @Mr Torx

Linux, by it's very nature, is open to inspection by anybody who wants. Whether this is done is a moot point, but at least you can do it. Previous Linux exploits (like buffer overruns) certainly have been discovered before being found in the wild (you can tell these because they are normally published as 'potential' buffer overruns). Windows does not have this level of openess, so although there are more systems to attack, there is less chance to spot an exploit before it is actually used (which is why zero-day exploits are so damaging to Windows).

The autorun is another matter entirely. If the underlying OS was secure, and the default user was not privileged, then it would be relatively safe (but of course, personal information would be available even if they were not privileged). But Windows has a reputation of being unsafe, and certainly in XP and earlier, most systems were configured so that the default user was an administrator. This make autorun almost suicidal if users put untrusted media in their systems. I does not take a genius to see this.

Users on Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems can still be affected without privilege (I can think of several ways to add key-loggers to sessions on systems running X-Windows, for example), but in general, this is likely to affect the user and only that user, and the underlying OS and other users will be safe (significant, but less so if a Linux system is 'personal', i.e. only one user ever uses it - this is the problem Android has).

Because many users of commodity OSs do not really understand the differences in the security models and practice between different OSs, I see many challenges to Linux that are unfounded, and really should never be voiced if the person doing the challenging actually knew. I judge this to be one of them.

Re: I forgot to mention

There is a distinction between an administrator account, an account that can run commands using something like UAC, and one who can log in, but cannot even run UAC.

Up to and including XP, most default users on Windows were in the first category. Windows Vista on later, the default is in the second category, as are most Linuxes. But it is possible to configure Linux users in the third category (i.e. they are not allowed to run anything using sudo or it's ilk). Most UNIX systems are configured like this, and ordinary users do not have any abillity to do anything damaging to the OS unless there is an actual defect in the security system (and note I am not saying that there are no defects in any OS).

I find it funny how UNIX, the oldest of all of the OS's mentioned, is the one that implements, the least-risk model. Just shows that people don't learn from history.