Microsoft has consolidated its lead as the Web server platform most vulnerable to hackers.

Hacker site attrition.org today published its latest stats for defacements. Combined Windows NT and Windows 2000 defacements for the most recent full month of December hit more than two thirds of the total. Combined Linux servers account for 21.4 per cent of confirmed defacements. NT's defacement share had dipped alarmingly below 40 per cent last autumn, but made a strong recovery in time for Christmas.

Since August 1999, Windows has accounted for 58 per cent of defacements, a figure far in excess of Windows market share, which is around 30 per cent of all Web servers. It's difficult to gauge, particularly where Netcraft can record a site as running a Windows httpd, but where Unix servers do the real donkey work. Netcraft's platform survey gives Microsoft-specific platforms 20 per cent of the market, although this doesn't include sites running Apache on Windows, for example.

Attrition said it calculated its results using the Netcraft survey and the nmap auditing tool. Full details, in glorious technicolour, can be viewed here, and Netcraft's latest stats are here. ®

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