The BBS here was down for awhile so I was
 poking around the net. Lotta sites down, many
 others with notices about being slowed down by
 viruses. Then I came across this today:
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 washingtonpost.com
 
 Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design
 
 By Rob Pegoraro Sunday, August 24, 2003
 
 Between the Blaster worm and the Sobig virus,
 it's been a long two weeks for Windows users.
 But nobody with a Mac or a Linux PC has had to
 lose a moment of sleep over these outbreaks --
 just like in earlier "malware" epidemics.
 
 This is not a coincidence.  
 
 The usual theory has been that Windows gets
 all the attacks because almost everybody uses
 it. But millions of people do use Mac OS X and
 Linux, a sufficiently big market for plenty of
 legitimate software developers -- so why do
 the authors of viruses and worms rarely take
 aim at either system?
 
 Even if that changed, Windows would still be
 an easier target. In its default setup,
 Windows XP on the Internet amounts to a car
 parked in a bad part of town, with the doors
 unlocked, the key in the ignition and a
 Post-It note on the dashboard saying, "Please
 don't steal this."
 
 Not opening strange e-mail attachments helps
 to keep Windows secure (not to mention it's
 plain common sense), but it isn't enough.
 
 The vulnerabilities built in: Security starts
 with closing doors that don't need to be open.
 On a PC, these doors are called "ports" --
 channels to the Internet reserved for specific
 tasks, such as publishing a Web page.
 
 These ports are what network worms like
 Blaster crawl in through, exploiting bugs in
 an operating system to implant themselves.
 (Viruses can't move on their own and need
 other mechanisms, such as e-mail or floppy
 disks, to spread.) It's canonical among
 security experts that unneeded ports should be
 closed.
 
 Windows XP Home Edition, however, ships with
 five ports open, behind which run "services"
 that serve no purpose except on a computer
 network.
 
 "Messenger Service," for instance, is designed
 to listen for alerts sent out by a network's
 owner, but on a home computer all it does is
 receive ads broadcast by spammers. The "Remote
 Procedure Call" feature exploited by Blaster
 is, to quote a Microsoft advisory, "not
 intended to be used in hostile environments
 such as the Internet."
 
 Jeff Jones, Microsoft's senior director for
 "trustworthy computing," said the company was
 heeding user requests when XP was designed:
 "What customers were demanding was network
 compatibility, application compatibility."
 
 But they weren't asking for easily cracked PCs
 either. Now, Jones said, Microsoft believes
 it's better to leave ports shut until users
 open the ones they need. But any change to
 this dangerous default configuration will only
 come in some future update.
 
 In comparison, Mac OS X ships with zero ports
 open to the Internet.
 
 The firewall that's down: A firewall provides
 further defense against worms, rejecting
 dangerous Internet traffic.
 
 Windows XP includes basic firewall software
 (it doesn't monitor outgoing connections), but
 it's inactive unless you use its "wizard"
 software to set up a broadband connection.
 Turning it on is a five-step task in
 Microsoft's directions
 ([1]www.microsoft.com/protect) that must be
 repeated for every Internet connection on a PC.
 
 Mac OS X's firewall isn't enabled by default
 either, but it's much simpler to enable. Red
 Hat Linux is better yet: Its firewall is on
 from the start.
 
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