Security issues tend to be the primary focus of operating system suppliers, reaching a point where it has become the selling point that influences users choices. Although popularity of operating systems is a great commercial success for their vendors it can also cause serious threats to their long-term existence.

Security issues tend to be the primary focus of operating system suppliers, reaching a point where it has become the selling point that influences users choices. Although popularity of operating systems is a great commercial success for their vendors it can also cause serious threats to their long-term existence. Viruses and other forms of malicious attacks are usually created to cause serious problems to enterprises simply by targeting popular operating systems as a common route towards wide scale damage. Microsoft Windows-based platforms are the best examples of a common route to mass destruction, causing large number of organisation to switch to other operating systems, mostly Linux, believing that this would put a stop to hackers and viruses.

Theories exist that Windows is simply not a security-efficient operating system, hence the presence of thousands of viruses and security holes putting serious pressure on Windows popularity in the business and enterprise markets. However, one cannot help wondering if Windows was not the most widely used operating system on the global scale, from home users to multinational enterprises, would hackers bother wasting their "valuable" time on a non-popular route for their spiteful attacks? This simply would not make any sense unless they are targeting specific users for whatever reason.

Microsoft should be given the credit for their survival despite of the attacks they claim to receive daily. However, they do possess the resources to keep up and deal with such constant threats, but what about the new popular newcomer in the OS wars, Linux?

A worrying concern that is currently spreading throughout the Linux community, particularly users, is the discovery of a new security hole in the Linux kernel versions 2.4.2x and 2.6.x running on x86 and AMD64 systems. A security report published this month in an open source website described a simple C program that can freeze the Linux kernel locking the entire platform and causing the system to crash. The interesting aspect of this report is that this security bug was discovered "accidentally" during routine coding tests.

The report has highlighted, however, that in order to produce a malicious attack through this code, the attacker would need to have shell access to the targeted machine or other means of uploading and running the program, such as FTP access and cgi-bin. This means that root access is not required and the program can be operated through any ordinary user account in a hosted Linux system.
SUSE Linux, a Linux distributor, has reported this bug on its security website stating that the severity of this bug is considered low due to the fact that it is limited to certain versions of Linux kernel and platform architectures, as appose to any Linux installation.

This can be seen as an important eye-opener and has raised numerous questions regarding Linux' highly praised security. It must be stressed that any operating system is vulnerable to some sort of attack at anytime and that it is not only the responsibility of vendors to follow and maintain the necessary security measures, but it is also the responsibility of users. Linux has a negative aspect of being open-source due to lack of centralised technical and security support, which is currently provided to some extent by the likes of Red Hat and SUSE Linux distributions.

Linux is currently reaching the peak of its popularity, which can be seen as a new alternative route to Microsoft Windows to produce serious harm. It is a new era for Linux, as well as Linux users, distributors and hackers, which must be addressed to ensure the long-lasting success of this "Cool" operating system.

So be warned from the preying eyes.