New protocol to replace SMTP?

[Jonathan de Boyne Pollard]

Apart from the small detail that most (all?) botnets run under
Microsoft operating systems.

Just because there are a hell of a lot more of them than anything
else. Its hardly surprising that that was targetted, only a fool
would target anything else.

That is just one detail, but not the most important. I'm sure that
even the most popular OS wouldn't be hacked as much if it were a
little more difficult.

(I know that this is a Rod Speed thread. That doesn't preclude the
injection of measured rational argument, though.)

I could almost buy that argument, were it not for the lesson of
history. It has become more difficult, not just a little more difficult
but a *lot* more difficult, to subvert the most popular PC operating
system over the years and decades. And yet it's *still* the target.
The evidence before us is that the operating system is not targetted
because it's easy. A little thought reveals the fairly obvious
conclusion that people who want to hijack large numbers of other
people's computers target the operating system that is most likely to
get them the largest number of computers. They want large numbers,
having a larger army than the other bloke can deal with being their
primary goal, so they pick the largest set of homogenous machines as the
target. It's that simple. If millions of people were running Helios,
the hijackers would be busy churning out Transputer worms right now.

[Peter Flass]

Apart from the small detail that most (all?) botnets run under
Microsoft operating systems.

Just because there are a hell of a lot more of them than anything
else. Its hardly surprising that that was targetted, only a fool
would target anything else.

That is just one detail, but not the most important. I'm sure that
even the most popular OS wouldn't be hacked as much if it were a
little more difficult.

(I know that this is a Rod Speed thread. That doesn't preclude the
injection of measured rational argument, though.)
I could almost buy that argument, were it not for the lesson of history.
It has become more difficult, not just a little more difficult but a
*lot* more difficult, to subvert the most popular PC operating system
over the years and decades. And yet it's *still* the target. The
evidence before us is that the operating system is not targetted because
it's easy. A little thought reveals the fairly obvious conclusion that
people who want to hijack large numbers of other people's computers
target the operating system that is most likely to get them the largest
number of computers. They want large numbers, having a larger army than
the other bloke can deal with being their primary goal, so they pick the
largest set of homogenous machines as the target. It's that simple. If
millions of people were running Helios, the hijackers would be busy
churning out Transputer worms right now.

I just read a computerworld article that posits that most windoze
security holes are now in third-party software, such as Adobe.