[Novalug] linux update security?

[Stephen Chapman]

I think everyone is forgetting the biggest reason Linux is a tough 
hack.  If you are using the root user properly
which by default Most linux Distro's like Ubuntu install that way.  Then 
your system as a whole is less at risk.  Even with all the
security updates Vista has.  It still does not even do that.  I remember 
an article on that when Vista first
came out.  It is possible to setup XP and Vista sorta the same way .. 
not fully.  But either way its not the
out of the box default like linux.

Anthony Soucek wrote:
> Okay, I come from the world of windows, but here's me asking how linux
> can be so secure?  It almost appears that it is is considered more
> secure only due to the fact that hackers dont want to bother with the
> 5% of computers in the world running linux ( I heard ms has 75% of pcs
> probably an estimate, an some have to be Mac and BSD etc).  I heard
> that someone recently put a backdoor in the source for squirrel mail
> at least at the redistribution level.  I know you can check the md5
> checksums of your updates to guarantee that they are the same as the
> original but I have also heard that two different files can produce
> the same hash result, so a hacker can tweak run the md5 hash until
> they find a variant that produces the same md5, even though the
> content is different.  Also, What about firewalls?  I know that mostly
> services are off unless you turn them on in linux, but I am not so
> sure that is as true for non technical user distros like Ubuntu?  I
> know you can manually create a firewall with IP chains or something,
> but if your running Ubuntu or Linspire,  that is probably beyond the
> average users skill level.  And when you run updates, if you get them
> from the community and not the distro vendor, You will be prompted in
> Ubuntu that this update may not be safe because it's from an
> unauthorized source, so theortetically, a bad guy could write some
> small program, and then put out an update that changes it into
> malware.  is anybody else worried about this stuff?  I am not trying
> to get anyone irked here, but I am interested to see if anyone can
> explain how these threats could be impossible or avoided.  I realize
> linux is more secure than windows xp out of the box, (security by
> obscurity) but I can also see how open source is and invitation to
> trouble.
>
>