On Apr 4, 3:23 pm, "Mike Marlow" wrote:
"Leon" wrote in message

...

You are correct Leon. So much so, that CERT came into being over a hacked
UNIX environment - not hacked Microsoft environments. Virus', worms, trojan
horses, etc. were all very real threats in the UNIX world. One of the
problem with open source environments like UNIX is that it is indeed easy to
create malicious code. Apple has already seen the attention of the hacker
community as well. Not to the degree that Microsoft has, but for all of the
reasons you've listed.


Yes.

But if you go back 20 some odd years ago when Unix boxes still
outnumbered machines on the internet running microsoftware, what
was the percentage of each that was compromised at any give time?

Despite the fact that the Unix machines were more lucrative targets,
having faster connections and greater bandwidth, as well as
outnumbering
Microsoft PCs, wasn't the percentage of infected PCs much, much,
higher?

It certainly jumped when Microsoft released its first OS/ email
client combination that allowed a sender to install software onto
the recipient's computer without notifying the recipient. That
upswing was pretty much entirely a product of the technical aspects
of the microsoftware and had almost nothing to do with it's
popularity.

--

FF