Increase in the lifespan of unpatched Linux PCs

NEW DELHI: According to a study conducted by Honeypot Project, a non-profit organisation 'life expectancy' of Linux systems has risen from 72 hours three years ago to an average of three months today. Said an online report.

To study the pattern and frequency of attacks, technologists at Honeypot Project connect several unpatched systems by making what are called 'honeynets' to the Internet. Dozens of such Linux or Windows 'honeynets' were set to compare their lifespan.

According to the group's report, "What's surprising is that even though threats and activity are reported as increasing, we see the life expectancy of Linux increasing against random attacks." On the contrary an unpatched Windows system was hacked within minutes of it getting logged on to the World Wide Web.

The group noted that systems running older versions of Linux were more prone to attacks than those running newer versions of the open source operating system. This could be because of better security settings in the newer versions and holds true for Windows also.

The study also revealed that once a system is compromised it becomes more vulnerable, a honeypot running Red Hat Linux was hacked 18 times in just one month after its initial compromise. Said the report. This is again commonly noticed in the world of Windows.

The reasons Honeypot Project has cited for this increase in life expectancy on Linux systems are that only few services are automatically enabled and host based firewalls filter all inbound connections. Also, since Linux still has a very small slice of the market share miscreants prefer targeting Windows systems, which are much larger in numbers.

Looking at the study reports, it may not be wrong to say that Windows face a greater threat as compared to Linux.