cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/uncommon/p/1089778/linux-is-actually-very-vulnerable-to-exploits-and-it-s-showing-with-high-value-vulnerabi

I hate when people keep repeating the myth that Linux is more secure than X OS without any understanding of how much Linux gets exploited.

On the other hand, FreeBSD rarely suffers from wide security issues.

Overall, I don’t think anyone should repeat the myth that Linux is secure.

And at least if they gonna recommend Linux, they better recommend a good distro with SeLinux, hardened kernel and hardened OS.

    • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
      7·
      17 hours ago

      Thanks for the link! But I’m afraid it doesn’t tell me much. a) FreeBSD isn’t even on the list, so I don’t know the numbers to compare it to. and b) there’s things like survivorship bias. Looking at numbers like this is literally the textbook example of how to do it the wrong way. You have to do statistics the proper way around. For all we know by those numbers, Linux could be the best battle-tested OS in the world. I mean they fixed 3 times as many vulnerabilities as Microsoft did for any of their products?!

    • MissesAutumnRains@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      4·
      17 hours ago

      Interesting that this chart separates the SKUs on the Windows NT kernel but lumps all the Linux kernel stuff together. I have to imagine that this isn’t intentional and it’s just an artifact of how they collect data.

      This seems like a better resource for tracking a specific product over time than comparing between them. It’s also worth mentioning, as the other person pointed out, that the Linux kernel is the most audited codebase of all time, so that likely also plays into this a bit.