A Look Into the FBI's "Everything Bucket" 31
Death Metal notes an EFF report on information wrested from the FBI over the last three years via Freedom of Information requests. The report characterizes what Ars Technica calls the FBI's "Everything Bucket" — its Investigative Data Warehouse. (Here's the EFF's introduction and the report itself.) The warehouse, at least 7 years in the making, "...appears to be something like a combination of Google and a university's slightly out-of-date custom card catalog with a front-end written for Windows 2000 that uses cartoon icons that some work-study student made in Microsoft Paint. I guess I'm supposed to fear the IDW as an invasion of privacy, and indeed I do, but given the report's description of it and my experiences with the internal-facing software products of large, sprawling, unaccountable bureaucracies, I mostly just fear for our collective safety."
Re:Summary is biased... &, you're not? (Score:2, Insightful)
"I mean first of all Windows 2000 is currently still the most rock solid, impenetrable OS you can use. There is no reason to think a more secure OS has been released since that time." - by iamhigh (1252742) on Friday May 01, @10:25AM (#27786703)
Windows 2000 (&, later Windows versions) can be made to be VERY secure, by security-hardening them, & secured based on "industry best practices"!
(Per the multiplatform CIS Tool, which also mind you, runs on various *NIX OS', such as Solaris, quite a few BSD variants (since you noted it in your 2nd url (no MacOS X though afaik)), & yes - Linux too), quite easily - heck, the CIS Tool makes it actually sort of "FUN" to do (almost like running a PC performance benchmark test).
In fact, Windows 2000 Pro, specifically, can be made to CIS Tool score to the tune of a 99.058/100 score on this test:
http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=7de5812b7341873cc5e6ee9582f21bf9&t=28430&page=3 [xtremepccentral.com]
& the HIGHEST *NIX score I have seen, to date, came from Bert64 (a member here) ->
http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=7de5812b7341873cc5e6ee9582f21bf9&t=28430 [xtremepccentral.com]
That was done on SuSE Linux @ 90/100 on CIS Tool, AND, like Windows? It came up from its default score of 46/100 (just as Windows typically does, same range of score initially by default).
(The makers of the test say not to compare "apples to oranges" (in other words, OS-to-OS score comparisons), but, my point IS there - they all can be further secured above the "norm" & that probably goes for things like SeLinux bearing Linux distros as well)).
APK
P.S.=> You *NIX guys often fail to note that market share of desktop & server markets matters in terms of how often these OS' are attacked - & that's obvious as to WHY Windows is the most attacked: Today's malware authors aren't after only making mischief & getting "bragging rights": They're about getting INFORMATION, that leads to monies from YOUR WALLET/BANK ACCOUNTS, etc. et al... &, they're going to target the LARGEST SINGLE BODY OF USERS OUT THERE, today, in order to do so... & guess what? Yes, that's right - that's Windows users! Make MacOS X or Linux (or even another BSD variant) the "top dog" out there, market-share-wise?? That'd then become "the most attacked" from a single codebase for attack, because they are out to "hit the largest mass they can with a single shot"... apk