Hi FireWall2,
Respect your Post, Sun’s Web Site discusses their Open Source Codes,
referred to within the IT world as a “hacker happy†OS.
Your original claim was that Java and Solaris were "open source". There
was TALK of making Java open source, but as far as I know this is NOT
the case right now. I don't know which "IT world" said it was hacker
happy, but they probably mean ability to alter the code (hacking as in
coding).
In general open source is better for security; this claim was made
recently in a report by Homeland Security in the US. The reason it's
better, is that you can openly invite hackers (as in penetration
testers) to fire shots at it and find out the weaknesses. It can also be
fixed within minutes whereas you have to wait weeks for Microsoft to
patch things, and you don't know if it's been done properly because you
can't see the code. In 2006 we saw a number of Microsoft patches having
to be re-released because they either didn't fix the problem properly,
or they created some new problem. With open source, you get thousands of
people testing new code as soon as it goes into CVS.
One downside of open source (in the context of security), is that
there's no central place to get all security patches, you have to check
every piece of software separately and they all have their own
procedures (or no procedure at all!)
Have experimented with Firefox and Mozilla, the greatest trouble results
when users include those Browsers with, specifically, Vista, also IE 7
running XP .
What trouble exactly? Fiefox and Mozilla are both superior to
Microsoft's IE when it comes to security. The reason is simple; they run
on top of the o/s, they do not hook directly into the o/s. Most SpyWare
in the days of XP entered via IE, and that's why so many people switched
to the Mozilla/Firefox browser. Rule #8 of security is not to mix and
match o/s with applications; there's supposed to be an abstraction,
unfortunately this is missing in Windows.
Slowly realizing including third party Add Ons does nothing other than
create conflicts within Vista by weakening Vista’s Security,
I'm not sure how? Do you have an example?