Operating System Security

Operating system Security

For operating system security we will be comparing the security comparison of Linux, UNIX and Microsoft Windows. UNIX systems in comparison to windows and Linux are characteristics of good architectural design. These characteristics with UNIX are different because with windows these security characteristics when attempting to incorporate the same type of security into Microsoft windows, are implemented as features on top of the operating system instead of designed into the system architecture such as UNIX. Compared to Unix Microsoft has long had problems with privilege separation. There is some privilege separation built info Microsoft windows at the architectural level, but is only somewhat used depending upon the user level features behaving as they should and being used as they are intended to be used.

You might think that information you want to protect on your system is stored where your user accounts can access them. Privilege separation helps in this area because it does more than prevent infections and intrusion from gaining access to root privileges. For example say malware makes its way onto the system through the network. With UNIX server processes are run under specialized user accounts on the UNIX system. So getting through a network port usually gets the intruder no further than the affected service. Many malicious security hackers use tools that require administrative access to the work they want them to effectively. For example key loggers are one major hacker tool for Microsoft windows security but they require access to administrator level components of the operating system to operate on a UNIX system. So compared to windows the key logger inserted into the system using unprivileged user account does not have enough access to do its job.

Let’s not forget Linux and windows, windows versus Linux security has always been said in the tech world that windows has more incidents of viruses, worms and Trojans and many other...