Linux, UNIX and Windows

To find out which operation system is the most secure for the computer users is very interesting. I want to compare Windows with Linux and show you the architecture of both operation systems in my new article.

You need to know more about the history of Windows and Linux before you start comparing the security architecture of both operation systems. Linux is an Open-Source-Derivative of UNIX, which was developed by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie from AT&T (EX Bell Labs) for first time in 1969.  

Ten years later in 1979 the Berkeley-Student and later Sun-CO-Founder Bill Joy developed a version of Linux which could master the virtual memory. It is useless to implement the security system without virtual memory. Without a virtual memory everyone could access to the physical memories to read all stored information.

With this new version of Linux which Bill Joy developed it was for first time in the history possible to use operation system in real business services. Till that time IBM had the monopole in the operation system with the virtual memory. Bill Joy called his creation VMUNIX for Virtual-Memory-UNIX.

In the 80s having personal computers was not so popular like today and hundreds of computer users shared only one computer at that time. Because of that UNIX has a special security system. UNIX has a two-stage User-Model. There is the user-root which can do everything and all other users, who have limited rights. If a user wants to run and application, it asks for the extended rights. The user can do that only if he has the rights of User-Root. This is still the same system and it creates many problems to implement of security concepts.

The first operation system Windows NT 3.1 was developed by Dave Cutler from 1988 to 1993. In these years personal computers have started being popular and the processors could master virtual memory from the hardware-layer.

The personal computer could be forgotten after few years because the workstations from Sun and Silicon Graphics could win popularity. In every university, big companies, and schools you could see Sun computers. It was because of only one important reason: the workstations from Sun could master 3D-Graphics and security. IBM and Microsoft tried to get more popularity for the OS/2 for the personal computers as a new operation system. Microsoft understood that an operation system without security cannot be sold in masses. That was the reason that Microsoft broke away from IBM and in the year 1993 Microsoft released the first operation system Windows NT.

Windows wanted to learn from UNIX-Errors

Windows NT received another security-architecture than UNIX. Also Windows owns a almighty user with the name SYSTEM. It is not possible to log in to the operation system with this username. All other users own different global rights. The most rights can belong to only one group of users which is called Administrators. The most important right is the adoption of being the owner of the files and the objects. Also an administrator gets an error message if he does not have the right for accessing special files and objects. But he has the permission changing the rights for files that he can access those files and objects too. It works easily with Windows Explore. All other users can access, organize, and admin their folders and files if they have the permission for that. But it is not possible in UNIX.

Microsoft has recognized with Windows NT that the security-architecture of User-Root in UNIX is very primitive and it needs a new movement. Because of time-pressure in competition with IBM, Microsoft has not developed many ideas to the end and those problems are still contained in Windows operation systems from today.

The anchored security-architecture in Windows and UNIX has a very important duty that all applications and software can be run without any difficulty and any security problems. Windows has a stronger security-architecture than UNIX in this case.

In Windows it is much more difficult to access the SYSTEM because a Virus or etc. has to have too many permissions and rights to damage the operation system.

Microsoft offers more setting to create a functional operation system than LINUX. Windows has better security than UNIX because Windows does not need to access to all permissions of SYSTEM to run an application but in UNIX you need the rights of almighty User-Root to run an application. This is the most important reason why Windows has more security than UNIX.

IN the Web-Servers LINUX can make more points because of performance. In a normal Web-Server there are many applications which are running at the same time. LINUX has established the best performance in web-servers. Because LINUX is the most used operation system for web-servers, the web-programmers have to create their own security concepts and architecture. Because of that there isn´t any real users but virtual users and the web-servers are secured in background through databases and .htaccess files which give the virtual users permissions for different actions such as creating editing and deleting files from the web-server.