anyone know any of these file names?

[Twey]

There is no reliable data that I am aware of to support either position. Reports of attacks can be tailored by the reporting agency to suit their outlook and later skewed in interpretation by the reader to support any viewpoint. Figures don't lie, but you can lie with figures.

I don't see any way the results from the experiment I linked above can be skewed without downright lying. There were only three machines, it's not like they went into descriptive statistics or anything. Plus, personal experience does seem to back this up (although admittedly I was browsing the Web [safe sites] using Internet Explorer before my Firefox download finished, so this may not be as reliable as the machines without interaction).

Face it, (evil hacker type) mammals just like going after Windows.

You're still being overly vague here. Sure, you've got your (semi-)ethical hacker types who just like breaking security for the fun of it, or perhaps to promote a political ideal. I can certainly imagine these thinking "ooh, we all hate Microsoft, let's go after some Windows boxes." But the type we're primarily discussing here are for-profit crackers. They don't care about having fun or scorning their least favourite corporation, they just want an easy crack that they can add to their botnet and use to make some cash. They, like script kiddies, the two factions that compose most of what the media would term today's "hacker" faction (that is to say, the most visible portion), will take the easiest target with the biggest yield. A server is much more valuable than a PC in terms of monetary yield, so the only factor left to decide (in someone who's already decided to crack a server) is which would be easier to crack.

And Windows owners are generally not as savvy as those people who take the trouble to learn other server and/or PC OS's.

We're talking server owners here. These are primarily big hosting companies or other institutions with dedicated insert-Microsoft-certification-here qualified professionals. They'll know as much about Windows and Windows security as any admin can be reasonably expected to know.

[jscheuer1]

Actually we were talking primarily about PC's here. Any statistics though are open to interpretation. They mean nothing in and of themselves. The reasons for the observed results must be determined, and these may or may not be immediately apparent. Ready explanations might or might not actually be the true determining causes.

As an example, in this country abortion, STD, and single motherhood rates are often cited as proof that a given public policy is working or not. However, the factors governing these trends cannot be guaranteed to be significantly affected by any one given policy shift. And, in the politically charged atmosphere of such discussions here, even the data is questionable to begin with.

Getting back on point -

Even with servers though, the individual who uses Windows because he or she cannot be bothered to even investigate other options, we need to wonder about that person. In my role as webmaster, I have met some pretty clueless hosts. Guess which OS they were running.

[BLiZZaRD]

Any statistics though are open to interpretation. They mean nothing in and of themselves.

Did you know that 93.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot?

[Twey]

Even with servers though, the individual who uses Windows because he or she cannot be bothered to even investigate other options, we need to wonder about that person. In my role as webmaster, I have met some pretty clueless hosts. Guess which OS they were running.

They are, however, thankfully a minority -- their servers don't tend to stay up very long, and they certainly don't provide any particularly visible service.

Actually we were talking primarily about PC's here. Any statistics though are open to interpretation. They mean nothing in and of themselves. The reasons for the observed results must be determined, and these may or may not be immediately apparent. Ready explanations might or might not actually be the true determining causes.

This is certainly true, but can you give a confounding variable for so simple an experiment? It seems to me that the setup was so minimal that there is little or nothing that would cause it. I suppose one of the machines could have been on a different IP address interval that a superior cracker just happened to prefer, but I think the chances of that are highly unlikely, and while the other figures may be unreliable enough to lack weight in themselves, they certainly seem to corroborate this experiment.

[jscheuer1]

This is certainly true, but can you give a confounding variable for so simple an experiment?

I'm truly sorry to do this to you in this way, Twey. But I'm so busy at the moment that it would be very helpful to me if you could repost a link to the specific information you are talking about, so that I could be certain of what data we are talking about.

That said, I can imagine at least one thing that would skew any such results (assuming I have the general thrust of the data you are talking about right in my mind). I have already alluded to it, but unfortunately it really isn't readily quantifiable. I'm referring to the mood in the 'evil mammalian hacker community', and how it might be responsible in small or in large part for the observed results.