RE: How Secure is Windows, Really?

From: Scott Klement

I dunno... it'd take more refinement to get everything exactly right.  And
it'd be at the mercy of the level of authority granted to whomever is
running it, so it'd have to check authority levels and only carry out it's
actions if it has enough authority -- and keep waiting until it's
eventually run by someone with enough authority to do the deed.

And this is the sticking point.  If you have write access to the software,
then you can pretty much do anything you want anyway; you don't need to use
a virus to do it.

With Windows, the virus can be inserted without the user knowing, and
bypassing whatever security checks Windows has in place.  Hence my note
about Ms. Rutkowska's Vista exploit; this was the Microsoft's overall answer
to all security woes, and a lone hacker whacked it.

To Microsoft's credit, they did send someone to the conference where Ms.
Rutkowska demoed the technique and they have since patched that specific
hole, but the point is that there are very few ways to get that level of
access on the iSeries.

Not zero ways, mind you.  Operating systems are essentially still programs
and programs have flaws.  I'm relatively certain that someone of Leif
Svalgaard's knowledge and skill level might be able to create what would in
effect be a rootkit for the iSeries.  But the pool of potential black hats
for the iSeries is so very, very small that I don't think it's likely to
happen (unlike the Open Source Windows rootkit package that's freely
available for download on the Internet).

Joe