Monoculture breeds worms

Australia's Open Source Industry Association has used the Sasser worm incident to push its claim that operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and Unix are reliable and secure. OSIA spokesman Stephen Jenkin said since the worm hit the BigPond network at 1am on May Day, "Australian computer users have suffered major disruptions, with thousands of home and business users running Microsoft operating systems infected and others experiencing network congestion."

Jenkin said that as was the case with the Blaster worm last year, a large number of net users had suffered network congestion and sluggishness.

"Blaster, along with Slammer, Netsky, CodeRed, Bagle, Mydoom, Magistr and hundreds of other nasty pieces of malware only infect Microsoft platforms and applications," Jenkin said.

Thursday, 6 May 2004 11:07 EST

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