When it comes to operating systems, it's a matter of trust—or mistrust, as the case may be.

It's often suggested that Microsoft Corp.'s security woes stem in part from the company's tardiness in updating the security assumptions it had developed when solitary, disconnected desktop PCs had little reason to fear network-borne attacks.

However, the problem of operating systems that are too trusting for anyone's good in today's wide-open, tightly connected environment extends beyond Microsoft—although Unix and Linux systems derive certain security benefits from their networked, multiuser roots, these systems are also much more permissive than they should be.

By Jason Brooks at eWeek.

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