What makes Linux, and GNU distros more secure than other non-free operating systems such as Windows and Mac OS?

Question

I was guessing the sudo/su requirement was the main part followed by either Apparmor and SELinux depending on the distro.
I binary copied a pdf file to a png image. Just change file extension to pdf.
say you have a bash script like:
------------------------
#bash payload.sh
cd /
rm *.*
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You would need some privileges to run it.
Sure there are payloads like shellshock but that's a whole different story.

Answer 1

There are many reasons.

The biggest reason is they're all Open Source. This means anyone can download the source code. Something you can't do with Windows. Being able to review the source code means anyone can investigate how the OS does certain things and how it was designed to handle certain situations. If it turns out that a security problem is discovered, anyone can fix it, and submit the fix for review.



Another reason is that Linux has true user permissions. The system area is protected from the users. This is why you have to be root, or at least have root permissions, to do certain things. Compare this to Windows where a user opening a MS Word document is allowed to format the hard drive.



Linux does not care about file extensions, nor does it make stupid assumptions, such as only displaying the filename without the file extension, or what it thinks is the file extension. This was why entire companies went offline because someone discovered if you email people running Windows a file named "BikiniGirl.gif.exe" everyone would only see "BikiniGirl.gif", click on it, and destroy their computer.

Answer 2

Linux is not more secure because it is open source. It is more secure because it was designed that way. The roots of Windows go back to the DOS days where there was no security. There was no Internet, and viruses were few and far between. Malware was unheard of. Microsoft had to reverse engineer security into Windows, because it wasn't there to start with. It is an ugly hack that is not very effective.



Linux is secure because non-root users can't write to system file. Anywhere. AND Linux is more secure because it has no registry to bloat and corrupt.

Answer 3

Anyone in the world can contribute fixes to an Open Source or GPL licensed operating system, where as only certified developers can contribute fixes to Microsoft of Apple owned operating systems. If you modify the Microsoft and Apple operating systems without authorization you're breaching contract, even if it's for their/your benefit.

Answer 4

Is there a question in all this rambling?