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Few instances needed to do damage

Yes, a single incident in a monoculture does more damage, but the writers of malware aren't measuring success by the number of machines infected anymore. In fact, when recruiting for their spam-diffusing armies, they turn loose pc's that don't make the grade.


You wrote:
... you rely on the assumption that such a condition [find once, fix once] is a more preferable one than its contrapositive. I don't think you've made the case.
Seems to me the whole "monoculture" premise is that a single vulnerability leaves the Internet open to a gut punch at some time. As comfort value, the fact that the vuln can be patched once leaves me cold.

The "gut punch" can come from comparatively few machines. There was a socially engineered RedHat worm recently. The market share is tiny, but sufficient to be worth the effort.

With a monoculture, the effort to develop a vaccine [put it] is minimized and the distribution is simplified. Sounds more efficient and effective, doesn't it?!

Posted by: Anton Philidor   Posted on: 11/30/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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