Oracle Has More Flaws Than SQL Server 229
jcatcw writes, "Next Generation Security Software Ltd. of Surrey, England, compared bugs in Oracle and SQL Server that were reported and fixed between December 2000 and November 2006. The tally: Oracle had 233; MS SQL had 59. The products compared were Oracle 8, 9, and 10g; SQL Server 7, 2000 and 2005. From the article: '[The head of the survey said,] "The results show that the reputation that Microsoft SQL Server had back in 2002 for relatively poor security is no longer deserved."' Oracle's response: 'Measuring security is a very complex process, and customers must take a number of factors into consideration — including use-case scenarios, default configurations, as well as vulnerability remediation and disclosure policies and practices.'"
Summary title is vague (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted, the summary does explain that the article does indeed refer to MSSQL Server, but please stop calling it just SQL Server. MSSQL Server != SQL Server
(OK, I feel better. What is the moderation for RANT?)
Oracle is more complex (Score:5, Insightful)
Oracle is right (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:translation (Score:5, Insightful)
What, specifically, are those "bugs"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see that again.
The study looked at vulnerabilities that were reported and fixed...
So, if it wasn't fixed, was it counted?
Huh? Security is not about "software development life-cycle".
That's why you have almost daily updates of anti-virus software for Microsoft products.
Big time. One remote root vulnerability is worth 10,000 local app crash vulnerabilities.
Yep. Because Ubuntu has, by default, no open ports. So it is, by default, 100% resistant to worms.
Remember, you can never count on a user applying a patch. Your system has to be as secure as possible in the default, unpatched, configuration.
Not only is it not "the best approach", it is a fucking idiotic approach only used by morons who have no understanding of what "security" is.
It's not the number of bugs. It's what access can be gained by that bug and how easily it is to invoke that bug in the various "standard" configurations.
I dunno about that (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:translation (Score:5, Insightful)
Oracle is a huge robust database with lots of extremely security conscious clients. A high number of reported bugs and fixes shows that they're executing due diligence, and working to keep their system as secure as possible. MSSQL's low number of bugs suggests that Microsoft isn't digging hard into their code, but only waiting for big public flaws.
They used the same argument in claiming that IE was less buggy than Firefox (see this crappy article [informationweek.com]) and it's just as untrue in this case.
Re:Oracle is right (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:translation (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets face it, a bug report can be anything from a misspelled error message to a gaping sa/root/admin (whatever oracle calls it) compromise.
Severity is important. For instance, most popular linux distros (minus gentoo) have quite a few security holes do to third party package inclusion. Often the holes are not severe, but they do make linux look artificially insecure compared to some other operating systems. If redhat pushed 90 updates a month at you and Microsoft only 35... well who looks less secure? How many were feature enhancements? How many did each vendor NOT include a fix for?
Disclaimer: My above reference to linux distros only includes bloated packages like redhat, suse, etc. Most people using these distros tend to do a "full install". I'm a mysql or sql server user whenever possible.
Often one could argue that smaller companies get less attention so a large number of vulnerabilities would indicate a very insecure product. Oracle is obviously smaller than microsoft as a whole. In this case, oracle gets a lot of attention as its used for large scale deployments as well as their *lovely* business practices.
Re:Oracle is right (Score:3, Insightful)
Even calling something "severe" or not is a judgement call. I've seen many times a bug filed as severe only to have a developer look at it and refile it as trivial.
On top of all of this, it's not hard to "game" this system to make your company/project look better. Just raise your standards for what can be classified as a major vs minor bug (eg, file everything a bit lower than it normally would be). This standard is going to be set differently by different management teams and companies, so it's already skewed to try to compare. Someone trying to look like they have fewer bugs may also ask their team to refrain from filing bugs if they can (kind of like factories do with workplace accidents - they have incentive systems for employees/supervisors, part of that "We've gone X days without an accident" thing.. what really happens, is employees won't report accidents if they can get away with it because then they lose their incentives). At another company, they may have a policy to file bugs for EVERYTHING, so every change to the code requires a bug/feature ticket. What happens when you compare the # of "bugs" in these two companies?
Re:translation (Score:5, Insightful)
This is like saying that Fire Department A put out less fires than Fire Department B. That's nice, but what I really want to know is how long it took for the trucks to arrive, the size of the fires, and also if there are any houses that burned down before the Fire Department got there.
Re:What, specifically, are those "bugs"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not all worms require open ports to spread - a worm might target a low-level kernel flaw in the network stack (remember the ping-of-death?).
Re:Features? (Score:2, Insightful)
My spidey senses tell me that you've never actually used SQL Server at all.
Re:David Litchfied (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Summary title is vague (Score:2, Insightful)
That would just be silly.
So, your anger is Microsoft's gain. And every time you get angry at Microsoft, they kill a kitten.
Re:translation (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:My experience (Score:4, Insightful)
Oracle on the other hand request your support contract no (which they will actually look up for you) once you get past that really minor issue you never hear anything about money again. If you are unlucky enough to have a real bug that gets escalated you have the fun experience of hearing from someone from oracle every few hours - the calls seem to come from all over the world (based on accents etc)
More than once I have had a custom patch created for what to oracle must have seemed like a really minor bug.
Re:MS Labs Has No Equal (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If you offer a ton of additional features... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is also important that Oracle supports virtually any server platform in current use, while SQL Server only supports a small number of similar platforms. Back in 2001 I was still getting support for Oracle 7.0 on VAX/VMS! One get Oracle on Linux, AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, zOS, OS400, Windows, a variety of Alpha platforms, Itanium platforms, etc. And this isn't shallow level support. Oracle can utilize their own file systems, so they are going at the bare hardware on all these systems. Care to guess what that does to the QA cycle?
Oracle is the shiznit when it comes to high performance general database work. It will scale far beyond almost everything else, with DB2 a close #2. Niche players like TeraData have their place too, but only Oracle can scale across the entire enterprise.
Different Uses - why compare? (Score:1, Insightful)