Heterogeneity increases survivability of the *species*, but does little to protect the individual . . .These statements seem to agree. Is there a point?
I don't think that stands up, at least not for digital species. I can run Apache on Linux/x86, for which tons of shellcode is available, or I can run the same version of Apache on Linux/sparc, for which much less is available, and exists within a smaller and more specialized community....
. . . At most, you could say that running the most common system makes you somewhat more vulnerable to attack, and you should take that into consideration when planning your security.
It is difficult to quantify just about any security benefit.Yes; and it would be interesting (though probably difficult) to quantify that.
Now that is just not true. All of the technologies in the previous thread (StackGuard, PointGuard, ProPolice, PaX, W^X, etc.) have some capacity to resist attacks based on unpublished/unpatched vulnerabilities. That is their entire purpose.So heterogeneity is really just security by obscurity, dressed up to sound pretty . . .
Seems to me that obscurity is the *only* defence against exploits for unpublished/unpatched vulnerabilities that are spreading in the cracker community; if you can avoid being a target, by whatever means, then you are ahead of the game.
Crispin
-- Crispin Cowan, Ph.D. http://immunix.com/~crispin/ Chief Scientist, Immunix http://immunix.com http://www.immunix.com/shop/
