Windows 10 is not the most vulnerable operating system, it is actually Linux

Windows 10 is not the most vulnerable operating system, it is actually Linux

Which operating system has suffered from the most vulnerabilities since the turn of the millennium? It would be Linux, not Microsoft's Windows, at least according to a newly released report. An analysis of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's National Vulnerability Database, compiled by Thebestvpn.com, tracked ``technical vulnerabilities'' in popular software between 1999 and 2019. And Debian, a version of Linux, has spearheaded the table with 3.067 vulnerabilities in the last two decades. Android is reasonably close to 2,563 vulnerabilities, the third-placed Linux kernel racked up 2,357. Apple's macOS was only slightly behind at 2,212, with Ubuntu coming in fifth at 2,007. The top five spots were taken by operating systems, although Firefox and Chrome took the next 2.873 and 1.858 vulnerabilities, respectively. When it comes to Microsoft operating systems, Windows 7 had 1.283 vulnerabilities and Windows 10 had 1.111. If you add them up, you get a total of 2394 over the past decade or so, since Windows 7 was released in 2009 and took over from Windows 10 in 2015. Note that some of the other numbers mentioned represent twenty years of existence, like Debian, which has been around since 1993, so it's hard to make direct comparisons in this regard. Still, this does serve to point out that Windows security may not be as fragile as you might think, at least historically, and that Linux and Mac users shouldn't be complacent. Of course, security is not limited to the simple number of vulnerabilities that appear in a given operating system or product. There are also a number of other important points to consider here, such as the nature of these vulnerabilities, the likelihood that they will be attacked, and of course the response and ease of fixing them, among many other factors. The fact is, however, that no user should be complacent, no matter how safe they think a particular product might be. Looking at the numbers for 2019 alone, Android was the most vulnerable software with 414 reported vulnerabilities, followed by Debian Linux at 360, and Windows 10 came third in this case with 357.

Microsoft is an important target

If you go with the software makers, Microsoft, unsurprisingly, is at the top of the rankings given the breadth of widely used products it makes (not just Windows, but Office, web browsers, and more). Some of the most critical vulnerabilities have also been found in Microsoft Office, with the report giving the various security vulnerabilities in the productivity suite a weighted average of 9.1 in severity. This was surpassed only by Adobe Flash Player (9.4) and Adobe Acrobat (9.2). Regarding the type of vulnerabilities found, in 2019, a quarter (25.3%) of all observed security breaches were code execution vulnerabilities. Cross-site scripting was the second most common gremlin at 17.7%, followed by buffer overflows at 13.9%, followed by denial of service attacks at 10.2%. Via MS Poweruser