Linux and Android are more insecure than Windows, bet report

A US government report developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Vulnerability Database, pointed to Linux as the most vulnerable operating system since the turn of the millennium. The data is organized by TheBestVPN.

The data was counted between 1999 and 2019, placing the Debian Linux distribution as the most vulnerable, having registered just over 3,000 loopholes reported in the last twenty years.

And if you think that some Windows comes right away, you're wrong. Microsoft's first position in this ranking is ninth, with Windows Server 2008. The late Windows 7 comes in 10th place, with Windows 10 in 12th place.

Update 11/03/2020 - 14h00 - The way TheBestVPN organized the data is being questioned for supposedly accounting for the security holes in all packages distributed in Debian along with the operating system itself, while other OSs have only accounted for their own flaws . As soon as there is confirmation, we will update this post.

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Number of vulnerabilities found between 1999 and 2019 in software products (Reproduction / National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Vulnerability Database)

Before Microsoft products, we have Android from Google close to the top, followed by the Linux kernel. Apple's macOS comes in fourth, and iOS in eighth.

However, if you add the data from Windows 7 and Windows 10, which Microsoft's public has shared over the past two decades, we have a total of 2,394 registered vulnerabilities, enough to put Microsoft in fourth place, just above Apple with its macOS .

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Software companies with the highest gross total number of vulnerabilities found between 1999 and 2019 (Reproduction / National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Vulnerability Database)

Still, given Microsoft's long dominance in the global software market, the company's products are still the most “targeted” by cybercriminals. The company is also the company whose sum of all its product vulnerabilities is the largest in the report. Next is Oracle, responsible for Java.

In terms of real risk, the products that have presented the most problems for consumers in these twenty years are our old acquaintances: Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat Reader.