System calls In Apache Web Server

Ever wondered why major web server market is captured by Apache, whereas brainchild of greatest monoply of this world ‘IIS’ performs badly,now you can understand better.Richard Stiennon wrote an article in ZDNet (although article is very old but difference is worth to note even today) entitled Why Windows is less secure than Linux where he explains the difference between both opposite worlds in terms of the simplicity of sys calls.

First, why is sys call important ?? to understand this we have to understand sys call first. Richard expains it :

A system call is an opportunity to address memory. A hacker investigates each memory access to see if it is vulnerable to a buffer overflow attack. The developer must do QA on each of these entry points. The more system calls, the greater potential for vulnerability, the more effort needed to create secure applications.

Although many system engineer may know the difference technically,but an image is worth 1000 words.So, in his post Richard Stiennon expains this using two images (shown here) what the difference in the visual complexity of the Sys calls made by IIS and apache.These images were genereated by Sana Security.  

System calls in IIS

First image shown here is of Apache, where sys calls are shorter and simpler.Whereas just by looking at second image which shows that of IIS we get to know the complexity of sys calls.There is so much layering and complexity that no one will understand it properly,atleast i won’t try to do that.I think thats the main reason bug and security holes are so abundant in the windows system.Linux, solaris and other unix server follow the same pattern of simplicity and keep sys call to minimum.

Moral of the story, KISS … Keep It Simple Stupid.