NewsForge: Dept. of Homeland Security Site Switches to Linux from Windows 2000

“The United States Department of Homeland Security (www.dhs.gov)
changed its servers over to Oracle on Linux last week, after
running on Windows 2000 for several months. Experts say that it is
unlikely the change is a reaction to ‘Slammer,’ the MS SQL server
worm that rocked the Internet last week.

“Netcraft shows the change took place on January 24th and 25th.
The site had previously run off the U.S. Office of Personnel
Management servers, but now is listed with Energis Squared, the
same group that hosts the White House website.

“The changeover appears to coincide with the slamdown of the
‘Net by the MS SQL server worm. Officials from the Department of
Homeland Security were unwilling to comment on the server changes,
but Jerry Brady, CTO of Guardent, a security consulting company
that provides services to the federal government, says that it
would not be possible to get a new server up and running that
quickly. ‘The lead time there has got to be a lot more,” he says.
“Still, the general trend of vulnerability [in MS server products]
would cause some concern…'”

Complete
Story