February 2003 Web Server Survey
25th February, 2003
In the February 2003 survey we received responses from 35,863,952 sites.
Market Share for Top Servers Across All Domains August 1995 - February 2003
Top Developers
| Developer | January 2003 | Percent | February 2003 | Percent | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apache | 22,045,420 | 62.23 | 22,492,327 | 62.72 | 0.49 |
| Microsoft | 9,739,590 | 27.49 | 9,687,454 | 27.01 | -0.48 |
| Zeus | 736,744 | 2.08 | 768,951 | 2.14 | 0.06 |
| SunONE | 471,942 | 1.33 | 428,004 | 1.19 | -0.14 |
Apache on Windows Struggling?
25th February, 2003
One of the goals of Apache/2.0 was to better support operating systems other than Unix. While the Windows version of Apache/1.3 was advertised as experimental, it was hoped that in Apache/2.0 it would become much more widely established. However, since the first general release of Apache/2.0 there have been a string of security problems in the Windows (and other non-Unix) versions that may undermine confidence in the suitability of Apache for these platforms.
Windows Apache entries listed at mitre.org's common vulnerabilities database include directory traversal using dot-dot paths, revealing script source by appending invalid characters, and DOS device names causing a denial-of-service. The striking thing is that these are sterotypical vulnerabilities that over the years many other products have suffered from, and fixed. Apache developers will be disappointed that they were not able to learn from other people's mistakes sufficiently well to pre-empt the same vulnerabilities appearing in their own server.
In the current month's survey we find over 16,000 Apache Win32 sites on the 'Web which may be vulnerable to one of these problems.
Notwithstanding the security problems, the support for threading in Apache/2.0 is a major performance breakthrough for the Windows version and consquently sites using Apache on Windows have a bigger incentive to upgrade to version 2 than sites on Unix. This is reflected in the relative uptake of Apache/2.0: a little over 1% of all Apache sites are running version 2, but amongst Windows servers the proportion is over 7%.
www.byteandswitch.com reboots after two years
25th February, 2003
Last month we pointed out a Windows 2000 site that had gone over two years without a reboot.
Unfortunately, www.byteandswitch.com's proud run came to an end coinciding with the SQL-Slammer worm at the end of January.
World's second largest vendor of Windows machines chooses NT4 for Web Site
25th February, 2003
- When we say "Upgrade!" you must do what we say, not do what we do
- We're still waiting for our order to be delivered
- It's not broke, and we dont need to fix it.
- We're less of a target for attackers. There's no kudos in hacking anything more than 5 years old.
- We've been evaluating Linux, and have not yet reached a decision.
- It's just the front end machines. Everything else has been running Windows 2003 for months. Honest!
- The cobblers children didnt have shoes, either.
- That site doesnt see a lot of traffic. It just redirects to www.euro.dell.com
- If you think that running NT4 doesnt do a lot for our product advocacy, then you haven't seen what our evil competitor runs
Mandrake falls into Administration
22nd January, 2003
The increasing availability and falling costs of high bandwidth connections have posed a question to the continuing relevance of the Linux distribution industry. In 1995 only the very determined would have downloaded the Linux operating system over a 28.8K connection rather than pay for a CD, but equiped with a cable or DSL connection, the CD becomes much more optional.
Mandrake compounded this scenario by some commercially curious behaviour, making freely downloadable images of each new release available over the internet well before their CD editions were available. Mandrake's approach was popular but seemed to actively encourage people to download the new releases rather than buy CDs. More opportunistic companies have been able to sell CDs of new Mandrake releases for weeks before Mandrake's own boxed sets became available.
Liberty Alliance Identity Server launched
22nd January, 2003
Sun launched its Identity Server this week, which is positioned as the first component of the Liberty Alliance single sign-on scheme for web site authentication. When the Liberty Alliance was first announced, it seemed that its position was hopeless, as Microsoft Passport and AOL SNS already had their systems implemented and deployed. However, Passport and SNS have not by any means become pervasive, with this months survey finding fewer than 100 unique sites using these systems and Liberty now seems to have a plausible chance to compete with the established systems.