Welcome to
Intelligent Computing, Using 64 bit OS is great if you love to have amazing
performance and Also you can get the great performance with 32 bit if you have
lower configured PC, what about the Security with 32
and 64 bit operating system.
Now a day’s most of
the PC have 64 bit configuration in high end PC and highly configured Laptops,
where older PC and affordable laptop are equipped with 32 bit OS.
32 Bit and 64 Bit
PC means the Data width of the Operating system architecture which is being
sent and received from Microprocessor in one clock cycle. It does also depend
upon the clock speed or Frequency of Processor.
If you are using your
system in Network environment or for saving some great data of simply using it
as server, its best recommend using the x64 bit operating system like Windows 7 windows 8 or any 64 bit
Linux distribution.
Here are couples of
reason which state and makes clear why 64 bit operating system are more secure.
Driver Signing Becomes Mandatory
Do you know many of
the operating system crashes occur due to faulty drivers installed on your
system? Or saying those drivers which don’t have digital signature from legal
manufacturer still can be used on system.
These Drivers
supply malware to the system and cause lots of harm like Blue Screen,
Unexpected shutdown, long time to boot/startup and hardware functionally is
mostly affected by these drivers.
X64 Bit operating
systems are designed such that it enforces the driver signature at the time of
installation, this enforcing include both Kernel-mode driver and user mode
drivers.
Mandatory driver
signing prevents the system from unauthorized and unsigned driver provided by
malware working on system.
If you will use the
64 bit Operating system Malware authors will have to force to disable driver
signing check and bypass the signing process through rootkit used for boot
time.
Yeah it’s possible
to enforce the driver signature with 32bit operating system as well but there
arises many compatibility issues to handle such task.
Address Space layout Randomization
Address Space Layout
Randomization is very well known security
features which allow the programme data to write in memory at different or say
random location every time it execute.
When we are not
using ASLR, attacker would easily predict the location of the program on the
RAM and it can make any virus or malware to sit there and steal the information
from there.
With feature like
ASLR, attacker have to guess the correct location of the program’s data and if
the guess is wrong, this will cause the program to crash and new startup of program
will be at completely new location, again seems newly impossible to the
attacker.
Talking about the
32 bit operating system, these days ASLR is implemented in 32 bit OS as well
but it’s not as much vast and random in nature so not so powerful as 64 bit.
Kernel patch Protection
KPP is the Amazing security feature
which was introduced in 2005 by Microsoft’s
64 edition of windows this prevent patching of kernel of the operating system.
According to Wikipedia
Patching the kernel
means, modifying the Kernel of Windows Operating system to some unsupported
mode or by unsupported method of filling the security holes. Kernel
Patching was never supported by Microsoft reason being that it greatly reduces
the system reliability.
Though Microsoft
doesn’t support patching but it’s still being possible in operating system, but
due to evolution of x64 bit Operating system, Microsoft has applied technical
barrier to prevent such patching.
Data Execution Protection
DEP is the feature
of Operating system that allows marking the certain area of memory as the data
area and execution of the any kind of data from those areas are strictly
prohibited.
Operating system
marks these areas as NX bit and consider as Non-executable area. Because only
this area has user data and an attacker can put any file or executable program
in this area only.
Using this DEP
policy in x64 bit operating system; attacker won’t be able to execute any such
files from those areas. Though Modern 32 bit OS also has this feature but its
implemented on Hardware level if you have 64 bit operating system thus, more
secure.
WOW64 Compatibility
64Bit operating system
can run 32 bit program but for this it require a special compatibility layer
known as WOW64(Windows 32 on Windows 64).
This layer enforces some restrictions
in 32bit programs which are very helpful in preventing 32 bit malware running
on computer with 64 bit operating system.
Also 64 bit
operating system has dropped the feature of running old 16 bit programs like Turbo
C/C++ and many viruses which are written in 16 bit only.
This made the
Computer more secure from many viruses and enforces the old program to upgrade
to 32 bit to run properly on 64 bit operating system.
Bottom line
Unless you are
still using the old 16 bit programs, you should upgrade to 64 bit operating
system if your current configuration allow you to do so. Share this post on
your tweet, Facebook page and be awesome by linking this post in Forum if
someone asks such question.
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