MS Chief Security Officer to work for White House

NerveGas writes "An Interesting People message reports that Howard Schmidt, Microsoft's Chief Security Advisor, will be leaving MS to work as a security adviser for the White House. With the track record that Microsoft has in the area of computer security, this strikes me as a very bad move." CD: you'd think people would examine the job someone did at thier previous job before offering them a new one. Isn't this is like putting Capt. Hazelwood in charge of an oil tanker?

Comments

Re:First policy: Dump Windows

[b0r1s]

You people (anti ms zealots) really do amaze me sometimes. You assume everything has holes because it's windows. You assume anything that isnt windows is perfect and immune from exploits.

Let's look at pure facts.

This week, a remote root exploit was discovered in wu-ftpd. Have ALL of you patched your servers? Also last week, another windows worm surfaced. Looking at the two, which is more serious? Obviously the remote root exploit is far worse, chalk one up for windows.

You might say: "but you can patch wu-ftpd" or "you can run other ftp servers", to which I can respond "you can patch windows" and "you dont have to use outlook, nor do you have to use the 'preview panel'".

Everyone at slashdot is going to laugh and point fingers, sit back and say that windows is not secure so this man must be a fool. Why wont the people at slashdot, who are supposed to be intelligent free thinkers consider that windows, like EVERY OTHER OPERATING SYSTEM ON THE PLANET, is only as secure as the admin running the system, and any untrained staff running bad code with extra privileges can ruin any system?

Windows has flaws and exploits. So do linux, *bsd, and solaris. Patches come out. People who patch are survive, those that do not get rooted. This isnt something limited just to unix: it holds true for windows as well. A knowledgable admin, who keeps up with security updates, can keep any system sufficiently secure. Microsoft products are no exception.