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Microsoft Opens Source to China
angst7 writes "ZDNet is reporting that Microsoft has signed an agreement which would allow the Chinese government access to Windows source code. This is part of an effort to curb the shift toward Linux in China due to that country's concerns regarding the security of closed source software." Reader NZheretic points out that less than a year ago, Jim Allchin swore under oath that disclosing the Windows operating system source code could damage national security.
not opens source to China.
just using its own form of open source - you just need to yell "Hey were going to use Linux!" and you get the source ;-)
And this hurts the US National Security?!? WTF!?!
Well, it looks like terrorists are gonna be the first to see the source... :/
You are great player! Present you with points!
Now that China has the source code we can look forward to some really nasty ones.
I have heard people discuss this and say something like "Oh boy, I wonder if the code will be leaked and we can be free to modify windows! Yaaaay!" Not. Who would want to modify windows? I mean, you can make workarounds for problems that exist already without having source. If you want a fully modifiable OS, why don't you just go with Linux?
if the Chinese can't recreate the shipping binaries from the source that MS shows them? The last time the question came up (the Caldera suit) Microsoft finally had to admit that even they couldn't reproduce the distribution binaries from source.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
can they type: ../configure;make windows;make install?
If not -- then how do they know that the code they are looking at is the same version that goes into the build on their desktops?
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Just curiously... if all the linux users care about is open source, wouldn't the functionality of windows compared to linux IN SOME ASPECTS cause a flux of *nix users to use windows if they could fiddle with it as they liked? I mean besides server issues, windows is the way to go if your computer is really just a PC.
When he swore under oath that opening the source for Windows would be a threat to national security, I completely agreed. The number of security holes in Windows with the source remaining closed was bad enough. Now China gets to see the source, and we don't? Wouldn't that put them at an advantage over US companies that can't audit the code for security holes?
What's the corporate punishment for treason?
What's this Submit thingy do?
Sorting through gigabytes of Microsoft legacy code that was written under the pretense that nobody would ever see it. Now there's a scary thought. I'd hate to be the guy with THAT job...
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
less than a year ago, Jim Allchin swore under oath that disclosing the Windows operating system source code could damage national security.
So, does this open the door for a purjury investigation? I would think that a number of companies would look upon this with great interest.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Many, many countries already have access to the Windows source, not to mention many businesses and universities.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
This must be a covert attempt from Microsoft to destroy China by weakening its national security!
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
No, it would compromise security if the vagrant open-source developers saw the Win32 source code. China, on the other hand, certainly isn't a threat.
Just replace "national security" with "microsoft security", and things make sense.
--
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
They often releases it to schools with various NDA's, as well as businesses under various agreements, but that's usually for educational or development reasons.
The deal with China seems to be a combination of PR and sales, rather than education and development.
frob.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
I cant wait to put my hands on that baby, i know, is an ugly one but would be very intersting to look the sources. This make me wonder, with all the security issues that Windows has isnt a bit dangerous to give the source to only one country who could find several bugs and holes by looking at the codes?, isnt it scary?, say bye-bye to Windows on sensitive servers.
Sigs are for morons... Wait a minute...
So the US government needs to either arrest Jim Allchin for perjury or Bill Gates for treason.
So which is it, Microsoft? Treason, or perjury (or both)? (Yes, Microsoft bashing is fun, you should try it some time)
The ocean parts and the meteors come down
Laid out in amber, baby.
Unless the ability to compile the source and run the resulting binaries is there, this is a meaningless gesture as there is absolutely no way of knowing whether a given version of the OS matches up with the allegedly corresponding source.
I wonder if China and other governments will be tobuilding their own binaries and install CD's...?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
maybe its not all the source... you know they could just release parts of it.
.... oh wait that's BSDs stack.
Cool, now we can all see the tcp/ip stack
1. Turn over source code to foreign governments hostile to the United States.
2. Compromise National Security.
3. ???
4. Profit!
anyone else having thoughts of the Code Red virus 2 yrs ago that defaced websites with "hacked by Chinese"? Kinda ironic if it happens on a Chinese server, huh?
$cat
It's just that M$ can't go after China with an army of lawyers. When a school or corp breaks their NDA, they end up in court. I wonder what happens when China breaks NDA.
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
Trade secrets: Beyond a doubt there are piles of things in the source code that could be considered trade secrets. One way to protect trade secrets is to make certain that they are widely available but not legally available. In the cynic's view (i.e. mine) M$ wants the code to be leaked by China.
If the code is illegally leaked, it is very easy for M$ to accuse other products (future Linux apps?) of using illegally acquired trade secrets. How can the authors, living in countries around the world, prove that none of them have ever seen illegally leaked material?
Based on what I have read about the development of the clone of the IBM BIOS, it appears that the burden of proof de facto lies on the defendant to show that they are not using trade secrets illegally.
This may give M$ a very big gun to point at any colloboratively developed code that they don't care for.
...security goes out the window. (no puns actually intended).
The almighty dollar means more than anything to a corporation after all. Laws, security, morals - whatever - have nothing to do with how a corporation acts, unless it will affect profit.
BlackNova Traders
Sorting through 50 million lines of code, finding hundreds of thousands of vulnerabilities to exploit in windows, and thereby becoming the predominant information-warfare player, at least in terms of potential mass disruption, on the planet.
Someone in China is smiling sagely over this one.
Although I've always felt that "cyberwar" scenarios were rather overblown attempts at giving backroom geeks frontline roles, the military certainly takes it seriously; one well-received military paper a few years ago warned that America's IT defenses were on a par with the ability of Task Force Smith (whose ignominious retreat from Korean forces showed how woefully unprepared America was for the Korean conflict).
As we know, China has been touted as the first great cyberwar enemy; allegedly, China does have a "hacker brigade" tasked with disrupting American networks and computer systems in times of war, to rectify the strategic imbalance between the two nations. Now, Microsoft plans to open to a strategic rival of the U.S. the internal code that will power the Navy's upcoming CVN-77 aircraft carrier, plus other "smart ships."
This raises an interesting question for the Administration: although, as Vann H. Van Diepen (Director of the Office of Chemical, Biological, and Missile Nonproliferation) told Congress, export controls to China are not enforced in "areas where the technology is widely available as commodity items ... such as low-level computers," the source code to a mission-critical operating system used by military C4 systems is certainly not a "commodity item," nor is it "widely available." Will the White House put national security over Microsoft's profits? Les Kinsolving, call your office!
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
"All warez copies of Windows actually fake versions distributed by the Chinese"
"Microsoft Source Code leaked world-wide"
"Microsoft discontinues entire software division and focuses full force on their Mouse and Keyboard division"
1- China Gets Source
2- China uses Message Queing to break or break into asian corps, and small countries which have little security
3- China now has massive espionage in 2nd/3rd world countries, and united states corporate subsidiaries in those countries
4- China invests heavily in US stock market
5- Profit!
At least that is what an Evil empire would do...
But maybe it would damage national security. To say it's perjury, you have to prove he was not telling the truth. How does this prove he wan't telling the truth?
I,
Know that there are export restrictions for crypto software and the like and I'm sure MS isn't sharing this type of material.
But, given the number of times MS software has been shown to be quite a good host for viruses etc. shouldn't there be someone at the Commerce Department reviewing MS's shared code policy.
Basically, I'm seeing MS sharing source code with probable enemies of the US and it makes me nervous.
What's China gonna do with this source code.
Well, they could certainly look for exploits, "No need to try to hack the darn binaries anymore, we got the source Bob."
After identifying the exploits they could EASILY turn around and use them against computers in the US.
For example, what about all those Navy ships out there that are being fitted with MS software? Do you really want the ships Phalenx (spelling?) system networked to and sharing network assets with MS OS's that could be compromised by a sneaky Chinese spy onboard with a floppy full of viruses?
What makes this even worse is that MS is handing over this material to the bad guys and I'll bet you that a majority of our military cannot get their hands on it. Nor can the majority of the FBI personel or the CIA or the NSA I would bet.
This is similar to handing over nuclear technology to the North Koreans so that they can build a power plant. See where that get us?
As much as I dislike saying it, if everybody on our side cannot see the source code, then nobody should be allowed to see it.
Caution: Contents under pressure
This is the perfect opportunity to demand that the US Gov't remove all MS products from their systems and switch over to open-source equivalents!
Microsoft can no longer argue that it's safe and secure, or they'd be purguring themselves!
Oh what a tanlged web we weave... eh Microsoft?
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
Um.... reverse engineer?
They released the source to them.
There's no need to reverse engineer it...
Karma: Non-Heinous
<sarcasm> You'll notice that there are no brown-skinned folks on that list, so rest assured that dangerous information will not fall into the hands of terrorists. </sarcasm>
In case you didn't know, the "People's Republic of China" has an entire department(ie Air Force, Navy) dedicated to Information Warfare. Which does in fact, include computer viruses.
two far east countries essentially "force" MS to change it's policies but the U.S. can't do anything to control them? Proving once again our government if far to beholden to corporate interest.
From an Infoworld article on the subject:
"Governments signing up to the security program will be able to build systems that offer the high levels of security required for national security, Microsoft has said. However, government users will not be allowed to make modifications to the code or compile the source code into Windows programs themselves, according to Microsoft."
Yeah, real 'open'.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
When can we expect to see the $5 knock-off CDs of the source hawked on Hong Kong street corners?
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Why is this article listed under the MS topic? I thought Chairman Mao owned the copyright on the "Source to China", or perhaps Karl Marx. How can Microsoft legally distribute it?
I swore at Microsoft all the time. Then I stopped I knew they didn't pay attention.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Actually some versions of code red did have code to detect the language that a site's web pages were in and trashed the site if it wasn't in Chineese. Then a few days after this was discovered a second verison of the same worm appeared which did the opposite. Code Red hit at the time that the US spy plane was forced down in China.
There are plenty of examples of politically motivated hacking, the Palestinians and Israelis have been having an ongoing proxy war for some time. However almost all the events appear to be the work of independent agents working on their own rather than being coordinated cyber-warfare.
The only example of state sponsored cyberwarfare I am aware of is the attacks on Usenet by Hasan B-) Mutlu and Serdar Argic who roboposted thousands of anti-armenian propaganda messages. Mutlu and Argic were both pseudonyms used by an officer of thr turkish intelligence service which was concerned that reports on the Turkish massacre of Armenians during world war I were circulating on Usenet and damaging the image of Turkey abroad at a time when the post USSR CIS was fragmenting into racial warfare. So they roboposted claims of a bogus masacre of turks by armenians repeatedly in order to drown out and discredit the genuine claims that the turks massacred the armenians.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
so you can see the source. big deal. when i can compile my own windows, then big deal
Name five?
:-), neither do I. I kinda like it that way, I prefer not to have MS lawyers do cavity searches looking for their source.
If they had, then there would be copies of the Windows source floating around for a while now. Also, we would have heard some major eruptions from the Dept of Homeland Security.
Sorry, but Universities do have access to the source. I have a friend who worked on a project that was granted access. You have to apply to MS, they have to like the project, you sign NDAs and agree to keep lab locked, CDs secured, etc. MS gets the right to incorporate your research, you are allowed to publish, move to a different University and take the license with you. It's real. The source probably is out there somewhere, you just don't run in l33t enough circles
I tried to write something that was quick to read, but to the point. Who knows, maybe someone will notice. I'm not holding my breath, though.
=====
Despite the fact that Microsoft's software is widely known to contain many security vulnerabilities, the U.S. government and military heavily rely on Microsoft's Windows operating system to peform vital government functions.
It is relatively easy to find security vulnerabilities in software when you have access to the source code of that software (source code is what defines software; people read and write source code).
In light of this fact, Microsoft has claimed that sharing information about its software with competitors could damage national security.
More important than any competitor to Microsoft, China now has the source code to Microsoft's Windows operating system.
Shouldn't the U.S. government move in the direction of open software that is not ultimately controlled by any one entity? As a concerned and informed citizen, I would wholeheartedly suggest Senator Warner support open source software and vote against bills like the DMCA that stifle the progress of open source software.
I understand that China is not allowed to compile the program. That being the case how can they be sure that they have the complete source.
The only way that I can see a government feeling warm and fuzzy about this would be if they were allowed to examine all 500 million lines of code and to compile it themselves and distribute that.
Even doing this they will have to do the same thing to every update and every proprietary piece of software that they run on government computers.
I think that Linux is still the way to go for China.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
You see, being exposed to Windows source code gives programmers a killer headache, and after having seen it, they'll never be able to write a secure piece of code themselves.
Contrary to your assertion, many people outside of MS do have access to MS source. "Open Source" is not the only way to see source. China will probably sign an NDA just like the US corporations and universities do, and presumably the US government. Hell China might even abide by the NDA, why would they want to let their civilians to have access to the source. They are bigger control freaks than MS.
If, theoretically, the USG saw all the source code, couldn't citizens then solicit that same information (the source code) under the Freedom of Information Act?
I mean-- it comes down to the core issue of privacy-- the gov't would have to prove that it has no unfair advantage that could impede my 4th Amendment rights vis a vis the M$ software.
Or-- it could prove to be collusion between a private entity and the state, also illegal in the US, and I would think most of Europe...
davejenkins.com |
This isn't quite right. Trade secrets are just that - secrets. They are secrets that the company elects to protect by not publishing. However, if those secrets are discovered by someone else, or somehow otherwise made public, you have just lost any rights you may have had. The alternative is to patent them, in which case you gain limited protection (time frame, licensing fees, ect) but have just told the entire world how to do it, step by step. And not every country recognizes the same patent law. There have been recent medical cases where S American countries have broken pharma patents to provide cheap, effective medicine to it's people.
If, according to Allchin:
"It is no exaggeration to say that the national security is also implicated by the efforts of hackers to break into computing networks," Allchin testified. "Computers, including many running Windows operating systems, are used throughout the United States Department of Defense and by the armed forces of the United States in Afghanistan and elsewhere."
Then why isn't the military running NSA Linux? Because they don't like OpenOffice? Because they can't see Sorenson video in Quicktime? Because Opera borks their MSN page?
MSN is reporting a story on Opra attaining billionaire status, but I thought one side note was hillarious:
"Gates' personal wealth, much of it in company stock, has diminished by 60 percent since April 1998, when it briefly reached $100 billion. His worst year was 1999, when it plunged by a third as the government pursued an antitrust case against Microsoft. Forbes notes he is also the world's biggest giver, donating $1 billion annually to charity, largely to vaccine research."
With all the bugs and viruses his software is subject to, I was hoping he was putting more than that into vaccine research!
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
DVD-CSS aside, that's not how it's supposed to work. In theory the difference between trade secret and patent is that with a patent, the Government enforces your exclusive right to use the development in return for you telling everyone how it's done. With trade secret, you take the chance of independent discovery. So if an organization chooses to hide a development as a trade secret and the secret gets out, they've got no recourse other than to recover damages for breach of confidentiality. (That only works with those who have a duty of confidentiality in the first place, of course.) The genie doesn't go back in the bottle.
Of course, that's theory.
Still, MS would have a decidedly difficult time going after Tridge for "trade secret violation" based on a speculation that he found out about some SMB operation from leaked Chinese source.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
All MS need to do is take out the us govt. approved spy code for the examination. The Chinese won't be compiling and shipping their own versions of windows will they? Or is MS now employing Stallman/
Windows with improved support for USB (Ultra Straggly Beard)
Hands up everyone who refuses to obey orders.
YOUR FACTS ARE INCOORECT!
...maybe Bill G is hoping that having Windows and Linux both "open" in the same chaotic marketplace (Asia) will quickly lead to enough "contamination" in Linux distros to "open" the door to generalized lawsuits.
We all know that there is really nothing new in code. Part of what makes an open application clean in the sense of free from copyright issues is not the absence of certain ideas or particular implementations of them, but the absence of a means for those ideas to have been lifted entirely from proprietary versions of the same ideas. Microsoft has always protected their code and this is actually a Good Thing for "clean room" OOS developers coming up with the same solutions as M$ codemonkeys.
Now, if Microsoft could point to Asia and say "our crown jewels made their way into Linux because of our ill-advised opening of Windows in Asia wink wink" do you think a sympathetic judge somewhere might be bri...er...convinced to slap an injunction on the further distribution of OOS software developed after the date of Windows source release to China? And even if they (M$ and the Chinese) aren't actually thinking along those lines right now, do you think they (M$) will hesitate a New York minute to take such action if the opportunity presents itself?
So you see my Prince, perhaps the binaries are not the issue. We all know what the issue is for M$, don't we.
Signed,
Nicolo Machiaveli
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
For this to be of any use, they'd need to open all of the Windows source to China's government. Who knows what they might be hiding inthe bits they've not opened.
Follow me
I personally think this is hilarious. I spit coffee all over when I read it on news.com this morning It's hard to ask to be taken seriously when your proprietary flagship software product is so shoddy and untrustworthy that you have to share the source to get foreign countries to trust it (and compete with other open source projects).
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
But will they be allowed to make changes and recompile their own patched or enhanced versions?
If not, then Microsoft has completely missed the point of what Open Source software is all about. It's not just about allaying fears about that is in your code. It is the freedom to(pretty much) do what ever the hell you want to with it!
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
less than a year ago, Jim Allchin swore under oath that disclosing the Windows operating system source code could damage national security.
And aparrently, not disclosing the Windows source hurts M$'s bottom line. Guess we all know now where their priorities are (not that this surprises anyone). Wonder if we should start organizing anti-MS protests among vehement pro-American groups?
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
While I can see how this will help China discover unintentional backdoors, this won't help them against intentional backdoors.
There was an old hack which Ken Thompson used to give himself access to all Unix systems, as a proof-of-concept of why you shouldn't trust source code. He didn't modify the Unix source code. Nor did he modify the C compiler used to generate the Unix binaries. He modified the C compiler used to compile the C compiler. Full source code access wouldn't help you see the exploit.
Details are atn ed /thompson.html.
http://www.wbglinks.net/pages/reads/hacksexplai
China doesn't have the rights to compile the source code they get. Even if they do (and I'm sure they will, if it's of any use to them) they won't be able to verify that the code is free of intentional backdoors-- because presumably it requires M$'s compiler. Even if they get access to the compiler source code (and I don't think they do) they can't verify that it doesn't have a back door.
If I were China I'd be afraid that the US government has hidden an exploit in Windows. That may seem paranoid, but security folks are supposed to be a little paranoid. I wouldn't trust Windows, source code or not.
Come to think of it, I wouldn't trust the American-designed processor, BIOS, disk controllers, RAM, keyboard controller, chip design tools, etc.
> Now China gets to see the source, and we don't? Wouldn't that put them at an advantage over US companies that can't audit the code for security holes?
;-)
Do you know how many US (and non US) companies have the Windows source code now? Do you know how many US (and non US) companies sign strategic (and not so strategic) cross licensing contracts with Microsoft (and some of them include full source code disclosure) every year?
Try the news or ask some universitys CS department how (not) hard it is to get the source from Microsoft.
So the question why "you" -- i assume you are an US citizen -- will not see the Windows source code is missing the point. You will not until someone posts it somewhere -- nor will the average chinese geek/forum addict/slashdot troll.
b.t.w. greetings from _OLD_ europe