Microsoft Plans An Overhaul For Patch System

sckienle writes "ZD-Net has an article about Microsoft's plans to overhaul their patch system. 'Ninety-five percent of attacks happen after a patch for a known software vulnerability has been issued' says Scott Charney, chief trustworthy computing strategist at Microsoft. Basically, Scott is promoting the idea that Microsoft can do a better job, in many ways, so people will trust and be able to install patches quickly. Microsoft has a transcript of Scott Charney's talk on their site." As reader sweeney37 summarizes, " Microsoft's plan is to reduce the patch installers from eight to two, they want to have one patch installer specifically for the OS side and one specifically for the applications." Sweeney37 points out this InformationWeek article on the planned change.

Comments

Actually, this sounds like a good idea...

[rock_climbing_guy]

I imagine that Linux servers that get hacked probably had patches available as well, or they left ports open.

That brings me to another point: Isn't it relatively easy to hack a machine that has insecure services running on any port - such as telnet? In theory, it should be easy to get a cleartext of a password sent in through telnet or FTP.

Borg eye... necessary?

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

Okay, so given their history I'm sure a large number of you (and a big part of me) could see how microsoft might be making these changes to force patches and upgrades on people to enforce all sorts of bad stuff like DRM and all that. Or even if the people at microsoft who studied the current patch system and are sincerely looking for a better alternative, microsoft will surely use it for something evil...

But still... is the borg icon absolutely necessary even when there aren't really any aspects of evilness in the story? Especially since if the same exact story came out for another OS everyone would be fine with it.