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Gates Says Windows Reliability Is Greater

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the release-the-worms dept.

mogrinz writes "According to an interview with the New York Times, Bill Gates is proud of the achievements Microsoft has made in increasing the security of Windows. As for the effects on people being attacked by SoBig.F, etc? Gates says this is "something we feel very bad about". Gates summarizes the Microsoft position very succinctly: "We're doing our very best, and that's all we can do"."

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  1. Virus Cost Statistics, Microsoft's DOS Attack by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    > Every MS virus, worm, and what not does not cause BILLIONS in lost dollars. There are I am sure some cases of actual lost real money, but if they totalled billions I'd be surprised.

    So be surprised.

    Here are some virus costs from Wired:

    Nimda -- $635 million
    Code Red -- $2.62 billion
    SirCam -- $1.15 billion
    Love Bug -- $8.75 billion

    While we're looking at statistics, here's another...

    According to CERT, the number of reported security incidents grew, starting in 1988, until they hovered at just over two thousand incidents per year from 1994 to 1997.

    But then in 1998, the number of incidents started to explode:

    1998 -- 3,734
    1999 -- 9,859
    2000 -- 21,756
    2001 -- 52,658
    2002 -- 82,094
    2003 -- 76,404 (so far)

    So what happened in 1998?

    Microsoft introduced embedded e-mail scripting in Outlook Express!

    Even an idiot could have predicted the consequences.

    But why would Microsoft do something that was so clearly incompetent and irresponsible?

    The answer can be found in another event that occurred in 1998, namely, the leaked release of the Halloween document. That internal Microsoft document described a strategy for fighting Open Source, as follows:

    > OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market.

    So there you have it. The embedded scripting in Outlook Express is just one part of a general Microsoft strategy to decommoditize (i.e. break) Internet protocols.

    In other words, these viruses and worms, which are costing us $billions, are just a side effect of MICROSOFT'S EXTENDED DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACK ON OPEN SOURCE USERS.

    If Jeffrey Parson might be going to jail for his denial of service attack (modifying the DDOS Blaster worm), then why not the president of Microsoft?