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Gates Says Windows Reliability Is Greater
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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"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
A. No. "
He should.
Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen.
Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that. -CP
I like the part about "are you afraid of product liability suits". He should have answered. "no, now that we understand how to buy politicians and use lobbyists, we no longer fear the law".
photoplankton
Bill's made it possible for any random high-school loser to destroy $14 billion of other people's hard work. He's soaked the world in gasoline and handed out a billion matches. That's an "achievement"?
for you lazy Geeks:
Link
x+50%(where x = 0)
You can alter the percentage to taste, Bill does.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
They didn't even bother locking down any of these dangling ports until somebody exploited the fuck out of them. Now they are at least going to ship Windows with the Internet Connection Firewall enabled by default, which is a good thing. They are a reactive organization - it comes with the territory of having a dominant market position and being scared shitless of change, unless and until it forces itself on them, usually by inducing fear of losing the dominant market position.
Say what?
A patch for the blaster worm came out before the attacks. People [regardless of the OS] are just too stupid to run the fucking update process.
Even if they ran FreeBSD they'd have to keep ontop of updates. That is unless they want their apache server to get rooted or their ssh daemen pwn3d or their wuftpd completely j4ck3d.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Dear Bill,
Far and away your #1 bug is the infamous "buffer overrun" flaw. These usually mostly manifest themselves in string libraries. I know that you have at least 3 library solutions in-house (Safestr for C, CString in MFC, and basic_string in STL) but your developers don't use them otherwise these problems wouldn't happen.
I'd like to point you out to another alternative:
http://bstring.sf.net/
Which your developers may prefer. But whatever you do, why don't you simply make it a requirement that <string.h> simply be outlawed (you could easily write a tool to enforce that couldn't you?), or take some other drastic action?
Buffer overruns are certainly the most common kind of bug that isn't caught by QA (the right answer is not to try to train QA to find them -- they would require the skill of a hacker.) If you concentrate on this one bug alone, you will probably easily remove 80% of these attacks.
I have never gotten a virus with xp. Never even even had one come up in a virus scan. But, I do all the right things like use a firewall and autoupdate. I also do things no one else does like use IE security settings and turn -everything- (java, activex) for all but say 40 sites on the net. This last step is just far too much work even for expert users (esp with that stupid site may not display properly dialog for ActiveX). Further it is just beyond the typical home XP user.
here is a copy of the article, for the lazy bastards that don't want to register ;)
August 31, 2003
Virus Aside, Gates Says Reliability Is Greater
By JOHN MARKOFF
MICROSOFT, the world's biggest software maker, is the biggest target for computer viruses like the SoBig.F worm that wreaked havoc two weeks ago. Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect, talked last week about what it is doing to keep hackers at bay. Following are excerpts from the conversation.
Q. You wrote a memo last year calling on Microsoft to focus on reliable software. Now we've had this series of computer-security-related events that make it appear to outsiders that you aren't making progress. Have you in fact made progress?
A. Well, we've certainly made a lot of progress in terms of creating more reliable software, building tools so that people can stay up to date so that they don't run into these problems, creating the procedures that make sure that the recovery actions get widely communicated. We'd be the first to say that we're doing more and more on this. It was very important that we got the company focused on it, made it part of the reviews of all the different employees.
The fact that these attacks are coming out and that people's software is not up to date in a way that fully prevents an attack on them is something we feel very bad about. We want the update process to work so automatically that in the future these problems won't happen. The hackers are attacking not only our systems but other systems, and with the right kind of infrastructure and the right kind of work we can make sure they don't disrupt things.
Q. Have these events created a serious public perception problem about Microsoft on the issue of security?
A. Microsoft's reputation for doing great software research is very strong, and people are looking to us now and saying, "no other software company has solved this; you, Microsoft, need to solve it." We're rising to that challenge. The expectation they have of us is very high.
Q. The buffer overrun flaw that made the Blaster worm possible was specifically targeted in your code reviews last year. Do you understand why the flaw that led to Blaster escaped your detection?
A. Understand there have actually been fixes for all of these things before the attack took place. The challenge is that we've got to get the fixes to be automatically applied without our customers having to make a special effort.
Q. You have enemies who are in a crusade to undermine Microsoft. How do you cope with that?
A. I'm not aware of any systematic attempt by any group. There have been a few of these things that have come along. We have to make our systems invulnerable to these things. It's within our ability to make the systems invulnerable because the speed of update is as great or greater than the speed that somebody comes up with an exploit.
Q. Blaster included a message attacking you. Do you take these things personally?
A. No.
Q. Have you considered enabling the Windows XP Firewall by default?
A. The fact is there has been a fire wall inside of Windows that would have blocked MSblast [the worm]. We're doing a better job of getting information out to people of how to turn that on and when they should turn that on. The idea that it would be on by default is something that we have to push the technology to make that work for people. It looks like we've got a solution to do that.
Q. Some people are concerned about the automatic distribution of patches because of the possibility of doing widespread damage.
A. These patches will be signed by us, and things that are put into the critical security path that we have to pass through we have to be very careful that there is no regression in those things. It's a channel that has to be used not for features, but just for very critical things. We have some other ideas such as something called behavior blocking that will obviate the need in
For Chris'sake BILL what the fuck is taking so Goddamn long.
Steal the fucking Linux Kernel slap a Windows sticker on it sue the GPL out of business and give us One OS To Bind (not BIND) Them All already.
You ripped everything else off, how about ripping off so fucking security?
This
Linux and OS X ship with zero ports open. Windows XP and even Windows Server 2003 ship with 4 open ports. What does that mean? Four places that anyone can jack your system, and even if you have a firewall (a good one at that) programs that have managed to get onto your system whether through shadow installs (see Gator) or tricky web-pages that use java to make you download something and not tell you or even e-mail attachments-- all of those will be able to access the outside world and pull in information and throw it out there too without you ever knowing because those 4 ports are open.
Windows is not secure. Instead of fixing little problems like this that are incredibly simple, they decide to invest billions of dollars into programs like Palladium which will, among other less desirable things, make the platform "more secure" both from the outside world and from yourself. Figure your shit out Redmond, please (by Redmond I mean Microsoft, not Nintendo America).
The New Root Council, kickin' ass sinc
Why, because you're not trolling or flamebaiting?
I have three Debian stable installs here, all using ext3, yes, ext3 filesystems. How did I do it?
Well, I could boast about my l33tness, but I just selected the 2.4kernel install option from the menu, and then when it asked me to choose a filesystem, I had reiserFS and ext3. W00t!
So, it's not really that hard now, is it?
David
Content analysis details: (20 hits, 5 required)
AUTHOR_JOHN_MARKOV (20 points) Article written by John Markov
I'm a big fan of linux, but I work in an eviroment where windows is locked in. Yea MS has some problems but so does everyone, what everyone needs to remember is that MICROSOFT RELEASED A FIX FOR BLASTER BEFORE THE BIG HIT CAME. The fact is the people who got hit by blaster didn't maintain thier system, or weren't running firewalls. You wouldn't be on here growling about how debian sucked if a bunch of users didn't do apt-get update / upgrade would you? These guys have a huge market share, have a reasonably good product that most of the population is happy enough using. Many of (myself included) like linux. Both have bugs, both get fixes... but the weakest link is if the admins / system owners update... in this case many didn't and it made MS look bad/
--------- If its possible it will happen, If its impossible it will just take longer
Microsft software was never designed with security in mind. And it was and is not their primary goal, even now. It is quite different than non-Microsoft software.
If security were *that* important, wouldn't they take some of those many *billions* and actually make that silk purse?
Consider even just today's news post on Slashdot. Each and every one of them is about Microsoft is about money, and *not" about fantastic security advances. And yet the security problems plague us everyday.
Microsoft Introduces IM Licensing
Microsoft vs. Burst.com
Now that's just mean.
If by reliability, you mean it's ability to function in a proper way without self-destruction, I'd say he is succeeding. Windows XP is indeed better than the previous offerings. Once upon a time, you didn't even have to touch your computer and it would spontaneously have problems. It has gotten much better. Now, it's resilience against the evils of the internet...
That's another story. Indeed, Gates should institue a moratorium on new projects until the old ones can become stable enough to actually properly handle the internet.
Sobig.F is a good example of how fundamental the problems with Microsoft software is. The changes required to secure (pick one: Windows,IE,Outlook,Exchange,IIS) need to happen at the API layer. Unfortunately, this would take industry-wide support, something not even Microsoft can make happen overnight. It would seem with all the money companies already have invested, there is a lot of corporate inertia to overcome.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Hey, I am willing to beat up on Microsoft as much as the next citizen of slashdot city, but let's be fair here. A lot of the problems that are hitting people are due to people not applying the patches that are available.
I use both Mac OS X and Windows XP. On both systems, I use the software update mechanisms and religously apply the patches that are made available. On Windows I also have a virus protection utility in place. I have never once been caught with my pants down by a worm, virus, trojan horse, etc. And to answer the question of this out there that are already preparing to ask it, I have also never had my system "broken" by a patch.
So my respone, is that people shouldn "Just Apply The Damn Patches".
Jordan Dea-Mattson
Posting from China, where I am to adopt my daughter! Back to the US in a week!
ok you have obviously not read the mission statment of debian and know little about debian, so i won't bother with calling you an idiot, which you are, or any other names. I will simply say: if you don't like it or can't get it to run, leave the linux thing to people that can get it to run and who actually read and understand what they are using is about and simply keep your mouth shut about it. If you really have to say something about how you really want something done .... submit a bug report.
-=gabe2=- macbook dual 2.0
"We're doing our very best, and that's all we can do"
Concerned about the impact of viruses like Blaster and SoBig on your business? Look, here's what Bill Gates has to say on the issue. Even he's saying it's not going to get any better, so you can expect these kinds of incidents to keep recurring.
Now, let's talk about how to fix this...
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The truth is, every other mainstream OS has solved the security problem better than Microsoft. Most other OSes, especially *nix ones, have a philosophy of least privelege. But not Windows - its big "innovation" is to bundle the (insecure) web browser directly into the OS and enabling all sorts of nifty auto-executing controls so that drooling little kiddies all over the world can pass the time by bringing random network-connected Windows machines to their knees.
The usual refrain from Microsoft and its apologists is that its software is attacked so much because it's so popular. No. It's attacked so much because it's so easy to do.
The world doesn't care if security is good enough.
MS give people what they want, not what they need. Combined with their marketing bulldozer, ofcourse they're selling well.
If any other OS should have a chance to compete, it'll need to think about what the end user looks for, not what they should be looking for.
With the resources of the OS community it's not at all impossible to create something secure, but still as userfriendly as Windows.
The next great MMORPG.
Time to get the tin foil hats out again. Longhorn is going to affect the part of your brain that writes worms...
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
Dear Bill: Would you please give me one good reason why a system intended for home use needs to implement remote procedure calls at all?
Would you please point out one benefit this provides to the average home user?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Quote the article:
"Q. You have enemies who are in a crusade to undermine Microsoft. How do you cope with that?
A. I'm not aware of any systematic attempt by any group. "
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
This is double-speak. He is trying to imply that people's failure to auto-update is somehow related to Windows' risk of virus/worm attack. But they are in no way related.
System architecture that fails to maintain security is a design flaw, not a maintenance problem. Gates and Microsoft are attempting to blame shift their responsibilities to their product's users. Pretty much anyone would recognize this in a tort law suit, although I expect very few to make this claim in court simply because of Microsoft's size and reputation.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
Think linux is stable? Well your wrong! Copy and paste (thats if X's crappy mechanism lets you) this into your nearest xterm and watch the fun!
man bash
/ulimit
ulimit [-SHacdflmnpstuv [limit]]
...
Provides control over the resources available to the shell and to processes started by it, on systems that allow such control. The value of limit can be a number in the unit specified for the resource, or the value unlimited. The -H and -S options specify that the hard or soft limit is set for the given resource. A hard limit cannot be increased once it is set; a soft limit may be increased up to the value of the hard limit. If neither -H nor -S is specified, both the soft and hard limits are set. If limit is omitted, the current value of the soft limit of the resource is printed, unless the -H option is given. When more than one resource is specified, the limit name and unit are printed before the value. Other options are interpreted as follows:
-u The maximum number of processes available to a single user
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
You are wrong about open ports. If you take OpenBSD which is the most secure OS on the planet ships with SSH open by default. Now yes it secure but its still an open port.
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
"We're doing our very best, and that's all we can do"
In the words of George Carlin: "If this is your best, perhaps you should keep it to yourself."
Why should Microsoft fix anything? Window's is the most secure OS according to http://www.wininformant.com/Articles/Index.cfm?Ar
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I think also that the level of integration with the bulk of the OS is in need of dire repair. All of these applications cause the most problems, and due to thier integration, a comprimise in say IE usually results in the entire system being compromised. Making these programs function the same as any other program in windows would solve some of these problems I think.
The guy could burn a dollar bill every second until the year 3450 A.D. and he'd still have more in his pocket than I will probably make in my entire life.
How's that for perspective.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Before everyone starts chiming in on how real system admins would have been prepared. Remember a few things:
1) After being burned by a few bad patches, some corporations now have a policy that specifically states that patches must be tested first. With the huge amount of patches that is released by MS, this is a full time job.
2) Remote users (laptop users, VPN users, etc.) are like sailors coming back from overseas. Who knows what they were exposed to and what viruses they have. This is outside the control of most admins.
3) Microsoft itself was not prepared for Slammer. SQL servers that were being used in a development environment (read outside of normal sys admin networks) were not patched. With large organizations, sometimes there are unknown, rogue installations.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Years ago when viruses were brand new Unix experts were critical of Microsoft for making Dos an unsecure operating system.
Being fair even in the light of that day and even more so years later I can see why Microsoft Dos was made the way it was made.
(a CP/M like operating sysem for a new generation of computers not actually by Micorsoft dring a day and age when security was maintained through ignorence.)
After the movie "War Games" security became an important topic. Microsoft published the book "Outside the inner circle" this book would forever destory the notion of security by obscurity. Amoung the topics "The Cracker" points out that many operating systems didn't take security sereously when they were designed offering features that made hacking in increadably easy.
It also pointed out that "Security by obscurity" is stupid.
Many good consepts were printed in that book and I suspect that had Bill Gates not had a "Microsoft press" to publish it himself it probably would have never been published.
On the other hand talk is cheap.
When it came time for Microsoft to make it's revised Dos (called Windows) they did not take any of the critisums into account. Microsoft didn't lift a finger with reguards to security.
There are a few small issues I can think of with reguards to how Microsoft could improve the over all process in keeping Windows secure.
In saying "Windows is insecure by design" is not being critial of Microsofts efforst TODAY to repair Windows.
It's critical of Microsofts efforts over 10 years ago when Microsoft designed Windows.
And much later when Microsoft designed NT.
And again for Win 2k, Win XP and Win '03.
(I omitted Win ME and 9x as they were not resigned so much as improved on preveous version.
The over all os structures didn't change so redesignning the security was not possable)
Fundamentally Microsoft needs to make changes in Windows to work securely.
Realisticly it won't happen.
What they are doing is using the brute force method of securing Windows. Sending teams to fix bugs as they become known.
But brute force won't fix a flawed design process, Badly designed patches or an os that isn't designed to be secure to start with.
I don't actually exist.
Like you, I find the $14B figure highly suspicious. However, I cannot help but notice how much things add up. My company's cost for the last few virus/worms is tens of millions in helpdesk time (all metered, hence easy to count), plus lost productivity. Take a high-level engineer whose lab time, including salary, equipment, real estate and benefits come to $250/hour. Have him spent the morning fiddle with his Windows machine that has to be brought up to the last service pack, then rebooted 3 times, then he has to download and install three patches from saturated servers... (even if the guy actually never caught a worm and wasn't dumb enough to open an attachment titled "Free XXX Pics!", Networking won't let him reconnect before he patches his machine). And even on machines that said engineer has carefully kept patched, Networking insist that he downloads and runs an update verification program that will certify this machine is indeed patched. Oh, and the verifier is a bit buggy so on some machines, you need to tweak it before it runs correctly.
And soon your cost is a cool grand. Multiply by many, many instances all over the world for every outburst. It adds up quickly.
Meanwhile, of course, the Linux machines in the lab are perfectly happy. It's just that the engineer needs Windows to access his email because of the boneheaded all-Windows desktop strategy that the higher-up morons barfed on unsuspecting cubicle dwellers. But that's a different problem.
Don't tell me that these procedure are wasteful and inflexible. I know it. Unfortunately, that's still better than sending helpdesk technicians to each machine, which is even more costly.
So the total figure can easily come to billions because of the huge mandatory waste of time to update and run the verification program on each machine.
Right now, this weekend, in many colleges and universities, thousands of IT depts and student/faculty helpdesk techs are running around like crazy patching machines of students coming back to school. The cost for our local college alone (5000 students) is estimated at $15-30 per student. Do the math.
Conclusion: The $14B might well be optimistic after all.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Ahh their position for everything. The RPC 026 vunerability was discovered by a 3rd party.. not Bill's code reviews. The vunerability was in OLD code that existed back on Win 95... carried forward to the current versions. Even for those that deployed the fix, unless you had 100% coverage, you suffered the effects (Blaster.D ping traffic). And of course you lay blame with the very people that support your defective products (it's THEIR fault the fix wasn't applied).
Great question, lame dodge.. and the 'solution' you propose will not fix the problem, but will only satisfy another agenda.
Understand this, Gates: MS products are riddled with vunerabilities by the nature of your very development process. Peer review process is either non existant or done by folks who wouldn't know a Buffer Overflow if it smaked them over the head. Your programmers can get away with writing crap and because of the development model and your tight release schedules are forced to use 'quick and dirty' rather than 'quality' and 'wide peer review'. Code is slapped together and tucked away in a vault never to see the light of day... and forgotten. That is the best you can do with your business model - and it is not good enough and never will be.
Give me open source any day: worldwide peer review.. garbarge code is rejected and sent back, fast. A developer learns very quickly in this development model to use best practices or face rejection. Can't get away with 'quick and dirty'. And the funny thing is this cannot be bought. IBM realizes this.
Lawsuits won't fix this.. Marketing slogans won't, either. Insecure by design.
1) firewall on by default or equivalent
2) Separate Securtiy updates from feature updates so that sys admins will be less reluctant to apply them to stable reference platforms.
3) make the system default to autoupdate so that nearly all desktops will be patched.
4) "Behavior Limitation". By which I assume he means something like requiring root privliledges for some operations, and not making the user root by default.
If they do all this, and it sounds like they will, then it would seem that Windows will soar past Linux in security. Because Microsoft controls the entirety of their "distro" they will be able to have a robust patching mechanism that GNU/Linux with its highly custom configs wont be able to do (robustly at least). Moreover MS is mocing towards an instituinalized formal system for checking every line of code for sommon security errors like buffer overflows. Linux/GNU is dependent on developers checking theirt own code and the results will vary, and exerience will not be instituionalized.
Sure they've gotten hammered but the comment lament on Slashdot is that "boy they are dumb. if they just did a few simple things this would not happen. linux Rulez". Well apparently they are goinf to do a few simple things and a few more. How is the Linux desktop market (aka common user) ever going to succeed if it cant match the future windows for security.
Can someone please explain why after these changes Linux is somehow intrisically better than Windows has the potential to becomein terms of security?
This is a legitimate question, flamers will just be proving my point.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"Loosers allways tell me that they are doing their very best. Winners date the prom queen"
Sean Connery in "the rock"
There--- Used the code you told me to.
./crashlinux
...
bash-2.05b$ echo "main(){for(;;){fork();}} | gcc -o crashlinux && chmod +x crashlinux &&
>
bash-2.05b$
Seriously: 'format c: \q' should do more than that, but you had to create some smart script and hope that we added an extra '"'
Windows update needs a little work. Its a pain in the ass. It pops up while your doing something, wihtout thinking you hit remind me later, because your in the middle of something and dont want to have to wait for it to install and the reboot the computer. What they need is a remind me at next shutdown option. I dont run windows update all that often because i'm always in the middle of something, but i know i wouldn't mind spending an extra five minutes before i shut down.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I think the whole Linux vs. Microsoft thing where security and stability are concerned comes down to the dilemma of the "soft" parent vs. the "hard" parent. Microsoft is the "soft" parent and *NIX/Linux distros are the "hard" parent.
Remember when you wanted to go out somewhere with some friends of yours and your folks didn't? They did that for your own security and wellbeing. In some cases, you probably had a parent that was easier on you. For example, my dad was the "soft" parent for me. If I asked him something, he'd cautiously say that I could do X as long as I was home beore my mom found out. If I asked my Mom, the answer was most positively one of the following:
1. No!
2. Only if you've done everything else you need to do to get some free time.
3. Why would you want to do that? Go do something useful.
So you can guess which parent I asked more often. I asked the parent that gave me what I WANTED, not what I NEEDED.
Microsoft is the "soft" parent. They give the average user what they want without thinking too much about what the implications are. Or they assume that the user will "do the right thing". *NIX/Linux distros are the "hard" parent since they don't (by default) allow the user to do anything they shouldn't be doing. It's a pain in the ass to have to switch over to "root" to take care of some administrative tasks in Linux. Newer distros make it a little easier, but they still throw up the password protection which would annoy an average Windows user to no end. Think of how many times a Windows user complains when they have to remember a password and they can't or they have to write it down somewhere. Windows doesn't do this kind of thing. Instead they thwart security by being the "nice guy" on the surface. I have plenty of friends who got pissed off having to deal with passwords on their boxes and logging out to become administrator. They eventually all asked me to reconfigure them so that they log in as admin by default automatically with no password. I told them what the implications were and they still wanted this. The real problem still comes down to lazy and uneducated users. The PC industry is giving them the keys to Ferarris and nukes even though they aren't qualified to handle them.
I think that eventually it will become necessary to give people what they need with no respect given to what they want. However, it doesn't have to be impossible to deal with from the end user's perspective. I think RedHat's root dialog box when trying to run an administrative command from the GUI is a perect example of how it can be made slightly easier, but still secure.
Until the average user understands why they SHOULDN'T run as root or Administrator, we are giving them loaded weapons pointed at their heads without telling them how to use them.
Un-news
Most stack buffer overrun problems (Blaster bug, etc) are possible because the stack is executable. Other systems, such as VMS on Alpha don't have executable stacks, making this kind of exploits very difficult to do.
At least, the problem seems to have been fixed in the x86-64 hardware, but the operating systems need to take advantage of it. See here.
So when will we see M$ take advantage of good simple security features in the hardware instead of trying to invent new fantastic schemes (Palladium)? Why wasn't buffer overflow attacks fixed 5-10 years ago? I'm not sure if earlier x86 chips allowed non-executable stacks, but if M$ were serious about security, they could certainy have requested that feature from Intel. It's not rocket science.
)9TSS
John Markov is the reporter that has essentially harassed Kevin Mitnick via articles. Mitnick essentially says that Markov bent the truth (or even outright lied) about Mitnick in order to sell more articles, etc. Having watched Operation Takedown, I'm fairly certain Mitnick is right.
I'm giving up the possibility of modding in this topic in order to respond. Hehe, I'm an example for future generations!
-- It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
I like your idea about seperating critical updates from feature updates, but there is another problem. Microsoft frequently puts nasty licensing changes on their click-through agreements for updates. You may ignore this, but a business can only do so at their own peril.
"Sorry, we haven't installed the blaster update because we have not yet cleared the EULA with our lawyers..."
While that update may not have something previously unseen in it, we have all seen this in security updates and in media player updates (remember that media player has some arbitrary code exploits that are exposed every now and then... to fix those you need to update media player and 'agree' to their fruity terms).
With the likes of the BSA, software licensing can cause a business alot of pain. On the other hand, actual virus/worm can be blaimed on evil hackers, avoiding litigation.
Business will update more when it is not a legal liability to do so.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Alexandre http://enkerli.wordpress.com/
...except the credibility that they actually will do it, instead of talking about it.
Linux/GNU is dependent on developers checking theirt own code and the results will vary, and exerience will not be instituionalized.
Really? In my experience, there are quite a few people that "check out" the code without actually developing it. Not to mention people testing out automatic error detection systems, I know Linux has been getting good help from research in that area.
Can someone please explain why after these changes Linux is somehow intrisically better than Windows has the potential to becomein terms of security?
You speak as if they've already happened. Of course Windows could simply copy everything Linux has done, there's no magic over it. That aside, I don't think it will. Primarily, because it doesn't sell as well and because security is sometimes inconvienient. Windows has been building their market share on those new to using computers, and more are still joining. But I don't think Microsoft can hold on to being both that and the professional OS.
Around Windows 2000, I really thought they could. It was stable, clean and professional, and in general vastly superior to the Linux distros of its time. After WinXP, the "plastic" theme and setting up all the users as administrators in the *professional* version, I don't believe that at all anymore. I this you should ask the reverse - what is it Windows can do that Linux doesn't have the potential of doing better, not to mention cheaper (free) and with greater flexibility (access to source code)? I certainly haven't been impressed with the "improvements" I've seen lately...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The Linux I run on my computers today works a lot better than any combination of wishful thinking and promissory notes about future Microsoft products.
Windows' so-called potential for improvement is so large because it's so far behind. In any race, the smart money's on the consistent leaders, not on the lame duck with "great potenrial".
Sure, I'd be happy to explain after those changes actually happen. Until then, I'd be trying to compare actual working software with vapour. And that would be silly.
For those who are completely ignorant of computer security and never update their systems, they are akin to someone buying a power tool, not knowing how to use it, then trying to sue when they lop off a body part. You don't blame the manufacturer for those problems, you chalk it up to natural selection.
For those who are a bit more knowledgable, there is the issue of trust. After having used Microsoft's products for roughly 2 decades(since msdos), I feel I can't trust them to do something right anymore.
I know of people who got burned by the auto-update feature and their system was rendered unusable until they either restored or went into safemode to undo whatever "fix" was applied. Granted this is better than the "good old days" when a patch might require a clean re-install. Lots of good weekends gone to waste because of MS's "fixes".
Just this past week, I installed a update and suddenly, I couldn't make backups of my system because Autoupdate dinked with the drive access dll's. Thankfully, this only required the re-installation of the backup software to restore the DLLs to a working condition, but at what cost to the other parts of the system?
I have auto-update's download feature enabled, but I review the updates before installing them. I didn't get hit by the worm since I patched my system almost immediately after the fix came out.
The problem can't be completely attributed to users or to the producer of the software. But when the design of the software is so buggy that after literally tens of thousands of fixes, it is still riddled with security holes, you have to wonder if they are truly serious about security and about delivering a quality product to the end-user or if they are trying to do just enough.
It is understandable that MS is saying that they are doing the best that they can. That is all well and fine. But there is such a thing as their best not being good enough. Especially when there is so much slack to be made up for.
There is also the issue of this "got to be secure" attitude is recent. If it hadn't been for Linux arising quickly in the server and business markets both domestically and globally and if it hadn't been for the recent DOD government contract renewal, do you think MS would be so hot to trot to respond to problems like this?
Having watched and used MS's products for as long as I have, my personal opinion is that they've got a long way to go still and they aren't breaking even.
Winged Power Photography
> 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?
Nobody seems to be patching their Outlook Expresses.
> I've said it before and I'll say it again, there are no changes you could make that would stop SoBig from spreading except not allowing users to open attachements. All the crap about "In Linux you have to save the attachment, make it executable, and then run it" is crap, because that is what the users would have done. They WANTED to run the attachment. If it took 2 extra steps, they still would have run the attachment, because that was their intention. SoBig was a user stupidity problem, pure and simple. They wanted to run the attachment and did. Adding 2 more stpes wouldn't have changed that.
Part of SoBig was the Trojan port it opened; that port needed root access to do real damage to more than the original user.
If this Linux user were to have saved & opened that Linux SoBig attachment, then only that user's work would have been affected, not the whole system. Most MS users have Administrator access enabled on their accounts so they can conveniently install software and have that software run; a running SoBig in *this* environment threatens the whole machine.
Linux: +1, MS: 0.
The biggest problem with windows update is that it doesn't include any sort of "Criticality" level that indicates what should be applied, and what shouldn't. The hotfix for the blaster worm was rated just as high as an upgrade to MediaPlayer 9. Until Microsoft releases some sort of control for the sys-admins over what updates are applied, no network admin in the WORLD is going to allow windows update to run automatically. What happens if someone cracks the windows update site and manages to upload a signed trojan? Congratulations, he has now successfully 0Wnzored more boxes than anyone else on the planet.
And let's not even mention some of the "Updates" that microsoft has put out. Or the hot fixes that you have to de-install to install service packs, or any of the other muck-ups that they've managed to pull off...
Well, if those applications weren't so tightly linked into the OS kernel, microsoft wouldn't have that monopoly. So, yes, windows (any version) is intrinsically less secure than any OSS, because of microsoft's business model.
Get a list of all e-mail addresses to as many individuals with MS, Symantec, and all the other computer security outfits spawned by Gates. Include these in your address book and nothing else. Run an old unpatched MS office IE and Outlook express, get everybody that is pissed at MS security to do this world wide. Then do not run a firewall or virus scan. Now if everybody just let address book based garbage run wild and target the people who profit from garbage ware, and security patching, Gates might get the picture. Sometimes a little revolution is a good thing!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Guys
One common theme I see frequently throughout this thread is the constant assertion by linux users that MS products are fundamentally flawed out of the box and lead to all kinds of security and other problems for end users. However, when they make this comparison, they invariably take the non-computer literate windows user versus someone who has a fully tweaked linux box as their example. This to me is completely unfair on MS. The person who has the linux box is invariably far more PC aware and has done all sorts of tweaks and updates to get their box the way they want it. If that same, computer-savvy user were to apply themselves to setting up a windows box, they could achieve similar levels of reliability and security that they can on their linux box. On the other hand, if that joe bloggs, barely-knows-how-to-switch-it-on windows user was to try and install a linux distro, even one of the up to date ones, and I guarantee he will have an unusable comp and be looking at a re-install within a very short space of time.
I consider myself fairly computer literate and am running xp pro on my main box at the moment and have to say its the most stable, reliable os I have ever used and this includes several linux distributions. The box is up 24/7/365 with only occasional reboots for patches and so on. I run it behind a NAT router, use zonealarm, have up to date AV software and am up to date on all security alerts. These precautions couple with that most valuable of commodities i.e. common sense and I have never had a virus or security problem.
Its not that I dont like linux - I have been using it on a secondary pc which I like to dabble on - i have used RH 5.0,5.2, COL, SUSE 6.0, MDK 8 and currently RH 9. I went through the whole linux addiction, compiling apps and kernels like nobody's business but since getting married dont have the time to go and search for a new version of gcc or glibc because I want some plugin for xmms and have broken dependencies. Windows lets me get things done quicker and to me is more reliable - FOR THE AVERAGE USER.
So please people lets compare apples to apples in future when slating MS.