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The Windows Security Nightmare

Posted by michael on from the it's-funny-because-it's-true dept.

latif writes "Microsoft has set aside a $5 million fund for paying off informants on malware authors. In my opinion a good chunk of this money deserves to be paid to individuals who help catch the Microsoft employees behind the design of Windows Registry and Windows Update. As I found out, the two mis-features work together to deprive Windows users of all protection from malware. The details of my experience are in the article Why Windows is a Security Nightmare." In a related story, Anonymous Wussie writes "This guy had family with a problem: A Windows XP computer hit by worms that couldn't stay on-line long enough to get patched. His solution? A CD. This article describes the custom made CD he sent to his family member with patches, tools, and instructions to make a fresh install of Windows XP Home Internet safe. I know I'll be doing this in the future."

3 of 969 comments (clear)

  1. RTFA by interiot · · Score: 5, Informative
    RTFA, please.
    • Actually, Microsoft does offer a security update CD, and is willing to ship it to customers free of charge. But, as always Microsoft has made a mockery of a decent idea. First of all, 2-4 weeks are needed to deliver the CD. Then there is the problem of availability, the CD is not available everywhere (I live in Pakistan, and the CD is not available for Pakistan). Also, the CD Microsoft is offering is horribly out of date. There is no fix for this last problem, if Microsoft starts updating the CD every other week, then people will start asking for a new CD every other week. Obviously, shipping a CD to every customer every few weeks is quite an expense, and Microsoft doesn't want that. So, the Microsoft Update CD is there just for moral support.
  2. Re:offended by Turambar · · Score: 5, Informative

    A troll is a post carefully crafted to attract predictable responses and/or flames. The moderator probably read the post, saw the poster was "andy666" and thought some guy was trolling. It was a mistake.

    After looking at andy666's posting history, the moderator should have known that andy666 really is a French grandmother named Andrea Tilley, who apparently has a grandchild old enough to post the parent article, and isn't happy that her grandchild considers her technically inadequate for this job. Wow - French and thin-skinned; but I repeat myself.

    It's SlashDot - what do you expect?

    --

    Turambar
    ------------------------------
    Common sense is not so common.
    --Voltaire
  3. Downlaoding all "Windows Updates" is possible by comcn · · Score: 5, Informative

    I had this issue just the other day. I found out that Microsoft provide a "hidden" option on Windows Update to allow downloading all patches for a certain operating system.

    The following URL describes how to do it: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; en-us;323166

    Basically, go to Windows Update, click on "Personalize Windows Update", and then turn on "Display the link to the Windows Update Catalog", and save. You then go back to the main page, where you can access the windows update catalog and download to disk all current patches for a particular OS automatically.

    When I found that I was very pleased.

    I think there is software to automatically install it all from disk, too, but I haven't had time to look for that, yet.