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Open Letter to a Digital World
jg21 writes "Exasperated after spending 5 hours removing spyware and trojans from his wife's Windows PC, sysadmin Chris Spencer has written an impassioned Open Letter to a Digital World. In the letter he reviews the 'elephants in the closet' - i.e. unfixed bugs and glaring security vulnerabilities - that Microsoft in his view hopes ordinary users will ignore, including some discussed in previous Slashdot stories."
He has a CS degree, runs Linux himself and still let his wife surfing the web with IE? What went wrong? We all now that alternatives exist.
Well, this is a nice letter and all, but I have a feeling the only people with the patience to read through the whole thing are already convinced of its content...
Not by letting her run IE, but by letting her run IE on a Windows box as full admin.
"... despite the anti-virus, regular Windows updates, having the good sense not to open attachments, using a firewall, and avoiding any type of seedy activities online..."
Let's see, it's 2004, XP is two years old, 2K is four years old, and your wife got spyware for one of two reasons:
* You let her run too old a version of Windows (98/ME) with no built in security, (Melissa got past anti-virus software remember) or
* You let her run 2K or XP with full admin or "power user" access.
You two only have yourselves to blame for choosing to run a machine insecurely. Yes, you. You could've stopped all of this before the fact if you ran a modern version of Windows as limited users, if you used a mail program Designed for XP and kept that up to date as well as the OS, if you treated the 'net like any other public place instead of trusting everyone by default.
You chose Windows, and you chose to run it insecurely. If you think running Linux is the cure, go right ahead. But if you run it as root, you don't deserve any sympathy from me. And if you run XP as a full admin, you deserve even less sympathy.
Take charge of your own computer security already, however you do it. Don't whine at Microsoft because you let it happen.
And damn my slashdot karma to Hell anyway. I'm sick of this whining: "Microsoft (this), Microsoft (that), Microsoft (whatever)." Lazy bastards. How come MY MOTHER doesn't get spyware or viruses or whatever when she's running only XP Service Pack 1? Without any AV software? Explain that.
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
Why didn't he setup a non-root account for his wife on the windows box? Why didn't he install THE browser, Firefox, on his wife computer? Why didn't he enable excessive auditing so he could track down which app installed what and when?
Oh, that's too hard? If that's too hard, you're not a sysadmin.
True, spyware can be almost viral these days, but there is one factor which enables it in the first place: the user. "Oh, this nice free tool from www.[the tool's name].com is so handy!", should ring a bell, a lot of bells, alarmbells to be exact. NO search bar comes for free, unless it's open source, to name an example.
First I thought, hmm could be a great article, but after a few paragraphs it was clear this article is not great, it's the frustration of a person who doesn't WANT to understand windows and blames the consequences of that to the OS. I mean, blaming IE and not having firefox installed should be enough to categorize this article as "ordinairy propaganda".
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
I don't run anti-virus. I don't have a firewall. I don't run spyware-removals under normal circumstances. If I feel the computer is feeling odd I download and run F-Prot's free DOS version followed by running Adaware 6. On some single occasion I've run Norton Anti-virus just to be on the safe side
I'm not alone in using this computer, my not quite so computer-literate girlfriend does too. I often download shareware games and freeware programes, not to mention warez every now and then.
Despite all this - I have never (*knock on wood*) been virus-infected. I have never gotten any spyware.
So I have to ask myself, what to do all these people do to get their computers so messed up? Why isn't it happening to me, when I run the same Windows without any protection? Is it really Windows fault?
Telling all the stories you like about how your (or your mothers/wives/SO's) machine has never had a virus/spyware attack even though you never run anti-virus software nor a spyware detection suite isn't going to mnean a lot.
The simple fact is that many of the people on this board have to work with windows (from 95 to 2003) everyday and can tell you horror stories about machines that have been secured, reside behind a natting firewall, etc etc but still they get slapped down by the newest virus which has snuck in through a vulnerability which was patched three months ago.
The other area you seem to be missing is the inate ability of users to fuck things up, no matter how secure you make it. All it takes is one innocent click on a link and all of a sudden you have spyware coming out your nose.
I'm probably on thin ice saying this here, but oh well.
I run three OSs at home: OS X, Fedora Core 3, and Xp Pro. At work, I admin XP Pro and Red Hat.
My company has about 150 PCs running some form of Windows. In the last year, we've had one infection. One.
At home, I've never had any. Ever.
While I totally support GNU/Linux (including monetary donations and buying distros like SuSE at retail price), I also pay for and use XP Pro for various reasons. I agree that Windows is deficient in many ways, and I agree that Microsoft could do things differently and be better for it in the long run.
However, I find it very difficult to understand how so many people's computers get infected. Windows or not. I do nothing special at home...the only thing I've done is use a broadband router from Netgear (because I have more than one computer), make sure I keep my XP Pro machine updated, install anti-virus and keep it updated (automatic) and use Firefox.
This guy is a sys-admin, and his wife's computer gets infected? How? If it is "his wife's" computer, that implies he has multiple computers at home. This implies some sort of router...even a $20 router uses NAT and has basic firewalling built in.
Either this guy is a poor sys-admin, or his wife did something with the computer to get it infected. So, Windows and Microsoft flaws aside, what we're really talking about here is a user education issue. I, as a user, at home, am educated about security issues on my PC. The people at work are educated. I don't have problems at home, and neither do we have problems at work.
So, while his open letter is all well and good, maybe in his case he should focus on better education at home and spend the $50 required to get a decent NAT router with firewalling, instead of bleating about Windows.
Don't know how things work in your home but in my home, I have a computer (Mandrake) and my wife has a computer (XP home). I don't 'let' her do anything with her pc, she does what she damn well wants thank you very much and god help me if I start screwing with her setup and make something burp... and yes, I do have to clean up the mess when things go bad.
the good news is that her system is well patched, runs zone alarm, avg, mozilla, and I just switched her from aim to gaim. Step by step the migration to FLOSS goes forward.
Keep in mind that 'her' computer is for more than home and has to work at her place of employ (Windows and apple shop) so some of the 'hands off' has to do with not screwing up use of the system at work.
Anyway - bottom line, at home you are NOT a sys admin, you're a spouse with special skills.
dogu
There is. Firstly, Unix has been in use in university environments for nigh on a quarter-century now. Cracking systems has been a hobby for college comp-sci majors for as long as computer systems have been available to crack, and the operating-system-design classes in that major are often based around dissecting the actual source code of the very systems they're trying to crack which means they've far more detailed knowledge of Unix systems than of Windows. And yet, despite that, Unix remains relatively secure in that environment. Why should we assume this would change?
Secondly, track record. Apache on Linux is probably the most popular platform for Web servers based on NetCraft and other surveys. Apache on Unix of some sort definitely is not only more popular than any other option, it's more popular than all other options combined. Unix is the dominant OS there (and the traits that make Linux secure are simply the normal traits of any other Unix variant). Yet while we see regular compromises of Web servers, compromises of Apache on Unix are relatively rare. If it's not compromised often in an environment where it is the dominant platform, why would it be compromised often in another environment if it were the dominant platform?
How do people get +3 Insightful for completely missing the point?
First, I don't know about anyone else, but it is an incredible pain trying to run Windows (2000, at least, in my experience) as anything but Administrator.
Second: what is this "Maybe he is just an idiot" crap? He could easily have a wife who, like anybody else, would prefer to have their computer how they want it and for others to leave it alone. I know plenty of people who get irritated if anyone changes things on their personal computers--much less use them. As for rootkits, etc., are 80% of Windows users (the people who have this problem) really going to have access to those things, the skills to use them, or even the dimmest knowledge of their existence? Of course not.
Jumping down this guy's throat over the state of his wife's computer is completely missing the point. His point is that there are millions of people just like her, and his weighing of the pros and cons makes Windows an absurd choice for a desktop OS. Address that. Stop grasping for ways to tear him down instead of his argument.