Microsoft To Add A Black Box To Windows

An anonymous reader writes "According to ZDNet, Microsoft plans to add the software equivalent of a 'black box' flight recorder to Windows. According to the article, 'The tool will build on the existing Watson error-reporting tool in Windows but will provide Microsoft with much deeper information, including what programs were running at the time of the error and even the contents of documents that were being created.'" Commentary available via C|Net as well.

Comments

try again...

[circusboy]

it was from "cool hand luke"

the prison guard talking to/about paul newman

http://imdb.com/title/tt0061512/quotes

Re:Privacy Alert! Maybe not.

[DrEldarion]

the choice of whether to send the data, and how much information to share, will be up to the individual

Looks like Microsoft is fine, then.

Re:Not on my system you don't

[Phisbut]

Talk about an invasion of your privacy and a HUGE hole to reveal corporate IP.

And it wouldn't even surprise me that, hidden somewhere in there, there's a license agreement that mentions that you give all the rights to the content you send to Microsoft somehow, or give them an unlimited royalty-free license... just like you do everytime you attach a file on Hotmail.

From the Hotmail Service Agreement :

by posting, uploading, inputting, providing or submitting your Submission you are granting Microsoft, its affiliated companies and necessary sublicensees permission to use your Submission in connection with the operation of their Internet businesses including, without limitation, the rights to: copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, translate and reformat your Submission; and to publish your name in connection with your Submission.

Re:What's In Your Box?

[homer_ca]

System control panel, Advanced tab, Error Reporting button
and/or
Administrative Tools, Services, stop and disable Error Reporting service

Re:Not on my system you don't

[gmplague]

Have you heard about WMI? Installed and running by default since Win2k. You'd be amazed how much info you can get about a running system from a vbscript. Entire registry, map out the entire file system, info on every piece of hardware installed on a system, performance information (tcp packets sent/receieved, etc.), information about every component of every installed application. Not to mention that with the right privs you can execute any code you want. All this of course requires you to be an administrator on said machine, but if you combine it with the latest 0-day RPC exploit, then you've got a serious privacy concern.

Oh, and said virus could also easily access any unencrypted file on your system, and dumping your pagefile or info currently in memory would be pretty trivial.

Point: if you're worried about this enabling a virus to invade your privacy, then I'm sorry to burst your bubble but a virus can invade your privacy pretty easily already.