Microsoft vs. Computer Security

ArieKremen writes "The Slate has a piece written for the average user attempting to explain why Windows is `still` grappling with security issues. Although Gates made security and privacy top priority four years ago, not much progress has been made." From the article: "Microsoft customers haven't stopped worrying. A year later, Windows was hit with several nasty worms, including Slammer, Sobig, and Blaster. The viruses caused major traffic bottlenecks throughout the world, which cost tens of billions of dollars to clean up. Vulnerabilities deemed 'critical' have forced the company to release an almost unending stream of patches and fixes to the Windows operating system, Microsoft Office, and Internet Explorer." An interesting look at the whole issue.

Comments

No Progress?

[mymaxx]

Although Gates made security and privacy top priority four years ago, not much progress has been made. Excuse me? No Progress? Including a firewall with Windows is no progress?

Re:No Progress?

[fortunatus]

i must agree: the very "constant stream of patches" is in fact great progress; to have that kind of rapid support, delivered by an automated update system that for me at least works seamlessly, is incredibly good!

Re:No Progress?

[houstonbofh]

Considering where they started, just getting to BAD is a tenfold increase! And to be honest, they have come a long way. They just have a VERY long way to go.

Re:No Progress?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a very true point. Windows has made enormous strides with their approach to security compared to only a few years ago. Granted, their software has a ways to go, but almost any kind of software you can think of is going to have security flaws or bugs at some point.

Err wait.. forgot I'm on /.

Get the hell out of here with your pro-Microsoft trash!

Re:No Progress?

[jmp_nyc]

That ought to teach Microsoft not to get rid of a publication they owned for a while...
-JMP

Re:No Progress?

[vezult]

Perhaps more accurately, users of windows have made no progress. Quite a few of the worms that have made big headlines over the last few years are ones that make use of exploits for which patches were already available. It's long been said that people are the greatest security problem. And I believe that applies to Microsoft's security problems as well. As long as the education of Microsoft's user base is neglected (or actively refused by some), MS's efforts (feeble as they may seem at times) will have limited success.

Re:No Progress?

[Breaker_1]

Well, some may call that progress, it's really a band-aid solution to a much larger problem Microsoft appears to be addressing already. Their codebase is OLD, not to mention poorly designed. NT was written as kind of a test bed for new technology. It wasn't originally designed to be a production system. Now, you've got a million people doing a billion different things to who the hell knows how much code. It's hard to make much in the way of progress if you're trying to swim up a waterfall. I think the only way they're going to make progress is to change directions.

Re:No Progress?

[whoever57]

Including a firewall with Windows is no progress?

Doesn't Win2K have a firewall? What was lacking was a GUI that normal users could use. So, yes, progress, but not really very much.

Re:No Progress?

[Dionysus]

NT was written as kind of a test bed for new technology. It wasn't originally designed to be a production system.

News to me. You of course has sources to back that up.

Re:No Progress?

[jasontheking]

putting a nappy on a baby can't be thought of as "progress" in stopping it from shitting itself.

Re:No Progress?

[Philip K Dickhead]

The whole article is a troll.

Its filled with 'feelings' and 'impressions' by people cited as experts, without examination of their claims - nor an inquiry to factual matters. It describes a dislike, without addressing the basis of the problem, nor posing any other solution beyond disliking Microsoft.

The fact is, you still have millions of Win9x and NT boxes, hanging their gut out on the 'Net. This is and has been the principal problem. Slammer worm? Christ, I blame the crappy network border management, that allowed a local service-discovery broadcast protocol to come in from the Internet without being blocked.

I trust Rich Forno on Unix security. To use him as a source on Windows secuity is ridiculous. He is anti-Microsoft in bias - irrationally so. Microsoft could buy OpenBSD tomorrow, stick IIS6 on it, and Forno would still rant about the thing.

The WMF problem is a legacy file format. Let's not give MS a free pass on this, but seriously. It's like the zlib problem we had across distributions, a couple years back.

There are some other gross inaccuracies claimed by 'experts' and 'analysts' in this piece. "It is still built on the same legacy code, it is still written without adhering to secure coding practices, it is still thrown to the masses without adequate security testing." That's an assertion without supporting evidence. It doesn't have a factual basis. The MS SDL is a very good security development and testing process, implemented company-wide in 2003. Don't take my word fo it. Read the damned thing. This is how to do it in commercial software.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/?url=/library/en -us/dnsecure/html/sdl.asp

I wish I saw similar efforts from Oracle, or any of the other major commercial software vendors.

It remains to be seen if this methodology is well-executed. Server 2003 is the first full-blown OS released thouh a full SDL cycle. So far, it has been a reasonably secure system, with limited exposure of default "attack surface", and intelligent choices about vunerable service and connectivity configurations.

Vista will be the first full SDL derived client. While I may not like the policy enforcement of "Digital Rights" and whatnot in userland, as a system I expect that it will be difficult to exploit or escalate privileges - and that attacks will be localized at isolated in effect. Let's hope so.

Re:No Progress?

[Anonymous Coward]

A baby shitting is a good thing; Window's problem is getting the backlogged shit OUT of itself.

Re:No Progress?

[Philip K Dickhead]

NT was designed to replace VMS at DEC.

It was written to be "OS/2 v3", once Gates poached Cutler's development team.

It was grafted onto the Windows shell as a long-shot, after tensions between MS and IBM began to manifest themselves over the success of Windows 3.0, the failure of Presentation Manager and the differing visions for the future of OS/2.

Drivers for NT were still alot like drivers for VMS, from the API point-of-view.

Re:No Progress?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about basic security capabilities like the ability to not fucking bind RPC to 0.0.0.0. The default for non-enterprise installations should be 127.0.0.1... Get a clue Microsoft!

Re:No Progress?

[ryusen]

I recall reading an interview with some MS exec (wish i coudl remember his name... Steven something). this was a year or two ago where he said that the path to security for MS/Windows was basically a 10 year road map. In other words, they are making good progress, but not even MS expects the problems to be solved overnight.

Re:No Progress?

[Nikker]

The viruses caused major traffic bottlenecks throughout the world, which cost tens of billions of dollars

Follow the money.

Re:No Progress?

[QRDeNameland]

Doesn't Win2K have a firewall?

No, Win2K has no MS-supplied firewall. AFAIK, you can't even install the MS (XP) firewall on W2K.

Of course, this is one of the reasons I still stick with W2K, as I find that XP firewall to be a big fat piece of crap.

Re:No Progress?

[carl0ski]

well for starters
why wasnt the Firewall on by default in the first place
i never needed a firewall on Windows 98 or 2000 for that matter
why did a firewall become such a necessity on XP?

a firewall is a bandaid solution to a deep seeded problem issue.
it is not absolute progess.

Re:No Progress?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on,

Years ago security was a non-issue for them; now, security is an important issue for them.

We must acknowledge that Windows XP is much more secure than anything MS had back in the 90s.

Re:No Progress?

[DrSkwid]

That's not the same as "NT was written as kind of a test bed for new technology."

Re:No Progress?

[Tony-A]

No progress.
The going rate for a compromised machine went DOWN.

Now Microsoft has done some stuff that looks like they are trying.
That is not at all the same thing as succeeding.

Since the default is still to hide file extensions,
the assumption has to be that Microsoft does not actually care about anything resembling actual security.

Re:No Progress?

[sumdumass]

Including a firewall with Windows is no progress?

Was that progress before or after Mr Gates decided security and privacy top priority?

They are making some progress. SP2 really force some indeviduals as well as corperations to look at thier practices. Several other instaces have cam about too. It apears they have a lng ways to go still

Re:No Progress?

[drsmithy]

Their codebase is OLD, not to mention poorly designed. NT was written as kind of a test bed for new technology. It wasn't originally designed to be a production system.

That's might long bow you're drawing there, considering NT's design is probably one of it's strongest features and it was specifically written to replace the other OSes of the day (DOS, Windows, OS/2).

Do you have even the tiniest shred of evidence to support your claims ?

Re:No Progress?

[Trevahaha]

Well that'd a ridiculous reason, as you can disable the XP firewall. The security center will give you a warning, saying that you're not running a firewall. However, if you install a 3rd-party firewall (i.e. Zone Alarm, etc.) the warning will go away.

Re:No Progress?

[Philip K Dickhead]

That, if unclear, was my point.

Re:No Progress?

[ThaFooz]

Perhaps more accurately, users of windows have made no progress.

Perhaps even more accurately, windows application designers have made no progress. Windows has supported multiple users & permission sets for quite some time, but it's still considered acceptable for normal applications to spew garbage into the registry and write to system folders. Until its easy (not merely 'possible') to run limited accounts & control permissions, we're going to see major problems.

Re:No Progress?

[QRDeNameland]

Yeah, I know, I have a Dell box with XP and have done that. However, after all the painful family and friend's calls with problems from that damn firewall, I have a particular hatred of it. But it's only one of the many reasons I hate XP, and the only reason the Dell box didn't get downgraded to W2K was that I couldn't get all the drivers.

Re:No Progress?

[Transcendent]

I was wondering why the fact that they keep releasing a "constant stream" of patches is a bad thing, since the OSS community does the same thing (Now, I'm not trying to compare the quality or the type of patch).

Re:No Progress?

[SeventyBang]

It's funny this should come up. I wrote a response to someone's newsletter earlier today.

Here's what amounts to a primary copy|paste:

As far as things loading slowly, a lot of it has to do with the code which is being loaded. In many shops, things such as code reviews are non-existent. And when they occur, they're cursory at best. Programs written in Visual Basic don't have "Option Explicit" (requiring you to declare variables) and when you force someone to add it, it won't compile. One of the biggest gaffes Microsoft made was for programmers to make declaration variables in this fashion. It should be the other way around: force the declaration of variables unless you turn this off. This is a subtle, but crucial indicator of their internal decision-making system and vision.

And speaking of Microsoft, "Patch Tuesday" would be a shadow of its former self if they learned one thing in programming: buffer overflow For those unfamiliar with the term, it means permitting someone to type more than a variable is allocated to handle. The extra characters then alter the program's execution, including turning scenarios turning complete control over to someone running the software. There's a lot of humor about the questions Microsoft asks in their interviews; "Why are manhole covers round? How many gas stations are there?" My joke has become, "Demonstrate code which handles buffer overflows [because we don't know how to do it]".

Gates attempted to demonstrate the priority of security by publicly declaring all software development to be put aside and focused entirely on security issues in February 2002. (Google has started a new event known as "Summer of Code". Students are tapped to gain real-world experience and write OS (Open Source) code during their Summer breaks. I've since referred to Microsoft's dedicated activity aas "Month of Code". Has the error profile changed? No. Has the number of errors changed? Yes. More software on the market with the same error foundation means there are more copies of that problem in everyone's hands. It's not a trick question. Were their code architecture to prevent retro-fitting the solution, they could build it into each no product to hit the market and you'd see the patch count drop over time as new products were released with the underlying fix. This is not a particularly difficult technique to implement and wouldn't add a significant change to their schedule. In fact, the time factor would approach the current schedule as they become familiar with the mindset.

Why don't they do it? No one knows. Programmers with no more than three or four years of experience have learned this shortcoming is the reason Microsoft software is so buggy. And this is without access to Microsoft's source code. No one has put the question to Microsoft. Put their foot down and asked why this is company-wide shortcoming exists. Everyone (media) seems focused upon where Microsoft is going and perhaps afraid they'll commit seppuku (suicide) if they really push it. And if they requested time to investigate it, they should have an answer after a reasonably short period of time, removing, "We'll have to look into why this isn't done" as a response. Were this single issue to be addressed across their product line, I would estimate 98% of the currently reported errors would vaporize. That's not to say a new class of bugs wouldn't develop, but almost all of the reported errors today have a big gathering at every family reunion. We're not dealing with sudoku here; besides, standard sudoku is single digits.

Shortcomings aside, Microsoft has started one internal program: "Blue Hat" - annually bringing hackers in and showing how easy it is to peel open their vaunted software. Apparently, they expected a rah-rah session the first time and it was heard the gasps increased as the spirits fell.

Today's Quiz.

Name each quotation's author.

1. "Success is a lousy teacher. It makes smart people think they can't fail."
2. "People

Re:No Progress?

[tomhudson]

recall reading an interview with some MS exec (wish i coudl remember his name... Steven something). this was a year or two ago where he said that the path to security for MS/Windows was basically a 10 year road map.

... so Microsoft figures less then 10 more years before everyone's switched from Window to OSX or linux ...

Re:No Progress?

[GuyverDH]

Excuse me? Do you actually comprehend what you read?

Since when does "not much progress" equal "no progress".

Including a firewall with windows, while being some progress, is unfortunately progress in the wrong direction. People thinking that they are protected by enabling the Windows firewall is a joke. How many *default* holes are there in the preloaded config.

Re:No Progress?

[GuyverDH]

Why do we have to admit to that?

That's actually a false statement.

Windows XP is by far, less secure than say Windows 1.x through Windows 3.11. It started to become less secure with the introduction of WFW (that's Windows for Workgroups) 3.11, and has gone steadily down-hill from there.

Until networking was introduced into the equation, it was pretty damned hard to hack a box, unless you had physical access to it.

Re:No Progress?

[askegg]

Tying the *name* of the file and the *type* of the file together was an extrodinarily bad move. They are two seperate attributes and shoul dbe treated as such. Unfortunately, most operating systems do this.....

Re:No Progress?

[GuyverDH]

Hmmm - tiniest bit of evidence....

VMS
V+1=W
M+1=N
S+1=T

VMS +1 = WNT

Granted it's not really evidence of any sort, however, if you read around the internet, there are actually bits and pieces of evidence to be found.

http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index.cfm?Art icleID=4494

http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/docs/Windows-NT_i s_VMS_re-implemented.html

Now, whether any of it or not is factual, I cannot determine with any certainty, but there are certainly some clues to be found, and some items that make you go Hmmmm.

Re:No Progress?

[timeOday]

"Including a firewall with Windows is no progress?"

Not when the most buggy apps are IE and Outlook, which are both essential yet can't function disconnected from the network.

Re:No Progress?

[drsmithy]

Now, whether any of it or not is factual, I cannot determine with any certainty, but there are certainly some clues to be found, and some items that make you go Hmmmm.

You have provided zero evidence to support your claims that:

* Windows NT is poorly designed.

* Windows NT was written as a "test bed for new technology"

* Windows NT wasn't written for production use

There is no argument Windows NT and VMS have very similar architectures. They were both designed by the same development team. But that's completely irrelevant to the claims you have made.

Re:No Progress?

[harris s newman]

Progress seems to be more FUD than FACT. I thought the news just yesterday was that Windows has less flaws than linux. Now it turns out that it depends on what a flaw is. Who are they kidding? Does microsoft understand that there is a SCIENCE to computer programming? Perhaps the top technology person for Microsoft should go back to school (and finish) with a degree in computer science.

Re:No Progress?

[mikeabbott420]

yes,yes,yes! My company uses windows for the front end client and I would love to have the very simple adminstrative control we have with our linux servers.

Re:No Progress?

[Z34107]

Until its easy (not merely 'possible') to run limited accounts & control permissions, we're going to see major problems.

The use of limited accounts only goes so far. It will prevent a virus from doing damage to some areas of the machine; it will not prevent the creation of "zombie" DDOS networks, infection by spyware, or OS exploits. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the WMF exploit will work regardless of whether or not you're running with full or nil permissions.

Re:No Progress?

[GuyverDH]

Hmm - odd, I don't recall making any claims.

Perhaps you have me confused with the parent to this sub-thread.

I was just providing reading material that shows a few minor facts.

NT is poorly designed. In fact it wasn't designed (from the ground up) at all. It borrowed(depending on your use of the term borrowed) heavily from VMS, and then was jury-rigged to float a GUI on top of it.

From MS's own marketing group. NT equals New Technology. What was Windows NT except for Windows New Technology?

With the problems the OS had from the initial release, as well as all subsequent Windows OS releases, you can tell that NONE of the Windows OS releases were ready for production use. They may have been written, and then later used for production, but none of them were actually ready for production when released. Marketers, and Bill Gates apparently shoved them all out the doors before they were ready.

Re:No Progress?

[Foofoobar]

Excuse me? No Progress? Including a firewall with Windows is no progress?

Yes... something that secures your system and slows it down significantly does not encourage the end user to use it. The firewall they supplied was too little, too late and too much of a resource hog.

Re:No Progress?

[whoever57]

Doesn't Win2K have a firewall?

No, Win2K has no MS-supplied firewall. AFAIK, you can't even install the MS (XP) firewall on W2K.

So, you mean that the "TCP Filtering" that is available from the "Advanced" tab of the TCP/IP properties does not allow you to configure a firewall? Perhaps you might want to read M$ KB article Q309798

Re:No Progress?

[drsmithy]

Perhaps you have me confused with the parent to this sub-thread.

Quite possibly. But since you go on to agree with him, it all works out in the end.

I was just providing reading material that shows a few minor facts.

Trouble is, it doesn't show any relevant (or disputed) facts.

NT is poorly designed.

Why ?

In fact it wasn't designed (from the ground up) at all. It borrowed(depending on your use of the term borrowed) heavily from VMS, [...]

NT was designed and written from scratch by the same team who designed VMS when Microsoft gave them a blank cheque after hiring them awat from DEC. It's hardly surprising they have very similar architecture.

[...] and then was jury-rigged to float a GUI on top of it.

What "jury rigging" are you talking about ? Why would any remotely well-written OS even need any sort of "jury rigging" just to run a GUI ?

With the problems the OS had from the initial release, as well as all subsequent Windows OS releases, you can tell that NONE of the Windows OS releases were ready for production use. They may have been written, and then later used for production, but none of them were actually ready for production when released.

Funny, millions of people managed to use them in "production".

Re:No Progress?

[ozmanjusri]

Including a firewall with Windows is no progress?

After four years of effort and $40,000,000,000 worth of revenue from their long-suffering customers, Microsoft succeeded in including a simple firewall with their operating system.

You're right, it is progress but somehow - and I can't quite put my finger on why - I'm feeling a little underwhelmed.

Re:No Progress?

[jd0g85]

delivered by an automated update system that for me at least works seamlessly

Requiring a reboot after every update is not my idea of "seamless"

Re:No Progress?

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at Microsoft.

The other day, we had to have a little talk with one of our developers; he didn't understand why it was bad that his application generates an error message that writes the administrator password to the Event Viewer logs. What was that I heard about every developer being thoroughly trained in secure coding practices?

Even though security is supposedly top priority, we find ourselves unable to force our developers to adhere to policy and write code that can run under a non-admin or non-system account. The higher ups steam roll over us when we fight the fight.

The problem is that there are two groups at MS; the business side, and the technical side. The business side calls the shots, and they don't listen to the technical side.

Sure, there's plenty of talk about security, but no real action. PR is cheap.

"The whole article is a troll....Its filled with 'feelings' and 'impressions' by people cited as experts, without examination of their claims - nor an inquiry to factual matters."

The article is correct. The reason it is not filled with objective evidence is because there currently no objective, agreed upon method of measuring code or system security. In the absence of objective data, the opinions of experts are the best thing we have.

Re:No Progress?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft remains incapable of so simple a security model as login to do privileged operations (like software installs). 'Run As' is a start, but it doesn't work with multi-level installs (where the initial setup program calls another program). Instead, you must log out of your non-privileged account and log back in as a privileged user; install your one piece of software; log out of the privileged account and back into the non-privileged account to use the software.

Is it any wonder that most users don't do this? It's entirely backwards. There is no need to run a GUI with root/Administrator privileges. Run the GUI as the non-privileged user and *refuse* privileged logins. There is a need to run install trees (meaning a set of programs all initiated based on a single launch) as a privileged user (or simply escalate one's privileges with a login). Note that even the Run As functionality (to the extent it works) is backwards. Instead of challenging privileged operations, one must figure out that such and such will require a privileged operation prior to running it.

It's my understanding that Macs already have this capability, but I haven't used it.

Frickin' Lin(dows|spire) does better than Microsoft on this. Click'N'Run requires an administrative login when started by a non-privileged user.

I run Tiny Firewall on Microsoft precisely because it does allow me to enable things on a per process basis. My settings are so paranoid that I have to disable the firewall to run the Automatic Windows Update and can't run Windows Update manually at all.

Re:No Progress?

[eikonos]

There are some other gross inaccuracies claimed by 'experts' and 'analysts' in this piece. "It is still built on the same legacy code, it is still written without adhering to secure coding practices, it is still thrown to the masses without adequate security testing." That's an assertion without supporting evidence. It doesn't have a factual basis.

Windows is built on legacy code from 9x and even compatability code from 3.1 (in addition to the NT code) -- it's a fact. It's also a fact that code was written before the security issues that plague the internet, so they were not designed with strong network security in mind. It's obvious that the security testing done is not adequate because if it was adequate we wouldn't be reading about security issues in Windows all the time. Canstant security issues does constitute empirical evidence of poor coding.

Re:No Progress?

[Andrzej Sawicki]

In the meantime we (I use XP) are all beta testers...

Re:No Progress?

[Philip K Dickhead]

I wont tell you where I work. ;-)

In the field - you know, where the 'rubber hits the road' - it has been incredible progress in dealing with the security issues around MS software.

My background is as an assessment/penetration tester, and a remediation analyst for infosec. My toolset and personal choices are 'Unixy'.

I have yet to see anything as onerous as admin passwords written to logs - and I don't even BELIEVE it can be done. You can pass a hash, not text. No API will give you a plantext from either AD or the LanMan cached credentials. You need a refresher course.

Re:No Progress?

[ryusen]

nah.. i think with all things considered, we are on rc2 by now .)

Re:No Progress?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I don't know if you work at MS, but you haven't any idea of OS Security.

You can't write an Admin password in plain text. You can't write any password in plain text, because you have the hash for comparison, and nothing else.

If you want make some trolling, do it better, please.

Re:No Progress?

[toadlife]

"How many *default* holes are there in the preloaded config.

Port 3389 which is RDP - but the RDP service is turned off by default.
A program exception for remote assistance - so it can use RDP when it needs to
UPnP Framework (TCP 2689/UDP 1900) - restricted to the local subnet only.

The preloaded defaults are sane.

Re:No Progress?

[toadlife]

NT is poorly designed. In fact it wasn't designed (from the ground up) at all. It borrowed(depending on your use of the term borrowed) heavily from VMS, and then was jury-rigged to float a GUI on top of it.

Well by *that* logic.....

GNU/Linux is poorly designed. In fact it wasn't designed (from the ground up) at all. It borrowed(depending on your use of the term borrowed) heavily from Minix, and then was jury-rigged to float a GUI on top of it.

FreeBSD is poorly designed. In fact it wasn't designed (from the ground up) at all. It borrowed(depending on your use of the term borrowed) heavily from the original UNIX Time Sharing System, and then was jury-rigged to float a GUI on top of it.

OSX is poorly designed. In fact it wasn't designed (from the ground up) at all. It borrowed(depending on your use of the term borrowed) heavily from FreeBSD and Mach projects, and then was jury-rigged to float a GUI on top of it.

Solaris is poorly designed....

Re:No Progress?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm. Whatever 'Top Priority' means, there is a gulf between deliverables and what the punters expect. If the mailman took 4 years to deliver a parcel, I would want my money back.

Tinkering at the edges, and crisis management appear to be 'Top Priority'. Apple rolled out its new OS faster. It ported to Intel, faster. As Apple is running rings around MS, some butts need kicking. Independant review is the answer.

Re:No Progress?

[renoX]

Note that Python, Ruby, Perl all have automatic variable declaration by default and that only Perl provide 'use strict' which allows to enforce variable declaration.

Some claim that automatic variable declaration is nice for scription language as it makes program easier to write, given the number of spelling mistake humans do, I doubt it..
IMHO a good compromise is the way Limbo (for Plan9) does it: x:=val declares x and gives it the type of val, x=val2 when you want to assign a value to an already declared variable.

Re:No Progress?

[speculatrix]

it will not prevent the creation of "zombie" DDOS networks, infection by spyware, or OS exploits.

Example: zonealarm controls access to the network based not just on protocol/port but on the application asking for access. This could prevent an unpriv'd user from doing nasty net things. The Windows firewall is comparatively crap.

Example: non-priv'd accounts could be set to not allow software to be installed, or, not allow executables to be set up. unix equivalent would be to disable "chmod" for unauthorized users. However, it's hard to use a windows machine without being "power user" or "admin". In WindowsXPhome there's no intermediate between zero privs and admin, so you're stuck with being admin if you want the machine to be useable. The flood of patches also means people get lazy and don't want a separate admin account into which they login to do updates; windows could make it easy to be low-priv user and run update but require admin password, but it doesn't. Where's the "su" or "sudo" equivalent? How about the equivalent of "xhost"?

So, yes, the problem is people running as admin, but this is usually caused by windows' security model in Xp home, or, crappy software that won't run otherwise. Add to it the weak protection between layers of the application libraries, the gui and the core OS, and you've got very little protection against Bad Things.

Re:No Progress?

[pknoll]

The problem is that there are two groups at every tech company in existence; the business side, and the technical side. The business side calls the shots, and they don't listen to the technical side.

Fixed that for you.

Re:No Progress?

[ThaFooz]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the WMF exploit will work regardless of whether or not you're running with full or nil permissions.

Well, sure any exploits will still work... but the arbitrary code executed (typicaly) runs with the premissions of the vunerable program. So you're right that the user's permissions are irrelevant if a system process is exploited - but OTOH all of the recent damage done by IE/Outlook/etc exploits could have been GREATLY reduced by using limited permission sets (and a good number of those zombie networks you mentioned might not exist).

Along the same lines, Virii and Spyware could be less of an issue as well (as they require user interaction to get themselves installed). With limited permissions, the damage they could do would be reduced, and the location and removal of them would be orders of magnitude easier. It does imply that the user should be aware of the dangers of installing something with admin permissions... but I don't think that is totally unreasonable. OSX & Linux handle it pretty well.

Re:No Progress?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people measure progress based on their experience with the product.

Three years ago we were facing exploits of unpatched Windows buffer overflows, taking control of Windows computers. Today, we still face new exploits of newly discovered and unpatched buffer overflows, taking control of computers.

Three years ago, we still had to be sure every Windows computer in the network received security patches to avoid having them join some hacker's drone army. Today we have to do the same thing. (Yes the process has improved somewhat).

Three years ago Microsoft was promising the next update which would make us all safe so we could stop worrying about these things. Today we are still hearing the same promise. And we are still waiting.

There has undoubtedly been progress in the number of exploitable holes in a fully patched Windows system. But there has been little visible progress in the experience of a Windows user regarding vulerabilities and patches. Some people think that is what matters.

Re:No Progress?

[skarphace]

Not if it's taking the input from the text box. I don't think he's speaking of revealing the has, but about revealing what was entered.

Re:No Progress?

[silverburn]

Simple front end for Windows servers?

Take your pick, depending on your need; AD/group policy, SUS, MOM, Terminal Services, Pretty much any enterprise AV/AS manager, etc etc. 90% of the full functionality, and not a command prompt in sight.

I've seen Linux admin front ends; I usually wake up in cold sweats a minute later...

Re:No Progress?

[MoogMan]

...one of our developers; he didn't understand why it was bad that his application generates an error message that writes the administrator password to the Event Viewer logs

And this is why Windows is 'still' grappling with security issues.

Re:No Progress?

[TheLink]

The built-in ipfiltering for w2k is a joke - there's no statefulness. It's even crappier than ipchains (which was pretty crappy). It's about as crap as cisco ip acls 1-99.

Re:No Progress?

[Brewskibrew]

Until networking was introduced into the equation, it was pretty damned hard to hack a box, unless you had physical access to it.

By this logic, a WinXP box that's not connected to the Internet can't be hacked...

Re:No Progress?

[colinrichardday]

No, you didn't make those claims, breaker did. The other posters in this thread were responding to his claims. You asserted that there was evidence for breaker's claims, but other posters in this thread disagreed.

Re:No Progress?

[GuyverDH]

Why? - What "jury rigging" are you talking about?

      Let's see. In order to get the GUI to perform at a reasonable speed, they had to integrate it into the kernel.
      In order to get the Web Services (IIS) to perform at a reasonable speed, they had to integrate it into the kernel.
      It appears that in order to get certain types of applications to run with any kind of acceptible response times, that it has to be dropped into the kernel.
            That would appear to be one area that shows jury-rigging (or cobbling together) at least.

Trouble is, it doesn't show any relevant (or disputed) facts.
        Odd - it seems to point out the issues with applications having to be placed into the kernel to get decent response times out of them.

Funny, millions of people managed to use them in "production".
        - I'll agree to that statement - with one exception - Millions of people managed to use them in production for one application per server. ie - if you wanted a PDC, a file server, a print server, an Exchange server - you needed to build 4 seperate windows servers. That was per Microsoft's recommendations btw. Their OS couldn't run responsively (ie switching execution threads) with multiple heavy use applications running on it.

Re:No Progress?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It's long been said that people are the greatest security problem. And I believe that applies to Microsoft's security problems as well. As long as the education of Microsoft's user base is neglected (or actively refused by some), MS's efforts (feeble as they may seem at times) will have limited success.

Sorry, this is just not the case. The majority of compromises by number and by bandwidth consumed are automated worms that require no user intervention. I have no doubt, that with proper security policies and good coding MS can one day aspire to make users the weakest link, but until that time, all the education in the world is useless.

Right now Windows users are not given the power they need to keep their machines safe. Unnecessary services run by default. MS software does not run properly as non-admin. Local privilege escalations are trivial. Executables masquerade as data easily and the UI does not inform the users what they are dealing with. New applications are not restricted by default. Error messages and warning are not phrased in plain english. Dialogue boxes appear with alarming frequency and almost always with the same two options: OK/Cancel. This trains users to just click "OK" to make things work, since they don't understand most of the thousands of messages spewed at them regularly. Default applications run with escalated privileges and execute data if it happens to be the right format. Internet applications mingle code with critical parts of the GUI.

I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with you. Users are not given the opportunity to be the weakest link, and focusing on the required, huge amounts of education that would be required to run Windows safely is unfeasible. Fix Windows first, then worry about education.

Re:No Progress?

[Weedlekin]

Automatic variable declaration is OK for very small programs with low line counts and very few variables. Once you go beyond that, it becomes a right royal pain in the backside. IMO Python and Ruby would therefore be much better off if it was allowed when running them interactively, and disallowed when executing application code contained in files.

Re:No Progress?

[GuyverDH]

It's also a pain in the ass to activate.

But yes, it can't be hacked (without physical access) until it's networked.

Very astute grasp of the obvious there Mr. Checkov

Re:No Progress?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh! Oh! I work at Microsoft, too! :)

Re:No Progress?

[Ken Erfourth]

• The WMF problem is a legacy file format. Let's not give MS a free pass on this, but seriously. It's like the zlib problem we had across distributions, a couple years back.
  
  There are some other gross inaccuracies claimed by 'experts' and 'analysts' in this piece. "It is still built on the same legacy code, it is still written without adhering to secure coding practices, it is still thrown to the masses without adequate security testing." That's an assertion without supporting evidence. It doesn't have a factual basis.

Am I the only person who noticed this guy cites a "legacy" file format as a security problem, and in the next paragraph disses the expert who cite problems with Microsoft's reliance on legacy code?

I didn't realize file format vulnerabilities weren't code problems. Apparently, this means the .wmf exploit can be used to hack into Mac and Linux boxen, right?

We need better trolls.

Re:No Progress?

[Anonymous Coward]

You exagerate. Shut up. You don't have to reboot after every update.

Re:No Progress?

[Sarisar]

Where I used to work, when I was on the Tech Support side of things, I received an ticket for an error on a system I had written a few years earlier. Now this was a fairly simple VB front end with an Access database behind it so I had total rights to do anything to it, but for some completely unfathomable reason the hell^Hpdesk guy had written the users password into the ticket!

So here we have two stupid people. One users who had given his password out, and a stupid helldesk guy who had asked the user for it and written it down! I mean there is just no reason for requiring the password as all the tech guys (in house anyway) should always have enough access to do whatever without requiring a password.

Mind you this is the place that had a server that was faithfully backed up every night and then it turned out that the tapes errored every time, but the script they used to backup (it was a VERY old OS/2 server) checked that the backups worked but there was a bug in the check, so they never worked. When the server shat itself we were out lots of work.

And the same place that has backup tapes used in 3 month rotations, so if you need to backup anything over 3 months old you're screwed. And yes that did happen once when I booked some code out of the repository and found it was corrupted and it had been in there for 6 months. So no backups there!

And the same place that had all users able to run .reg files (mind you I liked that - I had one run when I logged on to change the screensaver and stuff that someone thought we needed to have locked down)

And the same place that had the SMS install password in a file called DROWSSAP.DLL on a network drive which gave FULL access to said drive, which even us techs didn't have access to.

Oh and that password was the same as the username also.

And the password for the internet was locked so you couldn't change 'your' password (which is immediately insecure as more then one person knows the password) and they were all 6-7 letter words, found in a dictionary. And from what I heard they only had about 20 words they used as some people compared words and found they had the same one!

I could go on further, but I'm so glad I stopped working there :)

Re:No Progress?

[drsmithy]

Let's see. In order to get the GUI to perform at a reasonable speed, they had to integrate it into the kernel.

Actually they ran it in _kernel space_, there's a difference.

Not to mention this is hardly an unreasonable step to get decent performance out of hardware in the era of 33Mhz 486s with ISA-bus video cards. What OS are you thinking of that did it with a better design then (or now, come to think of it) ?

In order to get the Web Services (IIS) to perform at a reasonable speed, they had to integrate it into the kernel.

No, they moved one small part of IIS - the HTTP listener - into kernel _space_. Not the whole thing, and certainly not "integrated into the kernel".

And it wasn't to "perform at a reasonable speed", it was to perform at a *high* speed.

It appears that in order to get certain types of applications to run with any kind of acceptible response times, that it has to be dropped into the kernel.

False.

That would appear to be one area that shows jury-rigging (or cobbling together) at least.

Hardly. A perfectly reasonable tradeoff between the theory and design of a microkernel OS and real-life requirements.

Odd - it seems to point out the issues with applications having to be placed into the kernel to get decent response times out of them.

Well I can't read the first article, but the conclusions you've managed to draw - where they aren't outright wrong - are extremely questionable.

The second article - if you ignore the first dozen or so lines of dodgy comments and move onto the material from People With A Clue - doesn't really talk about anything relevant to this discussion.

You might care to note, however, from Cutler's discussion of the design goals of NT, that high performance was not a criteria. Hence the need for minor deviations from the original design to get high levels of performance from certain components.

I'll agree to that statement - with one exception - Millions of people managed to use them in production for one application per server. ie - if you wanted a PDC, a file server, a print server, an Exchange server - you needed to build 4 seperate windows servers. That was per Microsoft's recommendations btw.

That's preferred practice in any environment that isn't mini or mainframe.

Their OS couldn't run responsively (ie switching execution threads) with multiple heavy use applications running on it.

Compared to what ? On what hardware ? Running which applications ?

Re:No Progress?

[Shawn is an Asshole]

Not to mention they actually do a better job at it.

I'm currently running Fedora Core 4 on a dialup connection. Every weekend I run "yum update" and it usually takes the weekend just do download all the updates. Not cool.

Re:No Progress?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever heard of a command called "debug"? It it and several other commands and functions output raw memory, which includes plain text passwords. Of course there's no "ShowPlainTextPassword" API; that would be stupid.

The point is, when it was explained to the developer that his memory dump had captured a password, he didn't understand why that was bad. Keep in mind that non-privleged users can read the event logs.

You're the one who needs the refresher. Don't you understand that for a computer to hash a password, it has to process it in plain text first? Don't you understand that this means it has to reside in plain text in memory at some point? Don't you understand that there are many ways to look at and dump raw memory. 2 + 2 =...nevermind.

Re:No Progress?

[Anonymous Coward]

Four ways to get Windows to output a plain text password:

1) Dump memory after the password has been entered but before the authentication session is started.

2) Have the application that accepted the password write it to the logs before it passes it to the kernel.

3) If the application uses the TCP/IP for interprocess communication, output the results of that communication.

4) If the application uses the clipboard for interprocess communication, output the contents of the clipboard.

Those are just the ways that you might get Windows to output a password by carelessness, rather than malice. If you include malice, there are many more.

"Dude, I don't know if you work at MS, but you haven't any idea of OS Security....You can't write an Admin password in plain text. You can't write any password in plain text, because you have the hash for comparison, and nothing else."

Actually, I do know a thing or two about OS security, and you're just repeating something you read somewhere, without any understanding of how things really work. When you can't get a plain text password, is when observing an authentication session performed by a well-designed algorthim.

Let me make this real simple for you: What hashes the password? God? Your mother? No, it's the same computer that you entered it into. How does it hash the password without having possession of the plain text version of it? Do you think that the GUI magically hashes it, without it ever touching memory or the processor? Computers HAVE to handle plain text passwords. The idea with hashing them is that the entity you are authenticating against should never be handed the password. But the computer you enter it into will always process it.

What is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some kind of anti-microsoft site?

Re:What is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is quite easy to be a critic. Yes, Microsoft's software is often buggy and unreliable BUT we should not forget that, as stated before the number of people trying to break into the OS is direct proportional to the number of people using it.

In other words, give me 100.000 people ( pls correct me if i'm mistakeing ) and i'll just ask the to break into a standard linux workstation (running Debian for example). They will find at least 10 critical security flaws in one month ( max ! ).

I ,for one, use Debian, it's great but without a hand made firewall I feel like a duck staring a gun.

So, yah Microsoft is bad, buggy and all ... but there are little terms for comparison from a users point of view. it's all in the numbers.

Radu B.

Re:What is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

we should not forget that, as stated before the number of people trying to break into the OS is direct proportional to the number of people using it.

Maybe. But that's different to the number of holes they'll find. Compare Apache to IIS for a good example of greater installed base but less security vulnerabilities.

It's unlikely that Linux or MacOS would be broken into more than Windows is if the market shares were reversed. They're fundamentally more secure by design.

Re:What is this?

[freedom_india]

I see... Why don't you try and hack into my Mac OS X with Brickhouse enabled? eh?
Why don't you try your buffer overflow techniques, malformed URL and WMF bugs (i run VNC) on my Mac OS X?
You won't - Because you WILL fail.
When there is a 90% chance that an action is bound to fail, the incentive for trying out that action is gone.
When there is a 90% chance that the action is bound to succeed, the incentive is quite strong.
Windows ! Inherently Insecure

Re:What is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're all raaabid anti-microsoft-ites!

It's no secret...

[gbulmash]

Their conclusion about why it's plagued with problems: Too many Microsoft programs that have too many direct hooks into the OS to make them play well together (i.e. Media Player, IE, Word, Outlook, MSN messenger, etc.).

Their solution about how to shore it up: don't use IE, Media Player, Outlook, etc.

I hate to sound like a kid, but DUH!

Given, I use Firefox, Thunderbird, and other non-Microsoft programs because I like them better and they tend to work better, but the fact that they're less likely to compromise my system is also a consideration.

Note, though, that I say less likely. We have had bug/security fix releases of Firefox and there was a brouhaha with the GreaseMonkey extension inducing a vulnerability, BUT for the most part it seems the fixes were less frequent than with IE-related patches, plus they usually only compromised the browser, not your whole PC.

That's the big problem with many of the Microsoft glitches. They're not limited to the vulnerable Microsoft application. The vulnerable app provides a gateway for compromising the whole PC.

- Greg

Re:It's no secret...

[toadlife]

"That's the big problem with many of the Microsoft glitches. They're not limited to the vulnerable Microsoft application. The vulnerable app provides a gateway for compromising the whole PC."

I would like to know where everyone heard this crap, and why they keep repeating it vebatim., because it's a bunch of bullshit. Flaws in Microsoft products have no greater danger than equivalent flaws in any other Windows application.

A remote code execution flaw in IE executes code with the users rights, and therefore gets access to what the user has access too.

A remote code execution flaw in Firefox executes code with the users rights, and therefore gets access to what the user has access too

There is no special conduit that Microsoft apps have to the windows kernel or any other windows system object.

If you browse the web using firefox while running as administrator and you get hit with an exploit that exploit will have full access to your system.

Re:It's no secret...

[drinkypoo]

Hey, at least this guy wasn't claiming that IE was in the kernel, like the last slashbot that decided to argue with me about how Windows is put together...

Re:It's no secret...

[StikyPad]

I hate to sound like a kid, but DUH!

Don't worry, we stopped saying that years ago. Now it just makes you sound old.

-Kids

Re:It's no secret...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one thing that a blurb in a non-tech e-rag doesn't know better than to repeat fud myths, but we should know better. These vague "integrated into OS" tales have no actual technical merit - other than lawyerspeak, but forget that, we should care about the facts. Ignorance is not your friend (even if it's just pretending, as an excuse to spread fud).

Re:It's no secret...

[LOTHAR, of the Hill]

The real problem is that MS has a billion trillion gazililon lines of code to maintain and retrofit with "secure" code. Much of this code was written in the days when security was an afterthought and bugs were treated as an annoyance, rather than a threat.

Re:It's no secret...

[temojen]

Yes, it seems that the biggest problems with desktop security seem to be:

1. Defaulting to run as administrator, and the defective programs that require this behaviour.
2. Lack of user eucation.
3. Lack of testing of software to verify behaviour when passed unexpected input.
4. The ability to include arbitrary code (not just sandboxed code) in file types that shouldn't.

Re:It's no secret...

[shanen]

That's not the point, though he didn't say it very clearly. The way I see the problem is sort of philosophical. Microsoft sees the OS as a weapon, and the philosophy of building weapons is that of course you want to make them as big and powerful as possible. Metaphorically, Windows has become something like a swiss army trench mortar that little old ladies drive to church on Sundays, a bit of email, and occasionally use for killing flies. Accidents will happen. Lots of those spam-zombies are 'owned' by such grannies. Power gets abused, and Windows is abosolutely way too powerful.

Having identified the problem, I wish I had a good solution. The philosophy of the minimal OS is superior, but it doesn't make money.

By the way, if you're looking for 'the truth' on /., you'll need a pretty big lantern to see past the fog of moderation. Yes, I just got troll modded again. If I was a gamester, I'd be interested in the gaming strategies the trolls use to get mod points. After all, Taco admitted the moderation system is a game.

Do I have an axe to grind? Yeah, it's called 'the truth'. If every liar on /. would designate me as a foe, I'd be delighted--and have a really large freak list, too.

Re:It's no secret...

[temojen]

2. Lack of user eucation.

A prime example! oops!

Re:It's no secret...

[sconeu]

Add another dumb program to the list: The "Friends Trivia Game". The box specifies only Win2K or WinXP, which would lead one to think that it wouldn't require Admin.

WRONG!

I sent their tech support a nasty email pointing out that only sloppy coding practices would cause a game to need this.

Re:It's no secret...

[MaXiMiUS]

Results 1 - 10 of about 14,300,000 for Working Internet Explorer Exploit. (0.23 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 785,000 for Working Opera Exploit. (0.31 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 531,000 for Working Firefox Exploit. (0.29 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 448,000 for Working Mozilla Exploit. (0.28 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 434,000 for Working Netscape Exploit. (0.25 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 234,000 for Working Mosaic Exploit. (0.22 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 206,000 for Working Safari Exploit. (0.36 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 34,500 for Working Konqueror Exploit. (0.27 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 71,000 for Working Camino Exploit. (0.23 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 685 for Working Omniweb Exploit. (0.18 seconds)

I haven't even heard of some of those but apparently they're browsers.
http://browsers.evolt.org/

Re:It's no secret...

[sparkz]

This isn't exactly representative - given flaws in IE and FireFox, assuming equal severity, the IE flaw would (and must) get more coverage as over 90% of internet users use IE.

Re:It's no secret...

[Moofie]

How'd that work for you?

Re:It's no secret...

[pete-classic]

Microsoft has a long history of secret APIs used only by their applications. I remember some sort of hubbub about this around '94 when they were taking over the office suite market.

More recently the DOJ at least accused Microsoft of using secret APIs in support of IE, Messenger, Media Player, and Outlook Express.

I don't necessarily think that you are wrong, but the situation is certainly not as cut-and-dried as you seem to think it is.

-Peter

Re:It's no secret...

[The NPS]

You can get pop-ups from internet explorer even if you haven't opened the program, due to spyware on the system. I had a friend with this problem. This was a fews years back when I didn't know as much about computers (today, we would have just reformatted) and we tried to fix it by uninstalling internet explorer and running netscape instead. but even with internet explorer "uninstalled" and "not running" we were getting internet explorer pop-up ads.

Re:It's no secret...

[temojen]

"Simply Accounting" too.

Re:It's no secret...

[incubusnb]

The biggest problem that Windows has ,IMO, is the lack of a secure user system. They give you all of two options for users in XP; Administrator, and Limited.
Administrator has full control of the computer and unlimited access to the registry
Limited has next to no control over anything besides just "using" the computer.

There is no middle ground, no permission system on comparable grounds to Linux. I run as Admin on my Windows box primarily due to the fact that I don't want the hassle of logging out every time I want to update a program or do some other mundane task. This leaves me open to every worms and virus on the internet, fortunately I have the common sence to ensure I have working and well configured hardware and software firewalls, and an up to date Virus Scanner. Unfortunately, Joe User has no understanding of such utilities. Giving users the ability to install programs and run updates that don't require Kernel access would enable Windows to have much better security in most cases. Another thing that bothered me about Windows that is commonplace in Linux is the ability enter and exit Administrator mode without logging out the user through the use of a Password Prompt.

Windows Vista supposedly will boast a well designed user system that I will weclome with open arms, if they do it right!

Re:It's no secret...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have Word 97. hey, Its paid for and it does all we need.

Right after I first installed it on our new XP box, my wife said she couldn't run the spell checker. Guess what? If you arn't an administrator, the spell checker tab is greyed out!!

Just lovely.

Re:It's no secret...

[10101001 10101001]

>>That's the big problem with many of the Microsoft glitches. They're not limited to the vulnerable Microsoft application. The vulnerable app provides a gateway for compromising the whole PC.

>I would like to know where everyone heard this crap, and why they keep repeating it vebatim., because it's a bunch of bullshit. Flaws in Microsoft products have no greater danger than equivalent flaws in any other Windows application.

That's partially true and partially false. I'll explain more below.

>A remote code execution flaw in IE executes code with the users rights, and therefore gets access to what the user has access too.

>A remote code execution flaw in Firefox executes code with the users rights, and therefore gets access to what the user has access too

Exactly true. The issue is, instead, the number of remote code execution flaws.

>There is no special conduit that Microsoft apps have to the windows kernel or any other windows system object.

Except that such is not needed. In general, Microsoft seems more focused on trying to build a strong perimeter than to make sure that components are robust. The result is that anyone who can manage to obtain any sort of local access to effect objects is bound to find a means to use said objects to execute code (look at WMF for example). And because a local user effecting an object to execute code isn't a security risk (as a general rule, at least), little focus is set on making sure components are robust against such attacks. So it's not surprising that little consideration is given when such components are used in internet applications (think of the security implications of printf(user_provided_string); for example).

>If you browse the web using firefox while running as administrator and you get hit with an exploit that exploit will have full access to your system.

Of course. Firefox isn't a panacea.

Re:It's no secret...

[QRDeNameland]

A remote code execution flaw in IE executes code with the users rights, and therefore gets access to what the user has access too.

A remote code execution flaw in Firefox executes code with the users rights, and therefore gets access to what the user has access too

The difference being, however, that Firefox (unlike IE) can not execute ActiveX objects, making it far less likely for a remote execution flaw to occur in Firefox than in IE. An important point to leave out.

Re:It's no secret...

[DrSkwid]

What user do you run firefox/thunderbird as ?

is it yourself ?

Re:It's no secret...

[toadlife]

"The difference being, however, that Firefox (unlike IE) can not execute ActiveX objects, making it far less likely for a remote execution flaw to occur in Firefox than in IE. An important point to leave out."

That has nothing to do with my point. - that an exploit is an exploit regardless of weather it's IE or Firefox, but FYI, executing activeX controls is not actaully the danger - it's installing new, nasty ones, and in IE , only administrators can install ActiveX controls.

Vulnerabilties that cause auto-installation of ActiveX controls fail if the user doesn't have admin rights.

Re:It's no secret...

[Tim C]

They give you all of two options for users in XP; Administrator, and Limited.

Incorrect. They are the two options available via the control panel's users control, yes. However, if you right click "My Computer" and choose "Manage", you'll have access to the same users and groups admin that's been present since at least NT 4. By default, that gives you Administrators, Power Users and Users, and you're free to create whatever other groups you wish, assigning them whatever privileges you desire.

There is no middle ground, no permission system on comparable grounds to Linux.

Actually, the NT permission system is far richer than that found on the majority of Linux systems. You just have to know how to use it, and unfortunately, precious few people do.

Re:It's no secret...

[Anonymous Coward]

yay, a new world of possibilities to enjoy, thanks very much!

Re:It's no secret...

[sconeu]

I just got the 'bot response on how to return the program.

Re:It's no secret...

[cbell-bell]

"A remote code execution flaw in IE executes code with the users rights, and therefore gets access to what the user has access too."

You obviously haven't dealt with spending 5+ hours removing spyware all because a "NON-Admin" user decided to visit a web page in IE. (just viewing it.) If these programs don't act as gateways to some of the highest levels of the OS how could a "Standard User" account (with no write access to most of the HD) load software that loads several system services (running as "SYSTEM") on a fully patched 2000 SP4 desktop, write endless entries in the registry so every time "ANY" folder/.exe is opened the programs are re-installed again?? I have personally witnessed this on more than a few occasions and there was NO download/open dialog, NO warning, NO Nothing being generated to turn a working machine 5 minutes later in to Spyware/Adware/Pop-up HELL eating every available CPU/MEM resource and downloading/installing everything on the Internet it could connect and get it's hands on!

"If you browse the web using firefox while running as administrator and you get hit with an exploit that exploit will have full access to your system."

And what happens when i visited the "Same" infected site with Firefox on an identical cloned machine... At least one message (after a .js script loads) asking if i want to open/save an ".exe" file!

Re:It's no secret...

[jaelle]

I learned long ago not to allow Microsoft OS's to autoupdate. The updates invariably break more than they fix. I simply don't use any M$ apps anymore. And with the rumors (plans) for Vista's DRM spyware, I'll simply be taking all my M$ boxes off the net entirely. Linux runs web apps beautifully.

Re:It's no secret...

[shmlco]

And you can show us those secret API's the DOJ accused them of using? Oh, wait, of course not. They're secret. How convenient. Then again, upon consideration, it could be a safe claim at that. I don't know of any major application or platform that doesn't have internal APIs and undocumented functions.

Of course, you still can't show us the RunMSApp10PercentFaster() function call, can you?

Re:It's no secret...

[toadlife]

"The biggest problem that Windows has ,IMO, is the lack of a secure user system. They give you all of two options for users in XP; Administrator, and Limited.
Administrator has full control of the computer and unlimited access to the registry
Limited has next to no control over anything besides just "using" the computer."

Correct and it sucks, but is actually only in XP Home. XP Pro has that middle ground, which BTW is being removed in Vista.

"There is no middle ground, no permission system on comparable grounds to Linux. I run as Admin on my Windows box primarily due to the fact that I don't want the hassle of logging out every time I want to update a program or do some other mundane task."

Actually, there is a very robust permission system for both the filesystem and registy and there is a full set of system policies which hand out rights for specific system rights (for example, installing drivers, and changing the system time). The problem is XP Home hides it all from the user, which is stupid. In XP home you can modify file permissions with the command line tool, cacls.exe. I'm not sure about registry permissions, but I do know there is a command line tool to do that too. You can also boot up to safe mode, log in as administrator and access the file permission from explorer. The other problem really isn't Microsoft's (well maybe it is), its the fact that software deveolpers contune to write programs that assume the user with be running them as admin.

"Another thing that bothered me about Windows that is commonplace in Linux is the ability enter and exit Administrator mode without logging out the user through the use of a Password Prompt."

Actually, windows has this ability too - run-as. There is also a cool tool called "Make me admin" which temporairly makes your user account an admn account without having to log off and back on. But that doesn't solve the problem of XP Home making it very difficult to fix permissions so that regular users can run things.

http://blogs.msdn.com/aaron_margosis/archive/2004/ 07/24/193721.aspx

Re:It's no secret...

[Trevahaha]

Oh please, if you're running old IE then yes. But Internet Explorer since SP2 will prevent ActiveX from automatically installing. You have to click and explicitly give permission (with multiple warnings) to allow ActiveX to install.

Re:It's no secret...

[QRDeNameland]

True, but I still think it's atrocious that an ActiveX control can be silently autoinstalled even when running with admin rights.

It's a simple fact of life that most users do not want to deal with the drudgery of secure network administration, and don't want to have to understand why they have remember a password every time they want to install something. Microsoft is popular in large part because they cater to that desire, and do what they can to shield the novice user from any understanding of user based security. And also remember, there are still a large percentage of Windows boxes running 95/98/ME that don't even have proper NT security.

Considering that Microsoft knew all this, I think ActiveX installation from the browser was a terrible idea. It's shifting the blame a bit to say that lazy users don't lock down their machines when Microsoft has essentially encouraged them not to.

Re:It's no secret...

[toadlife]

That's a nice story you wrote there, but it's not very believable.

What you wrote *may* have been possible *if* the user was a "power user", got infected with adware which wrote a shortcut to the "all users\startup" folder and then logged onto the machine as an admin - which would run the rogue process with admin rights.

Otherwise, your story reeks of BS, or just a misunderstanding by you or your friend of what really happened.

Re:It's no secret...

[toadlife]

"Except that such is not needed. In general, Microsoft seems more focused on trying to build a strong perimeter than to make sure that components are robust. The result is that anyone who can manage to obtain any sort of local access to effect objects is bound to find a means to use said objects to execute code (look at WMF for example). And because a local user effecting an object to execute code isn't a security risk (as a general rule, at least), little focus is set on making sure components are robust against such attacks. So it's not surprising that little consideration is given when such components are used in internet applications (think of the security implications of printf(user_provided_string); for example)."

Why do people keep missing the point I was making, or changing the subject?

The point I was making was very simple:

A remote code execution flaw in IE (or any other windows app) is no more dangerous than a remote code execution flaw in Firefox (or any other third party windows app).

I never said anything about...

* the number of flaws in either.
* the severity of those flaws.
* that IE was secure.
* The firefox was insecure.

Re:It's no secret...

[MushMouth]

As can Firefox extensions, which can do anything that the user has permissions for. Actually you don't need to be an administrator, just put it a "pointer file" in the profiles extensions directory pointing to a directory with a chrome.manifest file.

Re:It's no secret...

[Tony-A]

Flaws in Microsoft products have no greater danger than equivalent flaws in any other Windows application.

They should have no greater danger.
They do have no greater danger is a much different statement, and is almost certainly false.

Do you really think some Microsoft munchkin will resist the opportunity to use some specialized knowledge or hook into the system to make him or herself look better to his or her supervisors?
Third party software tends to be a wee bit more paranoid about having the rug pulled out from under them, so the scope of what an exploit would be able to do tends to be rather smaller.

Any DLL shared between Microsof apps that is not know/used by third-party apps is a refutation of your argument.

It's kinda like there are treen in the Black Forest.
I have no idea what kind(s) or how they are spaced, etc.

Re:It's no secret...

[QRDeNameland]

FIrefox extensions can autoinstall? I'd like to see some evidence of that.

Re:It's no secret...

[vargasgrey]

I encountered this exact same problem myself when I used to used IE. After switching to Firefox, no it isn't a pancea but it is far better than IE. I just don't have the problems with it that I've had with the other browser.

Re:It's no secret...

[kimvette]

Time to upgrade to OpenOffice.org 2.0. :)

Re:It's no secret...

[SeventyBang]

There's no such game!

Perhaps you meant, Strip Happy Days ?


;)

Re:It's no secret...

[drsmithy]

If these programs don't act as gateways to some of the highest levels of the OS how could a "Standard User" account (with no write access to most of the HD) load software that loads several system services (running as "SYSTEM") on a fully patched 2000 SP4 desktop, write endless entries in the registry so every time "ANY" folder/.exe is opened the programs are re-installed again??

it can't.

I have personally witnessed this on more than a few occasions and there was NO download/open dialog, NO warning, NO Nothing being generated to turn a working machine 5 minutes later in to Spyware/Adware/Pop-up HELL eating every available CPU/MEM resource and downloading/installing everything on the Internet it could connect and get it's hands on!

Show me some links to these sites.

Re:It's no secret...

[drsmithy]

Do you really think some Microsoft munchkin will resist the opportunity to use some specialized knowledge or hook into the system to make him or herself look better to his or her supervisors?

I'm pretty sure he wouldn't risk his job.

Third party software tends to be a wee bit more paranoid about having the rug pulled out from under them, so the scope of what an exploit would be able to do tends to be rather smaller.

Say what ? Third party apps tend to be the _worst_ offenders in terms of using undocumented APIs and ignoring best practices. There are thousands of ugly hacks and workarounds Microsoft have in place so that broken software continues to run on current versions of Windows.

Any DLL shared between Microsof apps that is not know/used by third-party apps is a refutation of your argument.

So list them.

I am waiting for even a single example of a Microsoft application using an undocumented API to gain any sort of functional advantage over its competitors.

Re:It's no secret...

[Tony-A]

my point. - that an exploit is an exploit regardless of weather ...

weather: (whether it's raining or sunny?)

As is all exploits are created equal.
As in all diseases are created equal. It doesn't matter which you have.
As in all storms are created equal.

Re:It's no secret...

[Tony-A]

Seems like the ability to buffer print jobs way back in the old days of DOS.
Reverse engineering brought about the mess of TSRs.

Rather deceptive message if Windows (3.2?) was loaded on top of DR DOS.

There is a rather thick book of PC interrupts. Microsoft is hardly the only one using undocuments system features.

I would be extremely surprised if with windows, everything used was documented and documented correctly and that documentation was accessible externally.

Re:It's no secret...

[drsmithy]

Rather deceptive message if Windows (3.2?) was loaded on top of DR DOS.

Actually it was only displayed in _beta_ versions of Windows if it detected a non-Microsoft DOS (not just DRDOS) running. No shipping version of Windows displayed the warning.

If you can't see any valid technical reasons why something like Windows 3.x - which relied on and modified internal, in-memory data structures of DOS while it was running - would need to know exactly what the characterisics of the DOS it was running on top of were, I don't think you're trying very hard.

There is a rather thick book of PC interrupts. Microsoft is hardly the only one using undocuments system features.

The "rather thick book" part would suggest they _are_ documented.

I would be extremely surprised if with windows, everything used was documented and documented correctly and that documentation was accessible externally.

So would I, but it's a long way from the odd bit of undocumented API usage here and there, probably in legacy code that's been floating around for 15 years, to the "Microsoft use undocumented APIs so their software works better than everyone elses" meme.

As I said, I am waiting for even a single example of a Microsoft application using an undocumented API to gain any sort of functional advantage over competitors.

Re:It's no secret...

[TubeSteak]

The API's aren't exactly "secret," but AFAIK they were undocumented.

I remember reading how .NET isn't as secure as MS wants you to think because they have a variety of undocumented API's that you can call, which will ultimately let you bypass some of their secure framework.

It doesn't change the point that not documenting the APIs and functions was (according to the DOJ) not kosher.

Re:It's no secret...

[sconeu]

Try this, but don't buy it (for Windows, anyway).

Re:It's no secret...

[MushMouth]

Activex components don't install without either, an admin running an app that does the install, or an admin accepts an ActiveX security dialog. The same is true with firefox. Either the user accepts the extension, or a user run app drops the extension in he extensions directory (no dialog, but it's name shows up in the extensions dialog, IE has something similar).

Re:It's no secret...

[pete-classic]

I think you read a little too much into my comment.

Anyway, call them "undocumented" if you will. The fact is that if their apps are calling OS code that NO ONE ELSE CALLS, they might, indeed, suffer from unique security problems.

-Peter

Re:It's no secret...

[10101001 10101001]

Why do people keep missing the point I was making, or changing the subject?

I guess because the point you were making is a tautology and above comment in itself. The only thing left to comment on is things like the how of remote exploits. Having said that, what would you have liked me to comment about and in what way?

Oh, and the point I was trying to make was that an equivalent flaw might not have equivalent effect. That's because the word flaw is used to describe the cause, the effect, or a combination of causes and effect. Not all buffer overflows allow buffer execution, for example. The whole point of DEP was to still allow flaws (buffer overflows) without allowing some kinds of flaws (buffer buffer). I was just nitpicking over it.

Re:It's no secret...

[zcat_NZ]

astalavista.box.sk and serials.ws are a couple that I know of. Under MSIE they'll launch lots of windows that 'require a plugin or upgrade' but if you kill off MSIE without clicking on a single thing you'll still find quite a lot of stuff has managed to install itself with no interaction at all!

I haven't tried as a non-priviledged user, and if you want to experiment with these sites I'd suggest using a 'throwaway install' that you don't mind getting trashed.

Re:It's no secret...

[MushMouth]

Didn't do anything to my machine. Popped up a few windows, but that happens with firefox all the time as well (yes I have popups off for both but some still sneak through). I have default security set on IE, and don't run a virus scanner or spyware tool as I have never needed one as I only install completely trusted software.

Re:It's no secret...

[QRDeNameland]

Yeah, I "knew" that ActiveX require admin acceptance to install, up until the day I was browser hijacked by a silently installed an ActiveX object. All I did was click on link from a Google search (yes, I was running with admin rights), and bam, it overwrote the WMP executable, launched several exes that my firewall caught trying to call home, and took over the start page no matter how you tried to reset it. That's when I switched to Firefox and haven't had a problem since. Maybe it's fixed in IE now, although I thought I read here that it's only fixed in XP SP2. But that and the WMF exploit makes two incidents where IE has had a "merely click on a link and you're infected" bug. I am aware of no such bug ever in Firefox, even when running as admin. Until the day that Firefox has such an exploit, I don't think it's fair to say that there's no difference.

Re:It's no secret...

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing that concerns me with Microsoft introducing proper user security in Windows is the amount of *local* priveledge escalation exploits that are currently abuseable in Windows. Once a trojan/worm/virus is run by someones browser at 'Limited' user level it can run a known exploit to gain Administrator access and the bad program is exactly where it would be even if user security wasn't used.

I'm certainly not an expert on exploits for Windows but looking through lists of patches shows only remote vulnerabilites having been fixed. I've read before that Microsoft haven't considered patching local exploits for years becuase they consider local user accounts to be trusted. Lets hope they have been quietly finding and fixing local exploits during their code reviews - otherwise Vista's user level security will be no more than a user inconvenience.

Re:It's no secret...

[ozmanjusri]

I don't know of any major application or platform that doesn't have internal APIs and undocumented functions.

http://www.kernel.org/

Re:It's no secret...

[ohwell]

I've been on the internet 14+ years with nt+ until recently I didn't even have a firewall no av or anti spyware, I've never been hacked.. I don't get it, even with nt4 not having runas I still was able to perform all tasks just fine with a limited account.. My issues with the nt+ code base are mostly issues with bo's and that's a limitation all os's will encounter. My confidence was severily shaken with the cisco ios issue, basically at that point the games over any application/os feature that listens for inbound connections is a ticking time bomb the code paths are mind boggling... oh well shields up!

Re:It's no secret...

[darkpurpleblob]

Activex components don't install without either, an admin running an app that does the install, or an admin accepts an ActiveX security dialog.

Wrong. It's possible to author and package an ActiveX control in an installer that pleb users can download and install. You just need to install it somewhere on the file system that the user has access to (C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data) and make sure it registers itself in the HKCU section of the registry.

Re:It's no secret...

[Inspector Lopez]

If you browse the web using firefox while running as administrator and you get hit with an exploit that exploit will have full access to your system.

The cultural milieu of Unix/Linux/BSD/Mac OS, users do not use root-level access while surfing the web. In the Windows Milieu, it happens all the time.

I'm reminded of the Steinem aphorism that "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." In a thoughtful world, a user needs routine access to root privilege like a fish needs a bicycle. In the Windows world, um, fish have Campagnolo cleats on their feet.

Okay, that's gratuitous, karma annihilating, and, sort of perverse. I'm pretty sure that I spelled "milieu" good, though.

Re:It's no secret...

[Anonymous Coward]

Results 1 - 10 of about 115,000 for Working lynx Exploit. (0.15 seconds)

Re:It's no secret...

[servies]

I've been on the internet 14+ years with nt+

Yeah right...

Re:It's no secret...

[eikonos]

Undocumented APIs that the DOJ forced MS to document: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/dnapiover/html/api-overview.asp

"Microsoft teams identified a few hundred undocumented Windows interfaces or parameters that were used by one or more of the Microsoft Middleware components."

Re:It's no secret...

[toadlife]

"I guess because the point you were making is a tautology and above comment in itself."

If you believe it's good to let people continue to believe falsehoods, then sure.

Having said that, what would you have liked me to comment about and in what way?

How about giving me real reason why my point was "partially false"? The fact is, people have this unfounded belief that Microsoft applications have some sort of magic access to the operating system that other application don't. If you want to say some MS apps have more vulnerabilities discovered than third party alternatives, and more of it's vulnerabilities are serious, fine - that certainly seems to be true at least with IE - but it doesn't in any way negate what I said.

"Oh, and the point I was trying to make was that an equivalent flaw might not have equivalent effect"

By equivalent flaws, I meant a flaws that have the same consequences when explioted. I thought that would be obvious, but I guess not.

Re:It's no secret...

[MushMouth]

That makes sense, I guess all the ones that I have tried to install want access to Local Machine, Current Configuration or Root (AKA not inteligently written). As it is though a firefox extension has the same abilities to access the registry (look at nsIWindowsRegKey for the easiest way)

Re:It's no secret...

[MushMouth]

Firefox has had overflow bugs, up to 1.0.6 my browser crashed daily on pitchforkmedia.com and a few other sites. If sites that didn't want to crash it was taking it down, imagine what would happen if some smart russians had tried to put something on allmp3.com. Then there is the guy who built the malformed html creator and took down all the browsers EXCEPT IE in less than an hour (I know FF fixed these problems in 1.0.5 or so, but you were the one who brought up fixed bugs in IE). While no one bothered to build exploits (why would they you only need to infect a few percent of IE machines to get more than the entire firefox install base)

Re:It's no secret...

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

It might be true what you say, but why am I being hit by internet explorer related worms/trojans/spyware when I never ever use IE to browse?

The problem with the way IE is intergrated into Windows is that even if I use another browser I keep to get the vulnerabilities of IE for free!

Re:It's no secret...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the way IE is intergrated into Windows is that even if I use another browser I keep to get the vulnerabilities of IE for free!

Hey, at least you get something for free! A lot of people pay for that!

Re:It's no secret...

[Lonewolf666]

During installation, at least Windows 2000 recommends that you add a non-admin user for everyday work. That user is per default a "power user". So this may explain part of grandparent's story, if he did not check the facts in detail.
Logging in as Admin later is also likely to happen, when you want to install a new service pack or something else that requires admin rights. And only the most careful users will take the time before that to clear out all the autostart options.

Re:It's no secret...

[10101001 10101001]

>>I guess because the point you were making is a tautology and above comment in itself.

>If you believe it's good to let people continue to believe falsehoods, then sure.

The only other comments I could have made that wouldn't have gone off-topic are "me too" and "I agree". Were you really looking for a hi-five?

>>Having said that, what would you have liked me to comment about and in what way?

>How about giving me real reason why my point was "partially false"?

Because in your original statement you used the word flaw, and flaw can mean bug or exploit. Obviously when you use the word exploit it's an unambiguous tautology.

>The fact is, people have this unfounded belief that Microsoft applications have some sort of magic access to the operating system that other application don't.

Well, "I agee". Of course they don't.

>If you want to say some MS apps have more vulnerabilities discovered than third party alternatives, and more of it's vulnerabilities are serious, fine - that certainly seems to be true at least with IE - but it doesn't in any way negate what I said.

Well, I can't negate a tautology. I wasn't even trying.

>>Oh, and the point I was trying to make was that an equivalent flaw might not have equivalent effect

>By equivalent flaws, I meant a flaws that have the same consequences when explioted. I thought that would be obvious, but I guess not.

Some of us when they hear the word "flaw" think "bug". My comment wasn't an attempt to disprove the spirit of your point; it was merely to clarify the real world situation of bugs. I'm sorry if you think that was changing the subject, but there wasn't really anything else to say about your intended point. And I'm sorry that it wasn't clear which use of the word flaw was being used.

Re:It's no secret...

[tinkerghost]

A remote code execution flaw in IE executes code with the users rights, and therefore gets access to what the user has access too. I beg to differ a bit here, I have to clean out my son't win2K system every 2-3 weeks because the free game sites he goes to keep installing spyware as admin. Nice that the software removal tools don't have access from a restricted account to remove the spyware, but IE can install it for you just for saying yes I want to run active X and play the game.

Re:It's no secret...

[pete-classic]

"Middleware" is used in a weird sense here. According to the DOJ IE, Outlook Express, MSN Messenger, and Windows Media Player are "middleware".

-Peter

Whats even more amazing...

[MSFanBoi2]

Is all three of those worms/trojans flaws were fixed by patches that were out, in some cases months, before the release of the attack vector.

Re:Whats even more amazing...

[KiltedKnight]

Yep. That's what happened with the SQL Server bug that took down a large chunk of Bank of America's ATM network. Six months prior, IIRC, is what my friend told me when the patch was released.

I don't know if I'd chalk this all up to lazy sysadmins. While that's a factor, there's also the IT director at whatever firm who wants "stability." Sure, some of it is sysadmins not paying attention. But some of it is also sysadmins at war with the suits because, "that system cannot go down... not even for maintenance. I don't care if nobody uses it between 1 and 4am or on the weekends." (Yes, I've seen shops like that... those are VERY costly errors on management's part.)

Critical patches should ALWAYS be installed as soon as it is feasible. You should have a test system available where you can install them and run your regression testing, if you're in software development. If all you do is use your computers for word processing, data entry, specific applications, etc, you should, for the most part, be installing those critical patches as they come out. I tell family and friends to do that. My seldom-used windows box here at work gets done by corporate IT, and they seem to stay on top of a lot of that.

Re:Whats even more amazing...

[Nom du Keyboard]

fixed by patches that were out, in some cases months, before the release of the attack vector.

People don't patch. More news at eleven.

Re:Whats even more amazing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all us net admins have time to do our own regression testing.
I'm refreshing slashdot.

dustin

Re:Whats even more amazing...

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me that having your ATM network accessible from the internet is just a bad idea.

Re:Whats even more amazing...

[Taevin]

Not if you're the admin and want to drive up to one and tap the "UnitXYZ.DispenseCashAnonymously()" button on your pocket PC.

Re:Whats even more amazing...

[Quantam]

Welcome to the corporate world; please continue to bend over, and enjoy your stay.

I seem to recall hearing a while back about the computer connected to one of my dad's machines (he operates analytical chemistry instruments - mass spectrometers, chromatographs, that kind of thing) dying, and it took them like a month for the IT department to get him a new one, built to their (the IT department's) specs and with exactly the right software installed; all this time that one machine was out of commission. I told him I could have gone shopping at my local (cheap) computer shop, and had a computer up for him in under a work day (but that would have gotten him in big trouble with the IT department). That's corporate bureaucracy for you.

The what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Slate .. ?

  The Slashdot seems to have similar problems too, not just your fault

Security is damn hard..

[Ckwop]

Computer security will get worse before it gets better. It's the second hardest problem in computing, coming second only to DRM; which is provely impossible to do properly.

The problem comes from many quaters: some theortical, some practical, some managerial. For example:

1. We know that it is possible to write secure code in any language and we also know it is possible to write insecure code in any language.
2. We know that people are generally more prepared to pay for features than security but features are the enemy of security. The more features you have, the more code-paths you have and the more chance that you have a defect in any one of those paths.
3. We know that schedule pressure leads to crappy code and crappy code breeds insecurity.
4. We know that the attacker only needs to find one attack that works. We have to defend against all attacks..

I could go on for quite sometime.. the point to appreciate here is that it isn't all Microsoft's fault but they could do a whole lot more. If we could just get rid of the overflows that would be a good start!

Simon

Re:Security is damn hard..

[pHatidic]

the point to appreciate here is that it isn't all Microsoft's fault but they could do a whole lot more.

Actually it is all Microsoft's fault. Whether or not they deserve to be villified for it is another issue. But consider the following:

1) They don't fix bugs they know about so they don't break compatability with programs that rely on the bugs.

2) They don't submit their code for review by the public.

3) They don't follow security best practices, like turning off services by default.

4) They make their OS less secure by obfuscating design to make it difficult for competitors.

5) They use propriety data formats.

6) They alter the OS to make it work with their programs instead of designing a solid OS so that anyone can make programs run with it.

etc.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[dedazo]

They don't fix bugs they know about so they don't break compatability with programs that rely on the bugs.

Unless the bugs are vulnerability vectors this is called 'doing business'. Unlike FLOSSies, software companies write code for profit and part of that means finding workarounds for stupid design mistakes (like using undocumented internals) made by other companies that write software for your platform. Breaking some shareware author's tray icon is not the same as killing Photoshop or Lotus Notes. Read Raymond Chen's blog, you'll be surprised at what lengths they go to to cater to the likes of Symantec, Corel, etc.

They don't submit their code for review by the public.

That's a nice philosophical point, but philosophical nonetheless. If I follow your logic then Firefox would have had zero vulnerabilities the day it was released, and that's not the case now, is it? The "many eyes no bugs" mantra goes south in a hurry when you have a 10-million line codebase and a few hundred actually qualified people looking at it.

They don't follow security best practices, like turning off services by default.

They didn't, but they do now. Server 2003 ships seriously locked down.

They make their OS less secure by obfuscating design to make it difficult for competitors.

Yes... no one writes applications for Windows because its design is "obfuscated". Yes.

They use propriety data formats.

There you go again with the philosophy.

They alter the OS to make it work with their programs instead of designing a solid OS so that anyone can make programs run with it.

First you complain on (1) that they don't fix bugs to avoid breaking applications and now you postulate that they break compatibility whenever they feel like it so that it works only with theirs. Which is it?

Re:Security is damn hard..

[shanen]

You're running around the edges of the problem. Why does Microsoft do these things? Because they make more money that way. If they actually had to absorb the costs for their security mistakes, they would have taken a VERY different approach to security.

As current law stands, all Microsoft needs is a cutesy disclaimer in their shrinkwrap/click-through EULA and we're all screwed. They take the money up front, and if there's any problems (and hoo boy, are there problems), we pay to fix them.

Then the punchline. Microsoft will gladly charge us MORE money to 'support' their own mistakes.

1. Create LOTS of features, and give low priority to non-features like security.
2. Advertise features aggressively.
3. ...
4. Profit!

The invisible Step 3 in this case is obviously "Ignore the costs of the resulting security disasters."

Re:Security is damn hard..

[shaitand]

DRM is like Thermal Nuclear War. The only way to win is not to play at all.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[ThinkFr33ly]

1) They don't fix bugs they know about so they don't break compatability with programs that rely on the bugs.

Examples?

2) They don't submit their code for review by the public.

That's the nature of a company that is closed source. As has been pointed out many times before, there is no concrete evidence that having the source be open results in greater security.

3) They don't follow security best practices, like turning off services by default.

They certainly didn't used to, but they do now. Take a look at their most recent server releases, Windows 2003 SP1 and Windows 2003 R2. (Or 2003 gold, for that matter.) The OS comes with basically nothing turned on that isn't needed. In addition, take a look at IIS 7. It will allow for very selective enabling of fairly low level features.

4) They make their OS less secure by obfuscating design to make it difficult for competitors.

Examples?

5) They use propriety data formats.

And this affects security how? Have an example?

6) They alter the OS to make it work with their programs instead of designing a solid OS so that anyone can make programs run with it.

They do both, actually. Windows is fairly obviously the easiest OS to develop applications for. This is a result of a combination of great development tools (Visual Studio comes to mind) and a huge developer community. Visual Basic opened up programming to a huge audience, for better or for worse. The .NET Framework makes it fairly easy to develop enterprise applications... etc.

On the other side, Microsoft certainly has a history of tweaking the OS to make sure that applications ran OK... but this was usually for big time applications that LOTS of people used (Lotus Notes, certain spread sheets, etc) and if Microsoft released an OS that broke those, even if the breaking change was justified, nobody would have upgraded. That said, I don't know of too many recent tweaks. Have any?

Microsoft has made progress, albeit slow. Vista is shaping up to actually a great release, and Windows 2003 has a pretty damn good track record so far. Is it perfect.. nope. But neither are the alternatives.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[mrsbrisby]

They don't fix bugs they know about so they don't break compatability with programs that rely on the bugs.

Unless the bugs are vulnerability vectors this is called 'doing business'. Unlike FLOSSies, software companies write code for profit and part of that means finding workarounds for stupid design mistakes (like using undocumented internals) made by other companies that write software for your platform. Breaking some shareware author's tray icon is not the same as killing Photoshop or Lotus Notes. Read Raymond Chen's blog, you'll be surprised at what lengths they go to to cater to the likes of Symantec, Corel, etc.

They often become vulnerability vectors, and it is admittedly difficult to take a company seriously that says that they are interested in making a secure system when they cannot even factor that into the "cost of doing business".

They don't submit their code for review by the public.

That's a nice philosophical point, but philosophical nonetheless. If I follow your logic then Firefox would have had zero vulnerabilities the day it was released, and that's not the case now, is it? The "many eyes no bugs" mantra goes south in a hurry when you have a 10-million line codebase and a few hundred actually qualified people looking at it.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc: One doesn't follow the other.

Having the code available means a larger number of people can find vulnerabilities and a larger number of people can contribute fixes. It does not follow that a less vulnerabilities will be found, although it might follow that a less number of vulnerabilities will be exploited.

However, it may also be that the reason a less number of vulnerabilities are exploited are due to the lower deployment size.

Consider then Apache which has a larger deployment than IIS but fewer critical vulnerabilities.

They don't follow security best practices, like turning off services by default.

They didn't, but they do now. Server 2003 ships seriously locked down.

That's still under debate, although I suspect you'll refer to your first argument for rationale.

They make their OS less secure by obfuscating design to make it difficult for competitors.

Yes... no one writes applications for Windows because its design is "obfuscated". Yes.

Very few people write applications that directly compete with Microsoft.

They use propriety data formats.

There you go again with the philosophy.

By having additional lockin, Microsoft surely makes it harder for people to compete with them. This does indeed represent a security risk because formats, when understood, can reveal a great deal of information about the programs that interact with them.

In general programs that parse more, tend to have greater bugs.

By intentionally attempting to make their formats more complicated, they have certainly blocked compatability, but they've also decreased security by (again) making their software more complicated.

They alter the OS to make it work with their programs instead of designing a solid OS so that anyone can make programs run with it.

First you complain on (1) that they don't fix bugs to avoid breaking applications and now you postulate that they break compatibility whenever they feel like it so that it works only with theirs. Which is it?

The parent doesn't postulate that at all. You are again exhibiting faulty logic.

By altering the operating system to meet the needs of the applications, they are introducing more parallel, nearly identically developed subsystems, all with increased potential for bugs. This does indeed cause security problems.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[naelurec]

Unless the bugs are vulnerability vectors this is called 'doing business'. Unlike FLOSSies, software companies write code for profit and part of that means finding workarounds for stupid design mistakes (like using undocumented internals) made by other companies that write software for your platform.

I don't understand.. lots of FOSS has extension/plugin architectures and have to deal with the same issues.. however, I don't see FOSS developers catering to individuals/companies that elect NOT TO PROGRAM to established APIs. It seems like even companies such as Apple tend to have the same view point.. this seems like a Microsoft-ism.. I'm guessing its due in part to the fact that they themselves utilize many undocumented internals.

The "many eyes no bugs" mantra goes south in a hurry when you have a 10-million line codebase and a few hundred actually qualified people looking at it.

Thats crap. First, if this code was available, it could be utilized by thousands of CS students as a learning tool (and thus additioanl eye-balls checking out the code). In addition to this, there are LOTS of companies that develop for Windows. If something doesn't function properly, don't you think that these individuals would LOVE to get into the source to see whats going on? Sure, it might be a very small portion of the source, but nevertheless, being able to get in there to analyze/understand/adapt and report bugs goes a long way.

Needless to say, Windows was designed as a non-networked, single user system. While they have cobbled together multiuser and network features, the history of Windows continues to plague the platform. Anyway you slice it, the optimal choice would have been to sandbox backwards compatibility and rebuild Windows from scratch (or from a solid network/multiuser code base).. sure the transition period might be painful, but I don't think it would have been nearly as painful as the continued security issues of the current code base.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[avxo]

2) They don't submit their code for review by the public.

Review by the public is not all that it's hyped out to be. A lot of the "public" wouldn't know what to look for, but even if the public you refer to only includes programmers, keep in mind that many (if not all) programmers couldn't find most of the subtler security related bugs simply by reviewing the code.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[slackmaster2000]

"Needless to say, Windows was designed as a non-networked, single user system. While they have cobbled together multiuser and network features, the history of Windows continues to plague the platform. Anyway you slice it, the optimal choice would have been to sandbox backwards compatibility and rebuild Windows from scratch (or from a solid network/multiuser code base).. sure the transition period might be painful, but I don't think it would have been nearly as painful as the continued security issues of the current code base."

Actually, that's kind of what they did ala Windows 2000 and beyond.

Granted I'm not going to argue about how well it may have worked out or what "from scratch" really means, hehe :)

Re:Security is damn hard..

[Anonymous Coward]

"Actually it is all Microsoft's fault. Whether or not they deserve to be villified for it is another issue. But consider the following: 1) They don't fix bugs they know about so they don't break compatability with programs that rely on the bugs." - by pHatidic (163975) on Tuesday January 10, @07:03PM

Better check the URL posted below at the end of my posting in reply to you, ok?

That link will show YOU which OS family (Windows or Unix variants/knockoffs like Unix-Linux-MacOS X) had more security related bugs... ok?

(DO read it, you need to, in order to be informed better with current year-end 2005 security data)

Data & results from a 3rd party impartial site (us-cert.gov) that is NOT sponsored by MS @ all - heh, if anything?

They are AGAINST MS, because they levelled antitrust suits against MS, they're the U.S. Government, & the site is all about that area - security!

"2) They don't submit their code for review by the public." - by pHatidic (163975) on Tuesday January 10, @07:03PM

They do to institutions and companies that are part of an agreement with them to do so. Not for everyone, but they do that. Also, consider - they are COMMERCIAL software, & that codebase is their lifeblood as well.

Now, lastly, on that point of yours:

Have you even also considered the reverse of your statement, that opening up that same code would allow attackers to understand it better for the purposes of attacking it?

"3) They don't follow security best practices, like turning off services by default." - by pHatidic (163975) on Tuesday January 10, @07:03PM

LOL, sure they do man: Have you seen or used Windows Server 2003? It only installs in workstation mode first of all, less of a services based attack surface, & it has the Security Configuration Wizard (SCW) as well, & what is one of the FIRST THINGS IT DOES?

Turn off unnecessary services!

"4) They make their OS less secure by obfuscating design to make it difficult for competitors." - by pHatidic (163975) on Tuesday January 10, @07:03PM

Care to explain that? If you mean interfaces to file formats or say, API's Outlook uses, those are proprietary secrets... try to consider it from THEIR point-of-view as a commercial entity. Again, those are their trade secrets.

They have gotten better about that though.

"5) They use propriety data formats." - by pHatidic (163975) on Tuesday January 10, @07:03PM

And, what is wrong with that exactly? They DO provide API's to work with them MOSTLY, don't they??

(Uhm, also, correct me if I'm wrong but, isn't that same API I mention present & more used than ANY OTHER ON THE PLANET in more softwares because there are more softwares for varied purposes for Microsoft OS than any others?)

"6) They alter the OS to make it work with their programs instead of designing a solid OS so that anyone can make programs run with it." by pHatidic (163975) on Tuesday January 10, @07:03PM

WHAT? I've been building softwares for Windows professsionally in an MIS/IS/IT capacity for more than a decade now, and also sharewares as well... the Win32 API is VERY WELL DOCUMENTED & HAS FINE "RAD" TOOLS LIKE VB6 & Visual Studio as a whole, Borland Delphi, Visual Studio.NET & many more (heck, even their office suite is programmeable and pretty flexible, e.g.-> Excel & Access via VBA).

So... in addition to ALL that?

All I can say to you is - OH, really??

WELL, then you should see here which OS family + softwares had more bugs in 2005 exposed, Windows OR Unix type OS' and derivants/knock-offs like Linux/MacOS X etc.:

http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/bulletins/SB2005.html [us-cert.gov]

Findings & results from that site (which specializes in security mind you) showed that Windows and Win32 softwares had clearly LESS SECURITY RELATED HOLES IN THEM THAN Unix/Linux/MacOS X & their wares in the year 2005!

(And, yes,

Re:Security is damn hard..

[dghcasp]

[security is the] second hardest problem in computing, coming second only to DRM

Good to see those "formerly hard" problems like the halting problem, finding P-time algorithms for NP-complete algorithms, determining values for uncomputable problems like Ackerman's function, etc, have been pushed down the list by implementation problems.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[goodie3shoes]

Soon, Bill G. will announce Windows Vista RBB (Really Big Buffers). System requirement: 1 TB of RAM.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[Foolhardy]

Thats crap. First, if this code was available, it could be utilized by thousands of CS students as a learning tool (and thus additioanl eye-balls checking out the code).

Actually, I believe that most universities and their students can view the Windows source code, after agreeing to a non-disclosure agreement. It's not the same as open source, but it's still available.

Needless to say, Windows was designed as a non-networked, single user system. While they have cobbled together multiuser and network features, the history of Windows continues to plague the platform. Anyway you slice it, the optimal choice would have been to sandbox backwards compatibility and rebuild Windows from scratch (or from a solid network/multiuser code base).. sure the transition period might be painful, but I don't think it would have been nearly as painful as the continued security issues of the current code base.

Microsoft did that 12 years ago. They called it Windows NT, and the compatibility sandbox was called the Win32 subsystem (including Win16). WinNT has been a networked, secure, mulituser system from the beginning. The problem is that the sandbox's API and its compatibility with the old non-networked, single user, no security predecessor (DOS/Windows) never went away: it just got bigger and bigger, without an alternative from MS. Not switching to NT, but instead further developing the DOS/Windows line into Windows 95, 98 and ME didn't make things any better. Once XP finally replaced the old line with an NT, the amount of software written for the old API (Win95's implementation of basic Win32) had become much too large to ditch.

I was hoping that Microsoft would finally depreciate Win32 in Vista, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. In fact, there is no official alternative API to the old Win32 API, except for .NET, which just sits on top of Win32 in current versions.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[pHatidic]

That link will show YOU which OS family (Windows or Unix variants/knockoffs like Unix-Linux-MacOS X) had more security related bugs... ok?

This seems to be the crux of your argument, but it isn't really relevant. Comparing an OS made by a single company to an OS made by volunteers/many companies is comparing apples and oranges. The real question is whether the processes used by MS are conducive to good security.

Have you even also considered the reverse of your statement, that opening up that same code would allow attackers to understand it better for the purposes of attacking it?

It's a tradeoff, you need to do a cost benefit analysis, not just look at the costs. Look at the Fuzz report...

Have you seen or used Windows Server 2003?

No. It hardly helps me if an OS I've never used and never would use is secure, when the OS I would use is insecure by default.

Turn off unnecessary services!

How? My copy of XP didn't come with any instructions on how to do this even though were popup ads showing up on my desktop without my browser even being open.

Care to explain that? (obfuscating design)

They make it very difficult to switch away from their software. Firefox is my default browser, and every time I launch IE it asks me if I want me to make it my default browser again. I have no idea how to make it stop doing this. Also, it is very difficult to switch the default application that windows uses to open a given file extension. This makes it hard for the average user to install software like Firefox that would help keep the OS safer.

And, what is wrong with that exactly? They DO provide API's to work with them MOSTLY, don't they??

Proprietary anything is less secure. As Bruce Schneier says constantly, anyone can design a system so secure that they can't figure out how to attack it. That is why you need everything to be open to review to the widest number of people possible.

They alter the OS to make it work with their programs

What I'm saying is that if the Word team is having trouble, the OS team can throw in a quick hack to make Word run. Over time this degrades the quality of the OS even if it makes Word be able to ship a couple weeks earlier.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[drsmithy]

1) They don't fix bugs they know about so they don't break compatability with programs that rely on the bugs.

Right. I guess that's why Slashdot is littered with people complaining about the latest hotfix or service pack breaking all their software.

2) They don't submit their code for review by the public.

There is little evidence this philosophical issue makes any difference.

3) They don't follow security best practices, like turning off services by default.

There's not much listening after a default Windows 2003 install.

4) They make their OS less secure by obfuscating design to make it difficult for competitors.

Evidence ? Examples ?

5) They use propriety data formats.

More philosophy.

6) They alter the OS to make it work with their programs instead of designing a solid OS so that anyone can make programs run with it.

Evidence ? Examples ?

Re:Security is damn hard..

[drsmithy]

I don't understand.. lots of FOSS has extension/plugin architectures and have to deal with the same issues..

No, they don't, because the OSS solution is to _not_ try to deal with the issue and just break software.

however, I don't see FOSS developers catering to individuals/companies that elect NOT TO PROGRAM to established APIs.

Yes. That's because they don't have any financial consequences to worry about. The lack of any real efforts towards binary compatibility in the OSS world is well known, particularly with regards to Linux (the kernel).

It seems like even companies such as Apple tend to have the same view point.. this seems like a Microsoft-ism.. I'm guessing its due in part to the fact that they themselves utilize many undocumented internals.

Cite some specific examples.

Thats crap. First, if this code was available, it could be utilized by thousands of CS students as a learning tool (and thus additioanl eye-balls checking out the code).

Ignoring for a second that many educational institutions have access to the Windows source code, how many CS students do you think are going to be able to gain a meaningful and in-context grasp of the Windows source code ?

In addition to this, there are LOTS of companies that develop for Windows. If something doesn't function properly, don't you think that these individuals would LOVE to get into the source to see whats going on?

Also ignoring that companies can access the Windows source if they're prepared to pay for it, there's no reason for decent developers to need access to the source when they have a documented API to use.

Sure, it might be a very small portion of the source, but nevertheless, being able to get in there to analyze/understand/adapt and report bugs goes a long way.

It also encourages the use of undocumented/deprecated APIs, leading on to the requirement of ugly compatibility hacks in future versions of the OS to avoid braking existing software.

Needless to say, Windows was designed as a non-networked, single user system.

False. Windows NT was designed from the ground up to be a networked, multiuser OS.

Unsurprisingly, given your basic assumption is wrong, your conclusions are flawed.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[llamaluvr]

In general programs that parse more, tend to have greater bugs.

Whoa there, cowboy! How to do you know MS programs have to "parse more"? It's possible to have a bloated, more complicated-looking format that might be just as easy or easier than a simpler-looking format to parse. My guess is that parsing MS formats really isn't that difficult or long for MS's algorithms, given how quickly the average office file loads. Even if Office secretly latches onto the OS somehow for a performance boost, loading that file into memory still requires CPU cycles and hard drive reads to load into memory.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[twiddlingbits]

You have never dealt with the FOSS software world have you? If you had you would know your statement is total CRAP. The premise is FOSS can be reused, extended and IMPROVED by the joint work of the community. It's not at all about breaking things.

No financial consequences? How stupid are you? Novell, RedHat, Sun don't have to worry about consequences of the open source OSes (SUSE, RHEL, and Solaris) and software (JES) they sell? They most certainly do if they want to stay in business!

When I was a CS Student many moons ago, the IBM OS360 and the VAX/VMS code was what we studied in our OS classes. That is at least as complex as Windows. However, the basic concepts of OSes can be studied using most any multi-tasking OS as an example.

There are lots of reasons to see the source code of something you are interfacing too. Optimization of the interface comes to mind. If the interface is called 1000 times a minute then saving time in the code, and space on the stack/memory by sending only the minimum of data can be useful. Knowing if the routine you are calling is changing the data you send it via parameters, knowing if the routine blocks, knowing if it calls 7 other routines. The more you know the better code you can write. Instead of trusting the API to be right, you can look at the code and KNOW it is right.

Windows NT was NOT designed from the ground up to be a multi-user OS. It was to be more network aware and to support the full 32 bit model on the Intel chips. It did include some enchanced security concepts but it was still able to run older Windows programs so it was NOT a blank sheet OS, it was an extension to Windows 3.X. with added features.

I'm not a Windows basher nor a Windows proponent, just someone who has been around many OSes and many generations of computers since 1977 when we had teletypes and is stating facts based on experience/

Re:Security is damn hard..

[llamaluvr]

Needless to say, Windows was designed as a non-networked, single user system. While they have cobbled together multiuser and network features, the history of Windows continues to plague the platform. Anyway you slice it, the optimal choice would have been to sandbox backwards compatibility and rebuild Windows from scratch (or from a solid network/multiuser code base).. sure the transition period might be painful, but I don't think it would have been nearly as painful as the continued security issues of the current code base.

It'd be too painful.

The issues that maintaining backwards compatiblity presents to Windows are not the same as the issues presented to other OSes, by virtue of the markets that Windows is in. So many businesses would be in big trouble if MS did not make compatibility a top priority. For instance, often software for industrial use costs tens of thousands of dollars, and it might interface with equipment that may cost even more tens of thousands of dollars, or even more. And that equipment might have been programmed using that software over thousands of man-hours. Thus, the investment is enormous.

If the company declines to produce a version supported on Microsoft's latest OS, or they do, but it only works with their latest version of the equipment, that company has lost perhaps millions in an investment. That is, unless the old software is still compatible with the newest OS anyway.

It'd be nice to upgrade everything when a new version is out, but it simply isn't possible. It is often easier, however, to upgrade the operating system of a computer (to take advantage of security enhancements, at least, if not new features), than it is to upgrade some industrial system. Fortunately, Microsoft has made it often possible to do one without doing the other, even if the company who made the industrial system is not coorperative.

Microsoft is the player in the OS market who has done or is doing this for their customers to this extent, and it's because it is where the money is. Their customers are requesting this sort of compatibility.

A real plus of the modern Windows OSes that you really can have it both ways, though. In a well-managed environment using a select set of well-behaved applications, you can run everybody as Limited users, restrict kernel-mode driver installs, and all sorts of other things. But, when you need to loosen the reigns, you can, and that old, misbehaved app will still work. Windows allows companies to standardize on one desktop platform while maintaining legacy compatibility where they need it.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[bill_mcgonigle]

It's the second hardest problem in computing

From a cost/management perspective you mean, right? From a tools perspective if everything was Design By Contract we'd have most network security problems licked.

Sure, there are always going to be logic errors, but if we could get to the point where we only had to deal with logic errors we'd be so much happier. Our tools are failing us.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[pHatidic]

A lot of the "public" wouldn't know what to look for, but even if the public you refer to only includes programmers, keep in mind that many (if not all) programmers couldn't find most of the subtler security related bugs simply by reviewing the code.

But you don't need everyone to find bugs. If you release the code to a million people and only one person is able to find a few bugs, you're still better off. Of course it's a cost benefit of giving the source to attackers verse people who want to make it better, but judging by how many attacks there have been against Linux there have been I think it has been working out pretty well. And don't say that Linux is attacked because not many people use it, because almost every person who uses a computer uses Linux every single day. Every time you Google something, buy a book at Amazon, check Wikipedia, etc. you are using Linux.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[drsmithy]

You have never dealt with the FOSS software world have you?

Seeing how my job is a sysadmin, I get to deal with it every day.

If you had you would know your statement is total CRAP. The premise is FOSS can be reused, extended and IMPROVED by the joint work of the community. It's not at all about breaking things.

I never said it _was- about "breaking things", I said the OSS community's solution to backwards compatibility is generally to ignore it ("because they can just [patch and] recompile again"). Example A: the multitudes of Firefox plugins that break with every release. Example B: every new kernel release breaking existing hardware drivers.

No financial consequences?

Yes. This is why so few people in the OSS community care, becaue most of them work under two assumptions:

1) People using their software are getting it for nothing, so if it breaks then they haven't really lost anything

2) Everyone else thinks like they do and thus are only using open source - so if their fancy new app A.0 requires library B.2 and most users only have B.1, it's no sweat because they can just download the new library B.2 and install it. Likewise the developers of Library B.1 don't care if their upgrade B.2 breaks a bunch of existing software, because the "OSS community" will patch the software and the end users can just download and install the latest version.

Ie: There are no financial consequences for their fuckups and bad habits. This sort of attitude and approach is *rife* within the OSS community and probably the single biggest reason for its slow take-up rate and low level of support amongst commercial vendors.

Novell, RedHat, Sun don't have to worry about consequences of the open source OSes (SUSE, RHEL, and Solaris) and software (JES) they sell? They most certainly do if they want to stay in business!

Yes they do, which is why they expend so much money and effort trying to keep OSS code written by the typical cowboys stable. Novell, Sun, Red Hat et al are not representative of the OSS community, they're the exceptions to the rule. If *only* the rest of the OSS community followed the practices and standards of commercial operations like Sun, Novell, Red Hat, Microsoft or IBM, the world would be a better place.

When I was a CS Student many moons ago, the IBM OS360 and the VAX/VMS code was what we studied in our OS classes. That is at least as complex as Windows.

I doubt it. No GUI, for starters, and that's before even getting into things like the 16 bit compatibility layers.

However, the basic concepts of OSes can be studied using most any multi-tasking OS as an example.

Indeed they can. Your point ?

There are lots of reasons to see the source code of something you are interfacing too.

Yes, and almost all of them are going to result in you writing worse code.

Optimization of the interface comes to mind. If the interface is called 1000 times a minute then saving time in the code, and space on the stack/memory by sending only the minimum of data can be useful. Knowing if the routine you are calling is changing the data you send it via parameters, knowing if the routine blocks, knowing if it calls 7 other routines. The more you know the better code you can write. Instead of trusting the API to be right, you can look at the code and KNOW it is right.

So you're suggesting that optimising your code based not on the documented and supported behaviour of an API, but how one specific implementation of it behaves, is a good idea ? Or are you suggesting that writing an application that relies on your modifications to someone else's code to run is a good idea ?

Windows NT was NOT designed from the ground up to be a multi-user OS. It was to be more network aware and to support the full 32 bit model on the Intel chips. It did include some enchanced security concepts but it was still able to run older Windows programs so it was NOT a blank sheet

Re:Security is damn hard..

[Hymer]

You forgot one...

7) They are allowing other sw-companys to mark their software as "Windows NT, W2K, XP Compatible" even when that software does not obey the security model of Windows.
This should apply to any kind of software... including games. That is the reason why running Windows as non-admin user is a pain in the ass...

Re:Security is damn hard..

[eikonos]

Small, simple files take less code to parse than large, complex files. This is the equivalent to saying "it's easier to make a spelling mistake in a 2,000 word essay than in a 100 word summary."

My guess is that parsing MS formats really isn't that difficult or long for MS's algorithms, given how quickly the average office file loads.

If you have to guess about this, then you don't know what you're talking about. Compound OLE documents have a very complex structure and if you've ever done any coding then you'll know that adding complexity does increase the chances of making mistakes.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[avxo]

No you don't need everyone -- if everyone could do serious security reviews, people that charge a LOT of money to review source code would not be able to charge what they charge. The point I was trying to make is that you don't significantly improve security just by opening up your source code to scrutiny, although you do gain other advantages that the open source model gives you. The people that do the review must know what they are looking for. Are there such people reviewing code in the Linux kernel? Absolutely. Are there such people reviewing Microsoft code? Yes.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[Tom]

You're going out on a limb there. You assume that security == code quality == no bugs.

And that's the problem.

Code will always have bugs. There's no way to write bug-free code, though there are certain techniques (features on /. recently) to write code an order or two of magnitude less buggy than the current standard.

The solution to security, however, is not less bugs. It is making the system so that it fails safely. That even if there is a bug, it doesn't mean game over.
The security problem with IE, or Media Player, is not that they are buggy. The security problem is that external data scheduled for display to the user is at all able to compromise the system.
And that's a design fault in the system, not a bug in IE or Media Player.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[jc42]

Actually, I believe that most universities and their students can view the Windows source code, after agreeing to a non-disclosure agreement.

Yeah right; you're running an educational operation, so you tell your students to use something that requires an NDA. But this rather misses the whole point of an educational institution.

Funny thing: If you look into the history of unix and its clones, you find that the most successful clones (e.g., minix and linux) were started largely because of licensing restrictions for student access to the source code. Yes, you could get student access licenses from AT&T, with a lot of paperwork including signatures n NDAs, plus paying license fees. But Andy and Linus decided, quite reasonably, that this wasn't reasonable, and it would be better to build their own from scratch.

Both have commented that this was not just a better educational approach; it was also a lot more fun for everyone involved. And both projects, started for personal and educational use, have given us useful, unencumbered systems that are much more useful to a wide variety of applications.

For an interesting non-unix example, look into the Japanese ITRON system. This was also started in an academic environment, as a tool for teaching real-time computing without the legal hassles involved in showing the code to students. It's now one of the major embedded real-time kernels. Much of this is because you don't need to sign an NDA to study the code.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[mrsbrisby]

Whoa there, cowboy! How to do you know MS programs have to "parse more"?

Obviously, because they have bugs! You are probably misreading my statement to say "Microsoft presently does more parsing than is necessary" when I'm actually saying "Microsoft has to do more parsing than they're presently doing" because by not sanitizing input enough, they are making more bugs, and likewise, by being more paranoid, they're leaving themselves open to implement more, new bugs.

In contrast, by selecting a format that doesn't demand a complex parser to prove correctness, there is less code written, and it's easier to audit and there are frequently fewer bugs.

It's possible to have a bloated, more complicated-looking format that might be just as easy or easier than a simpler-looking format to parse.

I think you are making things up and there does not exist a complicated looking format that demands less parsing than a simpler looking format. Please give an example to demonstrate I am wrong.

My guess is that parsing MS formats really isn't that difficult or long for MS's algorithms, given how quickly the average office file loads.

Why would you think for a moment that complex file formats take longer to load? /etc/passwd is colon-delimited and is an extremely simple format to load and save. Nevertheless, on a large site, with tens of thousands of users, doing even simple lookups in it can take an enormous amount of time.

In contrast, some systems use DBM databases for storing password information. DBM is a much more complicated format than /etc/passwd, but does load faster. Fortunately, the various DBM-formats have been under review long enough that most people generally accept that at least some DBM are just complicated enough to get the job done, and not "over" complicated.

Even if Office secretly latches onto the OS somehow for a performance boost, loading that file into memory still requires CPU cycles and hard drive reads to load into memory.

You're basing this on the assumption that complicated formats have to load more slowly, which I have demonstrated to be incorrect.

Additional parsing does incur a performance penalty, but hopefully by selecting a more complicated format, the persons involved were interested in overshadowing that penalty by the structure itself being faster for common usage.

Nevertheless, this doesn't have very much relevance: I don't suspect for a moment that Microsoft used OLE streams in an effort to make things slower, but to make things faster. But by doing so, they've made things less secure.

An often used middle-ground (well, often outside of Microsoft) is to cache the in-memory structure (perhaps in this case, the OLE streams themselves) in a per-user per-machine location such that these cached streams would always be considered "trustworthy".

Unfortunately, this behavior doesn't encourage lock-in, which is why Microsoft has rarely used... But this is less relevant here I think...

Re:Security is damn hard..

[Starker_Kull]

For someone who brags in their sig about knowing the difference between "affect" and "effect", you should know about the difference between "ThermO Nuclear War" and "Thermal Nuclear War". The former is used to refer to warfare with hydrogen bombs (which use the extremely high temps in a "normal" atomic bomb to trigger fusion, thus a Thermonuclear weapon vs a plain ol' nuclear weapon), and the latter would probably be used by W.

Just a friendly suggestion - ;)

Re:Security is damn hard..

[twiddlingbits]

So you're suggesting that optimising your code based not on the documented and supported behaviour of an API, but how one specific implementation of it behaves, is a good idea ? Or are you suggesting that writing an application that relies on your modifications to someone else's code to run is a good idea ? Yes, in some cases. How much hard real-time code have YOU written where being off by a microsecond can kill someone? In those cases you HAVE to know more than just what the API says. I have worked with several OSes that we had to get source code for and "tweak" to get best performance. It is a totally different world, and with Windows (and Linux) showing up in real-time situations it is in the programmers best interest to know. Windows NT was NOT designed from the ground up to be a multi-user OS. It was to be more network aware and to support the full 32 bit model on the Intel chips. It did include some enchanced security concepts but it was still able to run older Windows programs so it was NOT a blank sheet OS, it was an extension to Windows 3.X. with added features. This is wrong in just about every way possible. I can only urge you to go out and educate yourself on the subject before Let me straighten you out...You have a lot of things wrong. The first version of Windows NT (3.1) was released in 1993 and had the same GUI as the normal Windows Operating System (told ya), however it was a pure 32 bit OS (said that), but provided the ability to also run older DOS and Windows apps, as well as character mode OS/2 1.3 programs. NT had a ton of new things but it HAD to maintain backward compatiability which caused issues and IMHO made it not as good as it could have been. The two big postives were a better security model and real multi-tasking (NOT MULTI-USER). The advanced features in NT were copied from VAX/VMS, Microsoft hired a group of 6 VMS developers from Digital Equipment Corporation led by Dave Cutler to build Windows NT, and many elements of the design reflect earlier DEC experience with VMS and RSX-11.So, It WAS NOT a clean sheet design from Redmond, it was a VAX/VMS security model on top ofthe Win3.1 GUI compatiability and other code for backward compatiabilty. It was a hybird, Win2000 was more "pure". It WAS new technology to MS, hence the name from Marketing, the developers said it was N-Ten but that isn't a sexy name. Windows NT 3.1 ran on x86, Alpha, and MIPS processors. Windows NT 3.51 added PowerPC. Intergraph Corporation ported Windows NT to its Clipper architecture and later SPARC, but neither version was sold to the public (I remember Alpha and MIPS boxes with NT). You can't change history no matter how much MS wants to. It is what it is. You are the one who got sucked in to the Windows Marketing Machine. I told you I was neutral, as someone who has done deep dives into Windows AND Unix I know what I'm talking about. No go back to keeping your Windows boxes online while my Solaris boxes take care of themselves. I'm done with this thread, it's a waste of time.

Re:Security is damn hard..

[drsmithy]

Yes, in some cases. How much hard real-time code have YOU written where being off by a microsecond can kill someone? In those cases you HAVE to know more than just what the API says. I have worked with several OSes that we had to get source code for and "tweak" to get best performance. It is a totally different world, and with Windows (and Linux) showing up in real-time situations it is in the programmers best interest to know.

By talking about hard realtime apps you're *well* out of the realms of anything the typical developer will be doing and relevant to this discussion. If required you _can_ have access to the Windows source code for these sort of (highly uncommon) situations.

Let me straighten you out...You have a lot of things wrong. The first version of Windows NT (3.1) was released in 1993 and had the same GUI as the normal Windows Operating System (told ya), [...]

Were this anywhere but Slashdot, I'd be surprised someone talking about "hard real time" a few sentences earlier would draw conclusions about an OS's internals based on its GUI.

The two big postives were a better security model and real multi-tasking (NOT MULTI-USER).

NT was multiuser from the start - according to the people who wrote it, any Operating Systems textbook that discusses it and, indeed, pretty much everyone except a bunch of trolls on Slashdot.

The advanced features in NT were copied from VAX/VMS, Microsoft hired a group of 6 VMS developers from Digital Equipment Corporation led by Dave Cutler to build Windows NT, and many elements of the design reflect earlier DEC experience with VMS and RSX-11.

How could Cutler have been "copying" something he wrote in the first place ?

So, It WAS NOT a clean sheet design from Redmond, it was a VAX/VMS security model on top ofthe Win3.1 GUI compatiability and other code for backward compatiabilty.

No, you have it completely arse-about-face.

NT was built from scratch - a completely new codebase. It had (has) a very similar design to VMS, because it was designed and written by the same people who wrote VMS. The security model was designed into it from the beginning. It was _always_ multiuser. The only architectural changes of any significance since NT 3.1 have been moving certain components to Ring 0 (and in some cases back out again).

*Then*, the win32 API, OS/2 API, POSIX API, Windows 3.x GUI and various other compatibility layers were added to that OS core. NT wasn't even designed to be a successor of Windows, it was designed to be a successor of OS/2 - until the surprise popularity of Windows 3.0, *2 years* after NT development began - this fact alone blows your theories out of the water.

I can run Windows apps on Linux and Linux apps on FreeBSD, as well, but that doesn't mean Linux has anything in common with Windows or FreeBSD has anything in common with Linux. Binary and API compatibility != code sharing or development history.

It WAS new technology to MS, hence the name from Marketing, the developers said it was N-Ten but that isn't a sexy name.

NT was pretty "New Technology" to the consumer-level marketplace.

Windows NT 3.1 ran on x86, Alpha, and MIPS processors. Windows NT 3.51 added PowerPC. Intergraph Corporation ported Windows NT to its Clipper architecture and later SPARC, but neither version was sold to the public (I remember Alpha and MIPS boxes with NT).

Amazing how you can know so much (or at least be able to regurgitate it from somewhere), yet still be wrong on such a fundamental level.

You can't change history no matter how much MS wants to. It is what it is. You are the one who got sucked in to the Windows Marketing Machine. I told you I was neutral, as someone who has done deep dives into Windows AND Unix I know what I'm talking about. No go back to keeping your Windows boxes online while my Solaris boxes take care of themselves. I'm done with this thread, it's a waste of time.

I challenge you to

What can you do to protect yourself?

[biocute]

The article is advising people: "Besides avoiding Microsoft products, one way would be to use substitutes whenever possible. If you run Windows or the upcoming Vista, use a different e-mail program, browser, and/or media player than the ones that come in the box. Stay up to date on patches and anti-virus software."

I thought most importantly users should be responsible enough not to simply click on or open anything in front of them.

Re:What can you do to protect yourself?

[Soko]

I thought most importantly users should be responsible enough not to simply click on or open anything in front of them.

Ummm... the recent WMF vulerability needed no user interaction, other than visiting a web page or getting an e-mail with a "specially crafted" WMF file disguised as a .JPEG or .GIF file. It wouldn't matter which program accessed the file either - the OS would bypass the extension based MIME type and treat the file as a .WMF anyway, complete with being able to execute code, as WMF files are able to do by design. IOW, there was very little defense for an end user, unless you knew what sites had these files in advance. Users are usually the weakest link in the chain, but not always.

Your first bit of advice was correct - security is a process, not a product, and as such needs to be maintained and thought out in advance. I'd add "Educate users why people want into thier machine and here's how they get in" to the list too.

Soko

Re:What can you do to protect yourself?

[mallardtheduck]

Actually, Windows does very little in the way of handling MIME types, so it really does depend on the application. If your image viewer uses the file extension, then a WMF disgused as a GIF or JPEG would just produce an error along the lines of "Bad GIF file."
The WMF vulnerability only affected applications that used the Windows GDI built in WMF rendering API. Other WMF renderers (there are a few) were not affected (at least not in the same way.)

And since when did CAD programs use WMF format?! I've never seen it used for anything other than clip-art.

Re:What can you do to protect yourself?

[Soko]

Quite a lot, actually. I'm going back to AuoCAD 13, but it would save a .DWG as a WMF for you so you could paste your drawing into Word. IIRC, the .WMF format was essentially a dump of what was on the clipboard, and the clipboard in Windows 3.11 and 95 couldn't handle some larger CAD files as metadata, hence .WMF files.

And thanks for the clarification regarding MIME types, though the effect is still the same.

Soko

Re:What can you do to protect yourself?

[weeb0]

The users are so idiot that when they see a popup with the drawing of the [X] they click on the drawed [X] and not on the real [X] on the top of the screen!

Whomever Geeks and Nerds Find Evil...

[moore.dustin]

will be under these kind of attacks all the time. Geeks, like everyone else, wants to stick it to the man. The man in this case is Gates and Windows. While this does not excuse the flaws and lack of attention at times, it does present another angle. To make a OS as robust as windows without things like this happening is hard to imagine honestly. If Macs were what windows is today, the story would be the complete opposite I assure you. You see the SAME thing in popular games as well. The most hacked games are the biggest and best, not because it is easier, but there are far more people attempting to exploit the system.

Re:Whomever Geeks and Nerds Find Evil...

[Hosiah]

And of course, you have an explanation for the fact that before Microsoft had such enormous market share (check here: http://www.osdata.com/kind/history.htm : computer history DID NOT begin with MS-DOS), security holes were virtually unknown?

Re:Whomever Geeks and Nerds Find Evil...

[Anonymous Coward]

And of course, you have an explanation for the fact that before Microsoft had such enormous market share (check here: http://www.osdata.com/kind/history.htm [osdata.com] : computer history DID NOT begin with MS-DOS), security holes were virtually unknown?

Hint 1: While you were'nt looking something called the Internet happened.

Hint 2: Read up on fx Unix security history (worms, rootkits, etc.), just for a start.

Re:Whomever Geeks and Nerds Find Evil...

[sootman]

Yeah, same way that Apache, various open-source operating systems, and various open-source databases have had so many more widely-exploited bugs in the last 5 years... you know, because Linux, Apache, and MySQL (for example) drive so many more websites than IIS, Windows, and MS-SQL... oh, wait, THAT'S COMPLETELY WRONG. Windows has LESS market share and MORE exploits. Hmm, I wonder why... You know, maybe, juuust maybe, is it possible that Windows is not designed that well from a security standpoint? And UNIX variants really, truly are better in that department?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no software is perfect, and I expect a flood of responses talking about this PHPBB exploit and that MT exploit... but count up the REAL, WIDESPREAD, COSTLY viruses, folks. A couple years ago, my company shut down its entire network--I mean, they cut the power to the switches--TWICE, in one year. Why? Because of REAL, ACTIVE, IN-USE Windows viruses.

Re:Whomever Geeks and Nerds Find Evil...

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Two Words: Morris Worm Two more words: Cuckoo's Egg

Re:Whomever Geeks and Nerds Find Evil...

[Hosiah]

Morris Worm...Cuckoo's Egg...yes, I knew about those! I said "virtually". Two != dozens per year.

Re:Whomever Geeks and Nerds Find Evil...

[shaitand]

Even that is ignoring the biggest flaw in the popularity argument. While windows systems are the most numerous, the most desirable targets for crackers are almost universally using non-microsoft applications.

Lets see, you could get access to my $200 visa on a windows box, or you could gain access to 5,000,000 $200 visa's by cracking a *nix box: which is the common hacker more likely to target again?

Re:Whomever Geeks and Nerds Find Evil...

[bersl2]

To make a OS as robust as windows without things like this happening is hard to imagine honestly.

"Robust" is not an adjective I would ascribe to Windows.

If Macs were what windows is today, the story would be the complete opposite I assure you. You see the SAME thing in popular games as well. The most hacked games are the biggest and best, not because it is easier, but there are far more people attempting to exploit the system.

Homogeneity is weakness. Stop being so damn homogeneous (x86, Windows, the most popular software, etc.), and start being more diverse (POWER, SPARC; Linux, *BSD; good but not most popular software; etc.); otherwise, you're just bringing this upon yourselves.

I know that the herd mentality still affects humans' decisions, but please do try to balance your cognitive biases out.

Re:Whomever Geeks and Nerds Find Evil...

[node 3]

If Macs were what windows is today, the story would be the complete opposite I assure you.

Did you put any thought into that at all? When coming up with a theory like that, one should always try to disprove it. There are plenty of things one can imagine which seem to make sense, but which fall apart under even the most basic scrutiny.

If what you just said is true, then you are stating specifically that Mac OS X and Windows are both equally insecure. And generally stating that all OS's are equally insecure. Does that appear likely to you? Outlook has had many vulnerabilities which don't even require viewing the email. Explorer has had (just last week even!) many exploits that require nothing but visiting a page, and there was nothing a user could do about it with certainty.

Windows has vectors which just don't exist on Mac OS X, and it's not because Mac OS X is less capable, it's because Windows was designed with complete disregard for all but the most superficial level of security. Mac OS X is very much influenced by UNIX, and UNIX has been hardened over the years.

No, your theory is dead wrong. Windows and Mac OS X are not equally insecure, sorry. The facts just don't bear it out.

Now, if you wanted to say, had the tables been reversed, there would be far more effort put into compromising OS X vs Windows XP, then yes, you are probably correct, but Windows would most definitely be pwn3d at a higher rate than OS X is now (which, by all accounts, is zero).

Re:Whomever Geeks and Nerds Find Evil...

[tyse]

Hardly any users. Absolutely no way to make money out of it.

Things are very different now. You can get rich from it.

saying != doing

[sczimme]

Gates urged that new design approaches must "dramatically reduce" the number of security-related issues as well as make fixes easier to administer. "Eventually," he added, "our software should be so fundamentally secure that customers never even worry about it."

Fair enough, but regardless of what is happening in the way of "new design approaches", the current installed base is the problem. The best ways to show dedication to the reduction of security issues would be a) rigorous code review + pre-emptive bugfixes and b) more rapid response to issues that are found elsewhere. There have been improvements, but the sum of the successes will not outweigh the sum of the failures.

Re:saying != doing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd argue that Microsoft are at least doing something about security, which is the real reason behind the emphasis on .NET and the resulting integration of it into Vista. When Microsoft can get managed code under so many peoples noses at once, they can start to rewrite whole segments of their operating system to run in a more secure environment that is essentially free from the risks associated with buffer overflows. If they did this outright with Vista, there'd be uproar, but keep an eye on the roadmap and the plans for future service packs. More and more of the new features of Windows are built on the .NET rebrand that is WinFX. This is a good thing (tm) for most scenarios, because anything that shows you a GUI and isn't a game is essentially user-bound in terms of performance. Any time your PC is doing nothing, which is the vast majority of the time for the vast majority of users.

Mark my words. .NET isn't about vendor lockin, it's about overflow lockout and reducing the footprint of the NT Kernel's C++ code. Other languages are finally a real option, especially with the growth in hardware specifications, and managed code for many will be the horse that the sales of faster hardware will ride on.

Re:saying != doing

[sparkz]

Gates urged that new design approaches must "dramatically reduce" the number of security-related issues as well as make fixes easier to administer. "Eventually," he added, "our software should be so fundamentally secure that customers never even worry about it."

So, all technical arguments aside, Gates has failed to the achieve the managerial decision he has made.

We geeks can worry all we like about the minutiae; Gates, as a manager and businessman, has failed to deliver.

Re:saying != doing

[sparkz]

Oh great, so more untested code (.NET in this case) is the new panacea?

When have I heard this before? Oh yeah, Win95, Win98, Win98SE, WinNT, WinNT4, Win2k, WinXP, Win2k3

(I would have gone further back, but Win3.1 was the original problem; 3.11 seemed to manage to add features without adding serious security problems, somehow)

Re:saying != doing

[tyse]

Gotta be kidding mate... Windows 3.1 Who was connecting to the internet then? It was a whole different world.

Re:saying != doing

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

3.1 was a different hell, having to find a Winsock, having various third party ones (anyone else remember Trumpet Winsock?) getting SLIP or PPP on top of that. There were people on the net, just not as many.

Re:saying != doing

[Weedlekin]

I remember Trumpet, quite fondly in fact. The problem of course was that of the chicken and the egg: you needed to download Trumpet to access the Internet, but could not download it without access to the Internet...

Extending tendrils?

[rts008]

FTA:"With the company's security problems still monopolizing the news, you might have expected that Bill Gates would address the vulnerability at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Instead, he boasted how Microsoft's new operating system, Vista, would extend the company's tendrils into your living room. Sure, it might be nice to connect your computer and your television set. But is it worth it to give hackers access to your television?" LOL!!! My prediction? One week after "tendrils" are extended, we have Goatse pics on all of the network's broadcasts- gaping across screens all over America...IN HDTV!!!!!LOL!!!!I can't wait, then maybe will start to wake up about security after getting "spammed" with Goatse on their tv's! HaHaHaHaHA!

Re:Extending tendrils?

[Anonymous Coward]

HahahAHahaHaHAHA LOL ROFFLE! *snort*

Re:Extending tendrils?

[weeb0]

I'm very angry to see a blue screen on the TV, or to see the image stopping and having to reboot the computer... Or, new, a reset button on the TV? A firewall ? And the new thing, install the new patch for the TV .... LoL. A lot of new possibilities with windows... DAMN ...

An interesting look at the whole issue

[ENOENT]

From TFA: "...Microsoft is still the dominatrix of the desktop..."

Yeah, baby. Tie me to your platform and make me pay.

Whats even more amazing...Security through age.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see a market breakdown by Windows version. How many of these security issues are with earlier versions?

SHOW ME THE MONEY

[halo8]

tens of billions of dollars to clean up

you know we as a tech community lambast the **AA whenever they (and the media) say a "hacker" did millions of dollars pirating

why do we not do the same when crap like this gets printed?

tens of billions? prove it, thats our job, thats what we do

Re:SHOW ME THE MONEY

[StikyPad]

Yeah, I started to make a similar post, but then I decided it wasn't so absurd. Probably on the high side, but it's not as much as it sounds like. 10M IT workers, even if they only averaged a salary of $100/day would be $1B. And that doesn't even factor in possible data loss which would result in users redoing their work.

Re:SHOW ME THE MONEY

[oGMo]

And this is vs the claims of the RIAA/MPAA, who seem to do things like multiply the entire cost of making the movie by the number of copies that were distributed, or something equally absurd.

Re:SHOW ME THE MONEY

[StikyPad]

Right, but redoing work is certainly a loss, as is preventing work from being done. That's an actual damage, not a "potential loss" like piracy. Arguably, IT workers are already paid to maintain systems, so you could factor them out entirely.

Re:SHOW ME THE MONEY

[sydneyfong]

and how many people are just surfing slashdot while at work anyways.....

Ooo, cleaning worms! Now that's real work ;-p

Re:SHOW ME THE MONEY

[Mr. Hankey]

In some environments, if a system is compromised then every aspect of the system's downtime is taken into consideration. The cost of employing someone who cannot work while the system is being reviewed, the portion of the SA's salaries paid while working on said compromised system rather than other tasks, the value of potentially lost data, and several other factors I won't even go into are all added together. This figure is used to determine how much to charge the responsible party if (when, really) they are found. It means a significantly harsher sentence in most cases.

If one were to take a similar tack on the amount of time and bandwidth wasted chasing even just the past several worms, I wouldn't be surprised if you could come up with a much higher figure. If you count the damage done by countless Windows zombies spamming people, sniffing passwords, and flooding networks, the figure actually starts looking downright reasonable.

Unending stream of patches helped MS it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

That "unending stream of patches" seemed to have made Windows & Win32 API based programs less bug-prone/filled than Unix (and its derivants/offshoots like MacOS X (via BSD) & Linux (via MINIX))!

See here:

http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/bulletins/SB2005.html

As of the year ending of 2005...

(And, yes, guys (specifically the Pro-Linux/Unix/Mac crowd here @ slashdot (you KNOW WHO YOU ARE, lol, the guys that endlessly blast on windows here)) :)

* That's an IMPARTIAL 3rd party that wasn't sponsored by Microsoft, & a gov't. agency that specializes in the area - security!

APK

P.S.=> Considering also that Windows based OS nowadays are the most used out there overall, on the most utilized hardware platform (x86) between personal computers/laptops & servers? That's QUITE an achievement on Microsoft's part imo... (Ducks as the Penguins prepare to flame the hell out of me) apk

Re:Unending stream of patches helped MS it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

The website url here

http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/bulletins/SB2005.html

Showed facts that in the year 2005 more bugs and security related issues were found in Unix based or derived operating systems and softwares than in Windows and its wares.

(Contrary to the information often stated by the penguins and unix fans worldwide and very often here at slashdot).

So I must ask - why was the post which I am replying to modded down?

It only showed things as they are from a reputable 3rd party source's findings in us-cert.gov which is a united states government website specializing in security related issues and it is also fairly obvious that the United States government is not partial to Microsoft because of the antitrust suits they have plagued Microsoft with.

The findings on the website used were also not results found by a test sponsored by Microsoft which is another complaint used by the linux people here at slashdot very often.

Shameful and childish modding down the posting that way slashdotters. Is that what unix people are about?

Unix, Linux, and MacOSX users are now the ones with the least secure operating system platforms it appears, not Windows users.

Re:Unending stream of patches helped MS it seems

[^me^]

This is said because unices, while they often share applications, often are completely different in their component parts.... among other things.

Re:Unending stream of patches helped MS it seems

[Philnet.HFZ]

Yeah, buy what you failed to note was that it lumped ALL Unix/Linux based systems together - Apple OS X, Red Hat, etc. Furthermore, the list was littered with "Updated" entries - essentially a previous entry which has been 'updated', and is lumped with the original.

Example:
- Apple Mac OS X Multiple Vulnerabilities
- Apple Mac OS X Multiple Vulnerabilities (Updated)
- Apple Mac OS X Multiple Vulnerabilities (Updated)
- Debian Lintian Insecure Temporary File
- Debian Linux Firewall Loading Failure
- Debian Module-Assistant Insecure Temporary File Creation
- Red Hat BCM5820 Linux Driver Buffer Overflow (Updated)
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Kernel Multiple Vulnerabilities
- Red Hat GNOME VFS updates address extfs vulnerability (Updated)

As you can see, many entries were repeated or were updates. Furthermore, just because one Unix/Linux had an error/bug/whatever does not mean they all had such an error/bug/whatever.

Plus, according to CERT, "This bulletin provides a year-end summary of software vulnerabilities that were identified between January 2005 and December 2005." Note the keyword IDENTIFIED. As in "those that were found" which may be significantly less than those errors or bugs that actually exist. Remember that with Open Source, anybody checking the code could find an error or report an error. With closed source code (like windows), only Microsoft has access to the code to debug it, so the chances of anybody else finding any flaws can correct or report it - unless you happen to get lucky and find a flaw, which is very unlikley.

Re:Unending stream of patches helped MS it seems

[JamesTRexx]

So I must ask - why was the post which I am replying to modded down?

I think you've missed something, so you're viewed as a troll/microsoftie/FUDamentalist/etcetera.
FYI; article here and here

It might not be sponsored by MS (probably), but it does not give an accurate pictures as there are many flaws in how they calculated the statistics.

Re:Unending stream of patches helped MS it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

"lus, according to CERT, "This bulletin provides a year-end summary of software vulnerabilities that were identified between January 2005 and December 2005." Note the keyword IDENTIFIED." - by Philnet.HFZ (923313) on Tuesday January 10, @10:42PM

Yes, and MORE were identified for the Unix based or derived OS period, which is amazing in & of itself - since there is FAR MORE Win32 softwares out there which run on far more systems (between end user desktops/laptops & servers) than there is systems running Unix variants/knockoffs like Linux-Unixes-MacOS X!

"Yeah, buy what you failed to note was that it lumped ALL Unix/Linux based systems together" - by Philnet.HFZ (923313) on Tuesday January 10, @10:42PM

Aren't they all Unix based?

"Furthermore, the list was littered with "Updated" entries - essentially a previous entry which has been 'updated', and is lumped with the original." - by Philnet.HFZ (923313) on Tuesday January 10, @10:42PM

Weren't the Windows entries listed also full of those as well??

"Remember that with Open Source, anybody checking the code could find an error or report an error." - by Philnet.HFZ (923313) on Tuesday January 10, @10:42PM

Conversely, with Open Source, anyone building the code or altering it could produce errors as well.

* :)

APK

Re:Unending stream of patches helped MS it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

"It might not be sponsored by MS (probably)" - - by JamesTRexx (675890) on Tuesday January 10, @10:42PM

us-cert.gov isn't sponsored by MS, there is no 'probably' involved. They specialize in security as that poster stated, and found more holes in Unix and its variants and softwares for them (since they all descend from bell labs unix) in 2005 than were found for windows.

"but it does not give an accurate pictures as there are many flaws in how they calculated the statistics" - by JamesTRexx (675890) on Tuesday January 10, @10:42PM

us-cert.gov are not partial to windows, that is not their job.

They know what they're doing in that capacity as well as far as statistics and only posted the facts.

In fact I would say the united states government is against ms because of the antitrust trials they have put them through.

The facts from the url the first poster put up do stand your tests of fire also imo.

Re:Unending stream of patches helped MS it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

"Note the keyword IDENTIFIED. As in "those that were found" which may be significantly less than those errors or bugs that actually exist." - by Philnet.HFZ (923313) on Tuesday January 10, @10:42PM

The same could be said on the Unix/Linux/MacOS X side... there is probably STILL undiscovered errors on them as well, just as you stated could be true for Windows & its softwares.

The razor has two sides on your anecdotal statement my friend.

"Remember that with Open Source, anybody checking the code could find an error or report an error." - by Philnet.HFZ (923313) on Tuesday January 10, @10:42PM

Or, as was stated by others here? Those same people coding that opensource code could PRODUCE an error as well. Again - the blade cuts both ways.

After all - who says a modder of said opensource wouldn't create a hole via his mod??

"With closed source code (like windows), only Microsoft has access to the code to debug it, so the chances of anybody else finding any flaws can correct or report it - unless you happen to get lucky and find a flaw, which is very unlikley." - by Philnet.HFZ (923313) on Tuesday January 10, @10:42PM

Ever heard of or seen Windows automated error reporting? As you get bugs/crashes, it can send (it offers to) this to a db that MS maintains and as more and more of that particular err/abend type get submitted, that particular error/abend rises higher in their queues to fix it.

It seems to be working!

That is because the us-cert.gov site only made an observation and finding of facts in 2005 showed this: That all the Unix derivants (even though they run on less peripheral hardwares than Win32 does and do have less software for less purposes than Windows does overall) which descend from the original Unix have more bugs security-wise than Windows does.

Re:Unending stream of patches helped MS it seems

[JamesTRexx]

Doesn't sound like you've read the reactions to this thing. They explain how several programs are listed under unix while it should be mixed platforms.
My reaction is not meant as flame, because this comes from Redhat as well, and they don't involve themselves in fud.

Re:Unending stream of patches helped MS it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is said because unices, while they often share applications, often are completely different in their component parts.... among other things." - by ^me^ (129402) on Tuesday January 10, @10:04PM

In that point?

You bring up a GOOD point there in FAVOR OF WINDOWS in fact. vs. Unix and its variants/knock-offs - there are many times when softwares of the same name do NOT run on diff. Unix variants/knockoffs as well!

(They (Unixes/MacOS X/Linux) are just knockoffs & variants of the same original UNIX OS, in that they all descend from AT&T/Bell Labs Unix, including BSD & Minix, as far as ancestry/lineage)...

However, by comparison/on the converse?

Software built in Win32 API code for Ring3/RPL3/UserMode does run across diff. models of Windows, no problem!

That is because of the care taken in backward compatibility by MS across diff. OS versions...

This includes even Win16/DOS code (provided it does not DIRECTLY access hardware, which usually means utility programs or drivers, not end user wares like Word etc.) and in MOST cases (unlike Unix as you stated) Win32 wares as well.

Another plus in favor of Windows (NT-based ones only having 10-15 years of time behind them) really... vs. Unix + variants/derivatives/knockoffs (with over 30-35 years of time behind them).

APK

Re:Unending stream of patches helped MS it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read every reaction man.

No one seems to 'grok' that all of the "unix systems" are descendants of the original bell labs/at&t stuff, that inclusive of Linux's MINIX core heritage & also BSD as well.

When us-cert.gove did their "lumping together" of ALL the UNIX type OS's into 1 group for the most part, it is not exactly a mistake, because they DO share common underpinnings & ancestry @ their cores.

The MAIN point of this was that Unix variants/decendants/knock-off's like MacOS X (BSD), Linux (Minix), & plain-jane UNIX variants (and, the softwares that run on them) did indeed turn up more security holes than Windows and the softwares that run on it...

That's just verifiable fact, from a 3rd party impartial agency that is geared to THAT area - security.

APK

P.S.=> Heck, in 1 reply here in this thread?

Well, I even mentioned I like Linux (with KDE on it, but older KDE 2.x series to be honest), & MacOS X truly VERY much, but they don't run as much softwares as are available for Win32 platforms, nor apparently are they as secure...

Heck, the latest from Linux is not as stable as Windows Server 2003, rated C-2 & also 99.999% uptime capable, either!

I.E. -> The 2.6x core is not as solid as the PROVEN 2.2-2.4x series were...

IMO, in order for Linux (for example) to be as flexible/powerful as Windows Server 2003 (for example)?

It's going to have to BECOME another Windows for the most part (e.g.-> easy to use, & tons of softwares built around & for it)... & it's NOT there yet, & most certainly not in terms of drivers for hardwares (peripherals) around it yet either...

I don't wish Linux, or MacOSX bad, I wish them both the best (honestly, & that's because I like 'em).

However, when I see/hear Linux penguins shouting their "FUD" that 'Linux is more secure' &/or 'Linux is more stable'?

Well, I know better from URL's like the one from us-cert.gov that I posted about, & also from folks that run the latest 2.6x series of the Linux kernel as well... apk

The Only Thing...

[Mad Ogre]

The only thing worse that "Windows" in the common OS versions in use... is the orphaned version of XP called "XP 64 bit edition" that doesn't work with all the tools normally used to resolve security issues. Many applications that we use here in the shop just flat dont work with 64. It looks like MS just took Server 2003 slapped an XP theme on it, and then broke all the strengths of both OS's. As a result, I've got a number of issues over here that I can't get resolved. As soon as I get a decent copy of the latest Vista Beta, I'm just going to make that switch. XP x64 is just about useless because of the security issues. This box is getting hit left and right, and is constantly stumbling. I'm not looking forward to all the new issues with Vista, but at least I won't still be using XP64 any more. (Yes, I've got a Linux partition... but that's not the point)

Re:The Only Thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you found some, but I havent found a single app that doesnt run in x64, that isnt a driver. What the hell do you expect them to do?

Microsoft Software Bad

[Nom du Keyboard]

Microsoft software bad.

There, I've just saved you from having to RTFA.

Re:Microsoft Software Bad

[ranolen]

I'm glad to see that you took the time to qualify your statement. Try giving a good reason next time, and don't follow everyone else by saying there are so many viruses, exploits, etc. as it's has been established and everyone knows that it's all cause there are so many more people trying to exploit MS stuff.

Re:Microsoft Software Bad

[drinkypoo]

it's has been established and everyone knows that it's all cause there are so many more people trying to exploit MS stuff.

First: "[...]it has long been established and thus is well-known that this is because there are so many more people attempting to locate exploits in Microsoft software."

Second: That's a bunch of bullshit. There really are more holes in Windows, and it really is because Microsoft is fucking lame, doing things wrong at every potential opportunity.

Maybe you were just making some kind of joke, in which case you're not funny, or you're being too obscure.

Re:Microsoft Software Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

"Second: That's a bunch of bullshit. There really are more holes in Windows, and it really is because Microsoft is fucking lame, doing things wrong at every potential opportunity." - by drinkypoo (153816) on Tuesday January 10, @07:35PM

OH, really?

Who's being lame (as well as the one full of shit, since your words are clearly disproven in the URL findings below)??

See here which OS family + softwares had more bugs in 2005 exposed, Windows OR Unix type OS' and derivants/knock-offs like Linux/MacOS X etc.:

http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/bulletins/SB2005.html

Findings & results from that site (which specializes in security mind you) showed that Windows and Win32 softwares had clearly LESS SECURITY RELATED HOLES IN THEM THAN Unix/Linux/MacOS X & their wares in the year 2005!

(And, yes, that's the results of a U.S. Gov't. agency's findings, not some Microsoft sponsored test which you Linux penguins & Unix fiends often rant about - so much for your rants that "Linux and Unix are more secure than Windows", eh?)

* :)

APK

P.S.=> Now that you're eating those words of yours boy, I gotta know - how do they taste? Oh, I know what flavor they are:

"The bitter taste of defeat"... lol! apk

Re:Microsoft Software Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you really expect something different? We're on Slashdot, remember?

Re:Microsoft Software Bad

[drinkypoo]

Now that you're eating those words of yours boy, I gotta know - how do they taste? Oh, I know what flavor they are:

If you are just kidding, please stop reading this comment here. I can't tell.

Are you a Troll, or an idiot? We just thoroughly debunked that "study" on this very website. If you eliminate duplicate entries, then all the Unixes in the study put together have only about a hundred more errors than one version of Windows.

Thus, you are hereby cordially invited to pucker up and kiss my ass.

Oh, THAT explains it...

[Hosiah]

I read to the bottom of the page, reflected that it was a pretty well-argued article, and then my eyes bugged when I got to the "Slate" box at the bottom. I damn near fainted! Imagine finding a pithy article on quantum physics in a back issue of "Vogue". I even checked out "The End of Moore's Law" and *it* seemed too high-quality to be on the old Slate.

Re:Oh, THAT explains it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which "old" Slate are you referring to?

This Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2476/
This one: http://www.slate.com/id/82275/
Maybe this one: http://www.slate.com/id/2074045/

Thanks for playing! Please try again.

Subject is dead on...

[Anonymous Coward]

You know when you see something that's right, you just feel it. "Versus" is the only word that appears natural between "Microsoft" and "Computer Security", something inside me just knows...

Easy fix not

[Nom du Keyboard]

So we should all switch to FireFox and Thunderbird because IE/Outlook are the most common browser/e-mail clients, and hence the biggest target. And besides, Microsoft can't write secure code.

Except if we all do switch then FF and TB will become the most common browser/e-mail clients, and there's no reason to believe that Mozilla's coders are that much better than MS's. FF has gone through how many versions these last 12 months?

Re:Easy fix not

[drinkypoo]

Except if we all do switch then FF and TB will become the most common browser/e-mail clients, and there's no reason to believe that Mozilla's coders are that much better than MS's. FF has gone through how many versions these last 12 months?

There IS reason to believe that Mozilla's coders are that much better; The most serious hole found in Firefox in some time actually ended up being a hole in Windows.

FF has gone through more versions because they don't release incremental security patches, and because their code is subject to public review. Microsoft does release patches, meaning there are less versions, and their code is not subject to public review, meaning they fix problems only when someone finds one accidentally.

Your arguments are universally specious.

Re:Easy fix not

[Sathias]

It goes to show that the only sure protection is a healthy dose of technological elitism. If you are using a program the plebs aren't then you will be safer from the net nasties!

Re:Easy fix not

[jimmypw]

Email/Internet browser applications are not the only problems, and also just because a product is the most widly used, doesnt make it insecure.

The fact is that a majority of hackers have some sort of mental vendeta against microsoft. This plus the fact that microsoft doesnt write as secure code as they could creates a dangerous comination.

For example take 2 web servers both running windows. One of the servers is running Apache - the general standard for web hosting (and losing ground i am reluctant to add). And another server running IIS - Microsofts very attractive attempt to creating GUI configured server. Both firewalled and using Out-of-the-box (fully patched) instalations.

From previous expierance of both servers and knowing that neither are inpenitrable (some better than others thou *cough*red*alert*) i would happily bet my left hand that the SMALLER TARGET aka IIS would be the first server to be penitrated.

What i am trying to say is that you are corret that people should vary the application vendors that they use but for the wrong reasons. Malicious code comes from sloppy coding in the firstplace and from evidence that we have seen from the massively publisized launch of firefox and the world renowned apache project is that the more eyes the better the code is in general.

And how can you hack a system when you are severely limited to your choice of exploit.

My Favorite Part of TFA

[Chabil Ha']

I have never read a more scathing remark of Bill outside of /. :

And the next time Bill G. promises to make software that is so fundamentally secure that customers never have to worry about it, ask him what decade he plans to release it.

unfair..

[fireiceviperhotmail.]

this article seems to me a bit on the unfair side off things... i personaly have even
stopped caring that much about the many security flaws.. i know there are just too many
found because the os wasnt designed with security in mind.

i'm just gonna wait and see how vista does.


Julien. http://free.hostdepartment.com/8/81fortune/

True enough

[jd]

However, there are usually solutions. At least, to parts of the problem. The use of formal methods will mean that you can eliminate (almost) all bugs caused through design and makes it easier to validate code for bugs caused through implementation. Unless you also write the compiler (or have access to a formally-written compiler), it is much harder to validate that the binary is correct.

It was noted elsewhere that Microsoft spends six billion a year on R&D. If they hired mathematically-inclined software engineers at 100,000 a go, they'd be able to keep a small army of 10,000 such programmers. You can probably reverse-engineer a specification, prove, then re-engineer the code for about 10 lines an hour. Assuming a 40 hour week, that means they could formally re-engineer 208 million lines of Windows per year. Even with all of the standard applications, libraries and utilities, the team should have an iron-clad damn-near-bugproof Windows within 2-3 years. It wouldn't cost them any more than they're already burning on patents for stuff nobody else cares about, and would save three times the total cost of the bugs to the country within a single year.

The overflows are easier. You compile all the applications with something like ElectricFence, dmalloc, or some other debugging malloc. A few tests at Microsoft should then collect a lot of the overflows. You then recompile such that the debugs won't cause fatal errors but will still generate alerts. You have the Windows error reporting tool collect all those alerts and either notify the user at the time & allow them to send, or send in bulk on the next major error. Microsoft can then fix the overflows BEFORE someone exploits them, because the odds are high that they'll be accidentally triggered long before any black hat learns about them. If only because there are several hundred million users, and most will be trying to do things that are impossible or - at the very least - seriously warped.

Of course, they could also get a copy of the Stanford Code Validator, or even just download a copy of splint off the Internet. Both would pick up the majority of coding errors and allow Microsoft to fix them.

Regardless of which of these solutions is used, a company the size of Microsoft should be able to completely and utterly clean their software of 98%-99% of its defects within three to four years. As the article noted, it has now been over four years since the proclamation of taking security seriously, but yet there is no sign of any kind of rigorous campaign to really erradicate faults. Rather, there seems to be much more of a campaign to make users more accepting of the fact that there are faults.

Not everyone can guarantee 99% fault-free software within a reasonable timeframe. There aren't the mathematician/software engineers, for a start. However, maybe it would be possible to have a standards authority that could certify a software product as "mid-grade" (50% bug-free), "high-grade" (75% bug-free) or "mission-critical" (99.99% bug-free). Software providers could elect whether or not to be certified and consumers would then be free to decide how much quality they want to pay for, because they'd know how much quality was there. Consumers would also be in a stronger position to interpret the lack of such certification.

Thoughts?

Re:True enough

[Dalroth]

Thoughts? Yeah, I've got one: you're completely cracked and have never done any real world software development.

Even IF you're completely unfounded speculation had any basis in reality, you ignore the fact that every line of code changed has the potential to impact other parts of the system. You fix one bug here, another bug pops up there. You go there and fix it, and another pops up elsewhere. The more code you have, the worse it becomes. No person on this planet can keep 200million lines of code in their head.

The problem isn't writing code, the problem is coordinating your 100,000 developers so that they each understand exactly what is going on in each others head and there's never any communication failure. That is an impossible task. Therefore, you can't throw man power or money at the problem and hope it goes away.

The way to fix the bugs is to change the way people think, and (unfortunately) build a massive self correcting process that covers up for the deficiencies with interpersonal communication and provides incentives for correct behavior. This takes patience and time (not money), and that flies in the face of our "must have it now at all costs" culture.

Until this attitude changes, you better get used to patching windows on a regular basis.

Bryan

Re:True enough

[Coryoth]

Thoughts?

Well I'm not really so sure about your quoted time frames for "re-engineering" Windows - in practice it would porably be easier to start from scratch using best practices from the outset (like, say Singularity). One point does stand out though:

Not everyone can guarantee 99% fault-free software within a reasonable timeframe. There aren't the mathematician/software engineers, for a start. However, maybe it would be possible to have a standards authority that could certify a software product as "mid-grade" (50% bug-free), "high-grade" (75% bug-free) or "mission-critical" (99.99% bug-free). Software providers could elect whether or not to be certified and consumers would then be free to decide how much quality they want to pay for, because they'd know how much quality was there. Consumers would also be in a stronger position to interpret the lack of such certification.

I actually attended a talk by... I think he was Director of Information Assurance... a senior person from the NSA about 5 years on the subject of software assurance. His point was that security, and assurance does matter, and he claimed that, over the next decade, it would become a significant factor in the software industry. It is not working correctly all the time that is important (that would be nice, but isn't sensible or even practical for all software), its having assurance as to what will always work correctly, and/or assurance about the quality of the software suc as you suggest with certification. It's about knowing what it is that you're dealing with. I think the sort of certification you describe, or other guarantees, perhaps with regard to certain critical functions of the software (but not necessarily of the software as a whole), are the way of the future. People who are heading off to college now to learn software engineering really ought to be taking note of the courses on software assurance, formal methods etc. You won't be using it for everything, but I do believe that in the not too distant future you will be expected to know it so you can use it appropriately when required.

Jedidiah.

Re:True enough

[tyse]

It was noted elsewhere that Microsoft spends six billion a year on R&D. If they hired mathematically-inclined software engineers at 100,000 a go, they'd be able to keep a small army of 10,000 such programmers. You can probably reverse-engineer a specification, prove, then re-engineer the code for about 10 lines an hour. Assuming a 40 hour week, that means they could formally re-engineer 208 million lines of Windows per year. Even with all of the standard applications, libraries and utilities, the team should have an iron-clad damn-near-bugproof Windows within 2-3 years. It wouldn't cost them any more than they're already burning on patents for stuff nobody else cares about, and would save three times the total cost of the bugs to the country within a single year.

This is why it is dangerous to let accountants anywhere near the real world.

Re:True enough

[David Off]

> The use of formal methods will mean that you can eliminate (almost) all bugs > Thoughts?

You must be shooting up with the Crack Hoares if you believe that.

Re:True enough

[tjwhaynes]

It was noted elsewhere that Microsoft spends six billion a year on R&D. If they hired mathematically-inclined software engineers at 100,000 a go, they'd be able to keep a small army of 10,000 such programmers. You can probably reverse-engineer a specification, prove, then re-engineer the code for about 10 lines an hour.

10 lines an hour? I doubt that is achievable even by an experienced developer who is new to the code in question. Maybe 10 lines a day in a huge C program. In C++ you might have a little more chance if the code is a shining example of good clean OO design where information-hiding has been well implemented and Java will stand you in even better stead as it does encourage better practices. But even Java won't save you from bad code or bad designs.

It's a better use of resources to identify problem areas of the code, get the original developers to provide a complete spec for that area and write a new clean, security-minded implementation. However that rarely gets done unless the problem code is actually causing serious trouble for the company - bad code that works well enough will probably survive because the cost of re-coding the bad area is larger than the cost of servicing the code in the field.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

lol

[Anonymous Coward]

While i am no MS fanboy, I stick with OS X/Kubuntu and FreeBSD I think MS are making progress, Since the os was writen years ago (alot of the origional NT shit is still in XP/2k3) there is bound to be security issues, Releasing patches is the best they can do short of releasing a new OS (which theyre doing, which is writen mostly in dotnet where all memory is managed for you, aka little to no buffer overflows) I cant stand MS, I dont like the way they do things, but to say things like theyre making no progress? But ultimatley it isnt about firewalls and antivirius and patches and anti this anti that, Educating people will do a far better job than giving them some shitty tool

The article is piece of crap

[GPFCharlie]

It makes no comments as to why Microsoft stuff is any better or worse than anything else. There's no mention, let alone a comparison between Microsoft and Linux, Apple, or anything else beyond just a mere fluff sentence.

But beyond that, my biggest issue is there are no FACTS in the damn piece. Everything is anecdotal. How are Microsoft product's better/worse? Why? By what measurement?

All this article does is pick on Microsoft because it's the biggest and easiest target, so any flaws make the news. It's like saying Wal-Mart still offers only low wages and busts up unions. Duh - so do a lot of other companies, but Wal-Mart gets the attention because they are the biggest.

Explain how they are better/worse/the same as the mean, or average, or some kind of realistic comparison. This is just a rant, nothing more.

Re:The article is piece of crap

[Anonymous Coward]

> This is just a rant, nothing more.

You didn't know that going in? The URL pointed to Slate after all.

Microsoft's Fundamental Choices Are At Fault.

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

Microsoft made the choice to tie things closely to the OS. In particular, their Netscape killing plan was to essentially make IE part of the OS. Outlook also requires the presence of IE to render html mail, or at least it used to. Similar decisions were made regarding hooks to the OS for other Office programs. These decisions were made for reasons of competitive advantage over competing software such as WordPerfect and Lotus.

The consequences of these decisions is an OS with fundamental security issues. Microsoft has an opportunity to change this with Vista, but I'm betting that they haven't.

Re:Microsoft's Fundamental Choices Are At Fault.

[drinkypoo]

Eh, not really. Their plan for killing netscape was to bundle IE. Their plan for avoiding getting nailed for antitrust by the DOJ was to basically make it a part of the OS. It didn't work, but their backup plan of [insert skullduggery here] seems to have paid off.

Re:Microsoft's Fundamental Choices Are At Fault.

[linuxmop]

Do you expect Microsoft to write two HTML rendering libraries, one for Outlook and one for Internet Explorer? HTML has become ubiquitous, so it makes sense that HTML rendering would be included with the operating system; now individual applications do not have to include (bundle?) their own rendering engines.

Do you have any references regarding undocumented hooks for Microsoft Office? I find that hard to believe, given that Wine can run Office.

Microsoft did make certain choices that have led to today's security-related mayhem. However, hindsight is 20/20; most of those choices were reasonable at the time they were made. Consider WMF, for example; today, it seems idiotic to allow data files to contain executable code, but when Windows 3.0 was released, it may have been a useful feature. Decisions such as these get buried in large code bases or made permanent by backwards compatibility requirements.

Re:Microsoft's Fundamental Choices Are At Fault.

[drsmithy]

Microsoft made the choice to tie things closely to the OS. In particular, their Netscape killing plan was to essentially make IE part of the OS. ,P>For the entertainment of the crowd, canyou please expound on what "part of the OS" means to you.

Massive progress has been made

[Anonymous Coward]

An insane amount of progress has been made on Windows security. Automatic updates ensure even the most retarded of end users has a chance of being patched, built in firewall has resulted in a significant chance of end users having a firewall, the security added to IE in SP2 has given a whole lot of protection.

It doesn't matter who the dominant OS / company is, the biggest threat to security on anyones computers is the person sitting in front of it.

You can't win a fight against ignorance, misunderstanding or plain stupidity. Microsoft has made some pretty damaging blows and that is commendable.

I think it's time the end users' took just a little bit of responsibility for their security issues. It's callous to assume (and blame) Microsoft when so many 'issues' are avoidable with a little common sense.

God help the *nix world if they ever get bundled with the masses of ill-informed, ill-prepared and irresponsible people who use Microsoft software.

Re:Massive progress has been made

[pyrotic]

God help the *nix world if they ever get bundled with the masses of ill-informed, ill-prepared and irresponsible people who use Microsoft software.

Good point. But is *nix an operating system or a philosophy? Why has it spent the last 20 years losing market share to Windows? My guess would be that there are only so many people with the patience, curiosity and abstract reasoning to grok the philiosphy of "worse is better".

Re:Massive progress has been made

[askegg]

I agree with you, but most people who use computers are not interested in the slightest about system architecture or security. They treat them like TV's or toasters - an appliance to use. As I get older I am starting to subscribe to this philosophy. I just want it to work; I don't want to baby sit my computer, constantly tinkering with settings, installing "protector" apps, configuring firewalls, logging out and back in again to install an application, being careful opening email attachments, carefully clicking the close button on popups that say "click here to remove all the spam from your machine!". I don't give a crap about all this - I want to do my stuff and go. Get out of my way and let me be productive!

Re:Massive progress has been made

[grcumb]

"It doesn't matter who the dominant OS / company is, the biggest threat to security on anyones computers is the person sitting in front of it."

"You can't win a fight against ignorance, misunderstanding or plain stupidity. Microsoft has made some pretty damaging blows and that is commendable."

Bull.

If what you are saying were true, then the 3 Linux-only computer centres that I run would be constantly plagued with security issues caused by stupid user tricks. That's 30-odd computers providing service for a total of about 1000 first time users. That's 1000 people who have never used computers before in their life.[*]

[*] I work in IT in developing countries (i.e. in places where robustness counts).

Basically, what we're dealing with in this example is a QA tester's dream - a horde of cats on the keyboard doing virtually every imaginable thing to the systems. 1000 users playing freely with an operating system and software suite - that is what we call a statistically significant data set.

Do you know what my security-related downtime is over the last 12 months? It's zero. Do you know how many user-facing software bugs I've dealt with? About four. How many are still unresolved? Zero.

Now let's take a look over the fence at the beginner to intermediate-level office staff that I support. They almost exclusively use Windows XP, all at SP2 (if I have any say in the matter). Do you know how much of my service calls have been caused by problems related to spyware, viruses, trojans and other security-related concerns? About 30%. Software bug count? I barely even keep track any more, because when I do find a bug, I have to wait on someone else's corporate development cycle. I just work around and keep moving and hope that - insh'allah - someday it will get fixed.

I'm really tired of that silly 'They only hate us 'cause we're popular' line. I know for my part I hate MS because in my qualified professional opinion it's causes more problems than it solves. I worked developing software and information systems on Windows for almost 8 years before I decided that I could no longer maintain my own professional standards if I continued to use Windows.

So on behalf of those of us who disparage Microsoft for its demonstrably poor quality: Quit pretending that we're just making this up, or that everyone else would suck if they only sold more units. Quit pointing at the fanbois and accept that there are a large number of people who are basing their opinions on empirical fact, on solid professional experience. If you don't agree with the conclusions then either argue points of fact, or accept that we differ in our views. This simplistic and fundamentally speculative kind of hand-waving does nobody any good.

Re:Massive progress has been made

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows was an anomaly driven by consumer ignorance and marketing genius.

The good guys at Microsoft were smart enough to generate a perceived need for a PC. A decade before you bought that 386, the Trash 80 provided everything to the end-user that DOS (or even Windows 3.1 for that matter) did, but there was no perceived need for a computer in 1983.

Re:Massive progress has been made

[Richard W.M. Jones]

It doesn't matter who the dominant OS / company is, the biggest threat to security on anyones computers is the person sitting in front of it.

You can't win a fight against ignorance, misunderstanding or plain stupidity. Microsoft has made some pretty damaging blows and that is commendable.

That's complete nonsense. It's perfectly possible to make an operating system which runs programs that people download at random off the internet in a sandbox to ensure that those programs cannot access or interfere with other programs or data. The fact that Windows (or Mac OS X or Linux) doesn't do this at present doesn't mean it can't be done.

Rich.

Re:Massive progress has been made

[Anonymous Coward]

Beautifully written and I could not agree more!!!

I have been using GNU/Linux on machines at the core of our network for close to ten years now, results follow:

Time spent defragging disks, updating anti-virus s/ware, rebuilding compromised machines, removing malware - NOT ONE SINGLE MINUTE!

Downtime due to any of the above problems - NOT ONE SINGLE MINUTE!

If there are any Windows admins with similar experience please stand up and be counted. Otherwise please feel free to STFU.

Re:Massive progress has been made

[Anonymous Coward]

If what you are saying were true, then the 3 Linux-only computer centres that I run would be constantly plagued with security issues caused by stupid user tricks. That's 30-odd computers providing service for a total of about 1000 first time users. That's 1000 people who have never used computers before in their life.[*]

So you're comparing the administrated, managed, sheltered experience of an employee to what a home user does? Apples to apples please, the 30 users on your linux network are no where near comparible to 30 'home users' on Windows.

I'm really tired of that silly 'They only hate us 'cause we're popular' line

Me too. That's why I didn't use that line, I said if the *nix world had all the dumb Windows users on their side of the fence that they would experience problems too.

So on behalf of ....

If you'd like to bash your e-dick against keys to troll out another rant, please at least read what you're replying to.

Re:Massive progress has been made

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's perfectly likely that [smart cookie] will Save As to another folder.

I like this whole "vs" thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

I like this whole "versus" thing. It encourages the idea that Microsoft is against or competing with the idea of Computer Security in general.

Re:I like this whole "vs" thing.

[markana]

Microsoft is apparently winning.... :-)

At least it's got Security on the run.

Re:I like this whole "vs" thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that kind of 'vs' is bad, take a look at this comment made by Neocon-man at the conservative discussion site, A Little More to the Right.

None of those would be problems

[jd]

If there had been a provably correct design from which the coders operated, OR if Microsoft had elected to spend the time reverse-engineering a design, then getting it into a provably correct form, then re-implemented Windows from that design.

You can create bullet-proof software in a totally proprietary fashion. The problem is that bullet-proof code requires far more designers and coders than most companies can throw at the problem. Open Source is good, from that perspective, in that a single company doesn't need to find huge armies of coders.

It would be possible to formally prove Fedora Core, and get it 99.99% bug-free, but Red Hat can't afford to hire the hundreds of thousands of brilliant engineers it would require. However, there probably ARE a few hundred thousand brilliant engineers who have access to the Internet who could perform a complete re-designing and re-implementation on the scale you'd need, who would be willing to volunteer at least a little time to do so.

I've shown elsewhere that this is not true of Microsoft, who really could afford to hire the extra staff needed to completely re-engineer Windows in a provably correct form that would also run at a decent speed. They don't have any of the usual excuses. They burn 6 billion a year on R&D they don't do anything useful with, they have offices in virtually every country so can draw directly on the manpower of every single one of those countries without any work authorization issues. And they could do it all without having to sacrifice their egos or a single line of source.

Theirs is not a fate caused by the limitations of human beings. Theirs is a fate entirely created and sustained by choice alone.

Re:None of those would be problems

[LO0G]

Except that formal verification of software doesn't scale. Formal proofs of correctness are VERY hard to generate, and once you're dealing with a system with more than a couple of hundred lines of code or more than one thread of execution, they fall apart.

There are numerous examples of theoretically "proven correct" software that wasn't. For a simple example, consider the Mars Pathfinder suffered from a priority inversion bug.

Formally proving the correctness of a large system is not as easy as your intro to CS class made it out to be.

Re:None of those would be problems

[Ed Random]

"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."
  -- Donald Knuth

So where are the Apache worms?

[Lifewish]

If popularity were truly what dictated worminess, Apache would have been overrun long ago.

Re:So where are the Apache worms?

[stubear]

It's not popularity per se, it's really a desire to do harm to something geeks believe did not earn its popularity honestly. I think it's also a sort of "not invented here" syndrome as well. Geeks want their creations to succeed at the cost of all others.

Re:So where are the Apache worms?

[Lifewish]

It's not popularity per se, it's really a desire to do harm to something geeks believe did not earn its popularity honestly.

I'd point out that the majority of geeks who code Windows viruses are Windows geeks, and the majority of geeks who genuinely loathe Microsoft mostly use a UNIX variant - either Linux or one of the BSDs. Are you seriously suggesting that there's a large number of Linux geeks who are buying Windows, investigating the grisly depths of the Windows API at painful length and wasting their time producing viruses, all just to piss Bill off? This seems a little implausible...

Apart from anything else, most Linux geeks I know see contributing to open source as a more than sufficient two fingers to Microsoft.

Re:So where are the Apache worms?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here
Here
Here
Here
Here

Or you can search for php vulns and worms like Santy... Some of the above are probably dupes.

Funny, Free Software Does Not Fail This Way.

[twitter]

Geeks and Nerds sticking it to the man, is that what's wrong with Windoze? Is that who's running all of these porn and pill advertising spam serving botnets? I don't think so. Wouldn't a better way to stick it to Bill Gates be to cripple M$ corporate or it's "Partners" like CompUSA? Wouldn't people who really want to stick it to the "man" be attacking banks and institutions, you know, the one's who run LAMP without problems but get creamed running IIS.

The popularity argument is pure bullshit. Non Microsoft runs most of the web and anything that's mission critical. Those foolish enough to try making M$ do things live to regret it and it has nothing to do with popularity, Geeks and Nerds but everything to do with marketing and crappy software. Apple, Sun, Linux and every other kind of software works better and non have had the kind of automated worm problems M$ has.

From the above, you can imagine that the functionality and features excuse is also bogus. Operating systems robust enough to provide services over the network can also be made with pretty GUIs that are equally robust. There is nothing a Windoze user can do that I can't do better with free software and many things that I can do that they can't without lots of effort and money. I share my classwork with anyone who's interested and I share my music and movies with myself without any of the problems Windoze users suffer just connecting to a network, reading their email or browsing the web.

When is the big Linux worm coming? Never, thanks to the diversity of excellence that a truly free market for software provides. Free software writers also don't make the mistake of mixing content with executable code, unless they are copying someone else's bad implementation for compatibility sake. Still everyone makes mistakes but that still won't do to free software what it does to M$. As an example, imagine Firefox had a problem. It would get about 1/3 of GNU/Linux users. Why? because the rest of them are using other browsers and all of them can stop using the browser with a problem until it's resolved one or two days later. Because Free Software is all about code, binary problems don't automatically propagate across distributions. A Red Hat exploit might not work on Debian and probably won't on Gentoo and won't do anything to a BSD box. The Free Software fix is always easier too. When things go wrong on a free software box, the user downloads the latest and greatest to fix it. The worst case is a rebuild, which preserves all user data and takes less than 20 minutes. In the Windoze world, the user takes out their "original CDs" or blows a few hundred bucks at the computer store for software that's at least two years old and probably has the same problems. Things are much much more difficult for crackers outside of the M$ monoculture of binary crap.

Re:Funny, Free Software Does Not Fail This Way.

[qzulla]

When is the big Linux worm coming?

You don't know.

qz

Penenberg is an Assistant Professor

[awitod]

And I shudder at the realization that this person has students.

Anyone who takes the time to become informed and check facts can clearly tell that many improvements arose from the security initiatives. Patching is far easier and less expensive, the new architecture of IIS is very secure, the new development platform, .Net, is sand-boxed and includes declarative security, and all you need do is go to CERT to see that the number of Windows vulnerabilities is lower than that of *nix.

If I were grading this diatribe disguised as an article I'd give it an F based on the discussion of buffer overflow exploits alone.

He fails not only in his technical analysis, but in the basic tenants of journalism as well.

In short, Mr. Penenberg, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Re:Penenberg is an Assistant Professor

[^me^]

..."one of the basic /tenets/ of journalism..."

Re:Penenberg is an Assistant Professor

[Anonymous Coward]

What is that last paragraph from, and why can't I remember it?

a word from a joe six-pack

[louden obscure]

might as well tell me ford is grappling with their SUVs blowing tires and tipping over at speed. i don't think i could be convinced to BUY anything as effed up as windows or an explorer (whoa, a naming coincidence or what. hey, both CEOs are named bill too)
i don't buy fisher-price tools to use for my trade (roofing), and i don't use windows on my PCs. i like to think i can logically choose the right tool for the job.

Re:a word from a joe six-pack

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to make a point, Explorers don't roll because they blow tires.

They roll because a top heavy vehicle blows a tire at 70mph and the idiotic driver (who thinks he's driving a sedan, despite the prominent warning on the driver's side visor about the fact that an SUV will handle differently) jerks the wheel to "compensate."

Similarly, Microsoft's security issues are less an issue of bad code, and more an issue of 1) it's users being the lowest common denominator of computer users, and 2) it being the most widely used, and thereby, most widely targeted system in the world.

You could write a virus for a Mac, or for *nix, but why? If you really wanna mess with people, you mess with as many as possible, so you write a virus for Windows.

When Castle A has 5000 catapults shooting at it, and Castle B has 3... Guess what? Castle A is going to have more breaches.

Re:a word from a joe six-pack

[direwolfwr]

Difference is, and I hate to burst your bubble here, you're not a Joe Sixpack. You're informed, do research before you buy/use products, are not taken in by gimmicks or trends, etc. In the area of computers, Joe Sixpack doesn't really think about the correct tool to use for a particular task, Joe Sixpack thinks about what he has heard about through a couple of decent sources and many, many unreliable sources. Joe does not research much before making a decision. Joe does not care that the SUV he is about to buy is unsafe, a gas guzzler, unreliable, overpriced, etc. What Joe thinks about is, "Wow! SUV's are in, I want one!"/"Everyone I know runs Windows, I will too". And that's it. He doesn't look into it further. He doesn't do any research into the technology, it's reliabilty and/or safety. He doesn't contemplate the consequences of him buying from Company Z. I don't blame Joe, he's got a lot on his mind and little free time. He says, "I don't have the time to learn how to use another OS". He doesn't realize that although it will take some time to get used to the new OS, that amount of time is dwarfed by the time it takes to properly - hmmm - admin? (protect?) - a Windows PC. Joe's not a bad person, he is not dumb, nor is he ignorant. At the moment, Joe is a victim of MS's market practices and advertising/lobbying efforts. Joe is just starting to catch on. Joe will eventually find out what has been going on and when he does, Joe will be pissed. Joe will learn. I like that Joe, he's a good guy.

Re:a word from a joe six-pack

[__aajqwr7439]

You could write a virus for a Mac, or for *nix, but why? If you really wanna mess with people, you mess with as many as possible, so you write a virus for Windows.

I disagree.

I can't be the only one who thinks that if I were someone looking to do some damage with code, Windows wouldn't necessarily be my first choice. The victim might be fifty times the size of the next target on the list, but it's also a crowded field. The writer of the next brilliantly malicious work for Windows gets his fifteen minutes, then is relegated to a long, well-established list. Was it worse than Sasser? Maybe not, but what about SoBig? And did it have half the creativity of that scroll-bar app dropper? No one is surprised at a new exploit; they mop up and go on with things. Been there before. Reinstall. Back to work.

At some point, you're no longer beating the dead horse so much as playing with horse soup.

On the other hand, when (if) OS X gets its first major worm, people are going to freak.

DN

Linux and less headache

[MindPrison]

You know what?

Ive noticed that the time I spend learning about my Linux system is far less than the time I wasted when I was using Windows. On windows I got my "near-daily" "windowsupdater-needs-to-restart-computer" that annoyed me beyond belief because it was usually very unconvinient. And sometimes these updates would completely screw up my installations or drivers.

When I switched to Linux for a year ago...permanently, I had a lot of troubles too - mostly learning how to do stuff differently from windows and entirely new ways of thinking, that was hard and sometimes very annoying too.

But Ive come to notice something that I take for granted with Linux... Theres no more worms...viruses...silly attacks from script-kiddies. Wonderful! My computer has finally been left alone from all of those daily plagues. I dreadfully remember at work when all the computers went down due to some kind of sober virus and how worried everyone where about losing their work. And not to mention the hassle of waiting until the network administrator finished the servicing because of these incidents.

I dont even see this stuff on Linux.

So for all its worth, all the hassle learning and maintaining Linux - its actually a better world (at least for now).
No wonder Microsoft is worried - imagine if the truth leaks out and people find out on their own? ;) Im a happy camper.

Re:Linux and less headache

[kuyaedz]

Windows is absolute shit for security! I just spent the entire weekend updating & trying to secure the machines in our office and it still isn't done. Virus, worms, malware, etc, etc. M$ has been the cause for all of these & its only getting worse. I don't see any change in this in the future until they completely start from scratch on their shitty OS--which will never happen. I've got four Linux machines connected to fiber-optic at home & I have NEVER had a problem with any of that. You should not have to pay subscriptions to keep your machine safe! Thanks for creating additional jobs M$. You've created job security for McAfee, Symantec & the like.

Re:Linux and less headache

[pintomp3]

if by "near-daily" you mean "near-monthly", i agree with you. they have moved to a monthly release cycle, not all of which require rebooting. like yesterdays round didn't. also, driver updates are not part of the "critical" set. you have to manually choose them.

Re:Linux and less headache

[MindPrison]

Maybe its better now...who knows? Dont use windows anymore, but I certainly remember all the frequent updates and they where WAY more than monthly. But if its better now - good for them. I wont see windows anymore anyway.

Not really that accurate

[KeithIrwin]

Their overall conclusion that MS products are still vulnerable to security problems is correct, but it is not accurate to suggest that Microsoft has done nothing to address buffer overflows. Now it is clear that they have not done all they could. Specifically, they have not started writing their applications in type-safe languages, and they have only recently starting trying to apply automated static analysis to detect buffer overflows in existing code (A technical report about their efforts can be found
here ). And of course, they haven't even vaguely considered requiring that drivers carry safety proofs (using the proof-carrying code stuff from Peter Lee and George Necula, for instance).

However, they have added support for computer architecture features which guard against this sort of attack, such as flagging data memory as non-executable and requiring jumps into code be word-aligned, features which is available in most new processors. They've also begun loading libraries to random addresses making it much harder for worms to know what address to jump to. Although none of these is a silver bullet which prevents all buffer overflows, they have definitely made it significantly more difficult to exploit buffer overflow errors in both operating system and application code. These features even have benefits to third-party applications.

So although the battle is certainly far from won, suggesting that Microsoft is doing nothing is ridiculous. These sort of features are not going to be visible to the user in any obvious way, but they are very good steps in the right direction. I'm certainly no Microsoft lover (I have a Mac and a Linux box and tend to avoid MS products), but if you actually keep up on Microsoft's security research and what from that is making it into the operating systems, it's obvious that they're taking buffer overflow attacks very seriously and making progress. The simple fact of the matter is that the reporter has not done his research.

Keith

Re:Not really that accurate

[techno-vampire]

...it is not accurate to suggest that Microsoft has done nothing to address buffer overflows.

Microsoft will continue to have buffer overflow issues as long as they use static buffers. Geez, Louise, it's not rocket science!

1) Read in a line one character at a time, counting its length.
2) Allocate a buffer long enough to accomodate it.
3) Read the line into the buffer you've just allocated and process it.
4) Deallocate the buffer when finished.
5) Profit!

Whoa! Waiddaminute there!

[Anonymous Coward]

>>>> "That's the big problem with many of the Microsoft glitches. They're not limited to the vulnerable Microsoft application. The vulnerable app provides a gateway for compromising the whole PC."

>> I would like to know where everyone heard this crap, and why they keep repeating it vebatim., because it's a bunch of bullshit. Flaws in Microsoft products have no greater danger than equivalent flaws in any other Windows application.

And I would like to know where you have been living. Mars?

Everybody, his wife and the dog knows there are lots of undocumented APIs, registry variables and other animals inside Windows. Everyone knows Office is promiscuously integrated with Windows, so as to start quicker, so as to look leaner, so that Windows erm "appreciators" can say M$-apps can work better, of course, because the OS is also from M$.

Now don't come you, Sir, with your agenda. It's their fault! Their fault, can you hear me now? (a pity there's no emoticon for frothing...)

And what's more? A corollary: if unknown secrets are dangerous, people get scared like the guy from the parent post. Then people start using non-M$ apps on purpose... to avoid M$ apps which _are_ dangerous. Have you ever read Gartner recommending IIS to be avoided? What about everyone being phished with IE?

Therefore undocumented features become a liability. IOW, people want to know -- or want to be assured by those in-the-know -- that the application is secure. I guess open source mentality is becoming mainstream, huh? Who'd say that? If you have your source closed, pray no other company comes up with a free/open alternative, lest you'll eat dust and become history -- or do you think life at M$ has been easy? For starters, I predict they'll need more chairs.

People can be lazy, irresponsible and make Firefox insecure, but it requires a lot more effort than IE.

Re:Whoa! Waiddaminute there!

[Trevahaha]

That is completely untrue. There are no undocumented APIs. Please prove it. The most that anyone could argue is that there has been a history of the OS team keeping bugs in old APIs because of other apps (including non-Microsoft apps) utilizing the "incorrect" behavior, and fixing that behavior would break those old apps. This is a huge root of Microsoft's dilema with their challenge to keep legacy software working. There are absolutely no "secret" APIs that have been added, used, or manipulated for the Office or any other team.

Re:Whoa! Waiddaminute there!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/dnapiover/html/api-overview.asp

Re:Whoa! Waiddaminute there!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read that, you can see that they no longer can do this. Since then, it's policy that they do not use undocumented features.

Yeah they have...

[jofi]

As someone said, security is a process and not a product. But for those who bothered to look or care to notice, upgrade from 2000 to XP SP2 is more than eye candy. It is just that the hidden features are ignored by Slashbots and ignorant users alike.

One thing to help would be a default account type in the Users group, and if currently an admin, switch your group to Users. Third parties need to fix their programs that requires more privileges (not necessarily admin) after the program is installed because of write access to system folders and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. Vista fixes this, but if you ask me I think MS is only encouraging the bad behavior of alot of third party programs by providing this method of keeping non-compliant applications compatible with least privilege. (Keep in mind, there are a$$holes like Even Balance who purposely wrote their anti-cheat to require true admin privileges)

Sure they have a firewall... you're screwed as admin because the code that launched can also create an exception for itself via netsh command or damn it all to hell and disable the firewall via "net stop". Malware does do this today, and sad how easy it was stopped.

Don't want to run as non-admin? XP can run specified apps automatically with User privileges even if you are admin (and I am not talking about Run As with a lower privileged account). And for fuck's sake, don't take the default of "SYSTEM" for your apache or whatever server software services.

Re:Yeah they have...

[louden obscure]

features are ignored by Slashbots and ignorant users alike.

a condescending attitude will absolutely make me want to try this windows OS of which you speak. where can i download the netinst ISO? i can't find it on the official corporate web site. is there a torrent available?

Re:Yeah they have...

[techno-vampire]

(Keep in mind, there are a$$holes like Even Balance who purposely wrote their anti-cheat to require true admin privileges)

Any program that does that is a security hole by definition. Just say NO, and don't buy it. Sooner or later, either they'll stop doing it or go out of business if enough people reject them. Either way, problem solved.

Re:Yeah they have...

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

That's a great idea, except it won't work.

Case in point: I do IT support for a major car-dealer chain. 300+ PCs, all tied into a central database of servers for real-time updates on pricing, recalls, etc.

The system, run on as/400s (I believe) *MUST* have Admin privileges or the program *will not* run. Yes, who ever wrote this is brain dead. But consider this, no one else makes this software. This company has an effective lock on the market.

You could not even get your foot in the door, even if you wanted to, no car-dealership would switch, for fear of going out of business, or worse (being subjected to lawsuits because of errant data)

Thsi Admin-only system has been in place since car-dealerships 1st started going to computers (mainframes and dumb terminals) and as the software was ported over, so did all the bugs (like the Admin-only level)

This is just one case, I can name several others for you if you would like. But this is *extremely* common in the business world for businesses that relay on 3rd-party specific apps to conduct business.

So, a boycott is a nice idea, but simply will not work. Daily I have to live with the security problems of the users at the dealships, because the app demands nothing less that absolute access.

Re:Yeah they have...

[techno-vampire]

You make a good point. I wasn't thinking in terms of locked-in business apps, but things like games that have absurd, insecure requirements, such as running as admin. (I know of one on-line game that does, or at least did, run on an *arbitrary* port over 1024, requiring you to allow all such ports access through your firewall.) Things like games you can boycott until they wise up or go away; if your business depends on it, of course, all you can do is hope they use a good quality lube and plenty of it.

My Opinion....

[MickDownUnder]

I just think there's some people out there you, that no matter how much you may try, you just can't help, and you can be absolutely sure that these people are using Windows.

In short I think the most critical security issue with Windows is the poeple that use it.

Re:My Opinion....

[KwKSilver]

You are right about the users. However, MS encouraged mindless clicking for years.

"Why the software giant still can't get it right"?

[Fortran IV]

Actually the article is a lot of the same old "what's wrong," and darn little "why." Accurate enough, but nothing new—waste of a Slashdot posting, if you ask me.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[10101001 10101001]

"Although Gates made security and privacy top priority four years ago, not much progress has been made."

Excuse me? No Progress? Including a firewall with Windows is no progress?(emphasis mine)

There's this thing called reading comprehension. There was never the claim that there was no progress made, only that there was not much, ie little, progress made. Considering how many and how deeply worms have been able to attack in spite of said firewall, I'd have to concur. Feel free to try to disprove his "not much process" claim, btw, because if you argue against the actual point you might be able to point at things with put at least some weight behind your counter argument.

Methinks the question is not...

[MickLinux]

... why Windows is still grappling with security issues. I'm not really sure that they are. Yes, they address them sometimes; but they aren't grappling.

I tend to prefer the question, why are Windows customers still grappling with security issues?

Relax. Don't worry. Be happy. Your daily stress will be less if the main server crashes.

D - O - O - M 4 M$

[koan]

That's the extent of my "l33t" speak, basically OSX on (hopefully) affordable Intel hardware spells doomy woomy for M$, last I checked OSX wasn't bothered by to many virii (viruses?) and hackers, and the few that were bugging (pun intended) were getting in thru M$ office suite (tee hee).

I used to like M$, yes I know that's blasphemy here but I did, I now see them for what they are, an anachronism.

Now if only Open Office would boot faster on my PC...

Re:D - O - O - M 4 M$

[808140]

First, yes, it is indeed 'viruses' and not that other neologism which I will not repeat.

I would advance that spelling MS 'M$' is indeed "l33t" speak, or at least Slashdot hive-mind-ism. I suppose that you can tell by now that I'm something of an anal bastard when it comes to spelling... but I'm not just another grammar nazi replying to your post. I do actually have a point, really, I just needed to get that out of my system.

OS X will never be a Windows killer. There are a number of reasons for this, but the largest is Apple itself. It isn't that OS X is inferior to Windows -- anyone who has used both knows that the opposite is clearly true. The problem, put simply, is that Apple's extremely savvy marketing machine plays the trendy card. They are not interested in being a commodity, that's not how it works. As much as techies would like it if every user with a closed source bent went with OS X rather than Windows, Apple will never take the steps necessary to make that happen. They market themselves as a beautiful, trendy, somewhat-pricier-but-worth-the-cost maker of personal computing devices. It's all marketing, of course. Price/Benefit analysis of some of their offerings (such as laptops) show that for the hardware, they aren't actually much more expensive, but that's not the point.

Car analogies are so tired, I know, but Windows is like a Toyota Tercel, only it's piss-poor quality. It's one of those beasts that everyone uses, that has nothing special about it. It isn't beautiful, it isn't ugly, it's functional, but not much fun to use, etc. It's affordable for almost everyone with a mind to own a personal computer.

The Macintosh, however, is a Porsche. It looks beautiful, it handles really well, and as any Porsche or Macintosh owner will tell you, when you use/drive it, you know where your money went, and you don't regret the decision you made to spend a little bit more. Porsche does not want their automobile to replace the Toyota Tercel. In people's popular consciousness, a Porsche is not something that everyone uses, it's not for the masses.

In the same way that a Porsche is for rockstars and CEOs, a Macintosh is for artists, musicians, trendy folks. Not people who spend all day looking at MS Excel spreadsheets. This is Marketing speak, mind you. The truth is that most Macintosh users use their machines just like a Windows user uses theirs -- and to come back to the car analogy, most Porsche drivers drive their car to work just like all the Tercel owners do. But in the promotional literature, it's all twisty highways in Germany, and you never drive your Porsche without sunglasses on. For the Mac, it's all editing your music and getting ready for your gig, because you're a rockstar.

You have to understand that it's perfectly possible to be an extremely profitable company -- as both Apple and Porsche are -- without being a monopoly. We've lived under the thumb of MS for so long that we've started thinking that any OS vendor has to be the dominant one -- it's like some Highlander-esque OS fight. But the truth is that this is not the normal, free market course of things, it's an aberration.

In a perfect world, you'd have many OSs, who thanks to open standards are largely interoperable. Each would find its niche. Apple has already found theirs. They don't
want to be MS.

Also, and this is important: it takes more than an intel processor to be a PC compatible machine. SGI demonstrated how easy it is to make an intel based machine that is nothing like a PC, hardware-wise. The intel-based Mac will be as much a Mac as the PowerPC and 68k based Macs were. Lots of other machines have used 68k processors, for example, but only Macs were Macs, and it's not just a matter of software. Intel will be no different.

There's a lot more to a computer than its processor.

As to "liking MS" -- the only people who never liked MS are too young to remember the days when IBM was the evil corporation, and M

Re:D - O - O - M 4 M$

[igb]

Microsoft aren't Toyota. Toyota's quality is the highest you can imagine. I drove a Yaris last week: astounding build quality. Clever design. Lovely to drive. Even the cheapest Toyota (no electric windows, no air con, no CD player) used as a garage hack was a little jewel of perfection, with everything thought through and done as well as if were a car costing ten times as much. I've never owned a Toyota, but I was seriously, seriously impressed.

ian

Re:D - O - O - M 4 M$

[koan]

I disagree, because at school all I see is Apple laptops everywhere, in fact that's "The" thing to own (besides the iPOD (Ipod?) any hoo, while Apple may not "destroy" M$ it's quite clear M$ "doesn't get it" and Apple appeals to users for its style and the fact that people like to feel trendy/superior/classy/different.
The average user of a computer doesn't know or care about technical details they just want "cool", and the average driver may buy a Porsche but doesn't drive it any different than they do a Toyota so what's the point? Well it's how they feel about it while driving, Apple gets this M$ does not.
I think Apples share will grow and M$'s will diminish, as I said M$ is an anachronism.

For the record, I use Windows XP stripped to the bone with nLite and run firefox 1.5, thunderbird, gimp, and open office.

Slow progress

[Savage-Rabbit]

Excuse me? No Progress? Including a firewall with Windows is no progress?

Of course that is progress but the real problem with Windows is the fact that it carries a burden of bad design decision at a fundamental level made for all sorts of business and marketing reasons. Why does a process like Microsoft Internet Explorer (Which is mainly a bigger gateway for malware than Firefox because it is badly written not becaue it is a Microsoft product) have to run with admin privileges? There is a reason why that is going to change in IE7 on Vista. Come to think of it, why the hell does the normal Windows user even have to have Admin privileges for day to day work to begin with? Thousands of Linux and Mac users get along just dandy with restricted user privileges apart from the occasional annoyance of having to either log in as root or in the case of OS.X feed a nag window the root password so that the occasional installation program can touch sensitive parts of the OS. You can try to write this off as *NIX evangelism but it is hard to deny that in the ancient past this sort of shoddy design work solved complicated problems for MS quickly and cheaply and for that reason it was allowed to happen without contemplating the long term effects. Unfortunately MS has since learned the hard way that thinking ahead sometimes pays but now they are also learning that back-pedaling is hard work.

Re:Slow progress

[yotaku]

Thousands of Linux and Mac users get along just dandy with restricted user privileges apart from the occasional annoyance of having to either log in as root or in the case of OS.X feed a nag window the root password so that the occasional installation program can touch sensitive parts of the OS.

I would say that this comes under uneducated users again. You can do exactly as you said in windows. I run as a limited user, and everything works fine. Sure, sometimes I need to login as admin to install something. Or a game's copy protection wont allow it to run except as admin. But then you just change the shortcut to runas admin, and everything keeps going just fine. I dont really see how this is any different than having to login as root or feed a nag window.

I think Microsoft is to blame for limited user not being the default. But once you have it setup running as a limited user, its not any harder than running as admin and most of Window's spyware, and virus problems dont affect you.

Re:Slow progress

[Ahnteis]

Because Microsoft wasn't willing to tell all users of antiquated, poorly designed software to bugger off.

They are SLOWLY getting software companies to write software that doesn't require admin access, and they are slowly moving away from using administrative accounts.

They'll get there, but because of their widespread use, they can't move as fast.

Re:Slow progress

[drsmithy]

Of course that is progress but the real problem with Windows is the fact that it carries a burden of bad design decision at a fundamental level made for all sorts of business and marketing reasons.

Which was ?

Why does a process like Microsoft Internet Explorer (Which is mainly a bigger gateway for malware than Firefox because it is badly written not becaue it is a Microsoft product) have to run with admin privileges?

It doesn't.

Come to think of it, why the hell does the normal Windows user even have to have Admin privileges for day to day work to begin with?

They don't if they're using properly written software.

Unfortunately MS has since learned the hard way that thinking ahead sometimes pays but now they are also learning that back-pedaling is hard work.

The design of NT was exceptionally forward-thinking. The problem is the lack of such foresight (or even just simple common sense) on behalf of application developers.

Re:Slow progress

[Mancat]

I use Windows as a limited privelege user on a daily basis with little to no headache. Internet Explorer works fine as a limited user.

Please stop making it sound like being a limited user is absolutely terrible. Very few applications have required me to run them as Administrator or Power User. Those that do, usually require a few tweaks to their home directory or registry key permissions, and you're good to go. Get with the program, developers. Windows can have more than one user now, and we're not all Administrators.

Re:Slow progress

[qzulla]

Thousands of Linux and Mac users get along just dandy with restricted user privileges apart from the occasional annoyance of having to either log in as root or in the case of OS.X feed a nag window the root password so that the occasional installation program can touch sensitive parts of the OS.

You don't need root on a Mac to do this - only admin and admin is not root. My root on my Mac is disabled and I do just fine.

qz

Re:Slow progress

[Thundersnatch]

Why does a process like Microsoft Internet Explorer... have to run with admin privileges?

It doesn't. It runs with the privileges of the logged-in user. And it works just fine under any user account, even one with guest privileges.

Secondly, the default privileges for a user on a workstation that is a member of a Windows domain are non-administrative, and have been since Windows NT 4.0.

Of course, the fact is that all non-domain (Home) Windows computers give the installing (and usually only) user account administrator rights by default. Which is a really stupid thing, but is quite easy to fix.

Re:Slow progress

[TubeSteak]

But then you just change the shortcut to runas admin, and everything keeps going just fine.

So... could you just set shortcuts (like IE) to runas a limited user account?

Re:Slow progress

[feijai]

Or a game's copy protection wont allow it to run except as admin.

Windows has games that won't run except as root?

No, seriously?

Man, that is so messed up.

Re:Slow progress

[TemporalBeing]

I would say that this comes under uneducated users again. You can do exactly as you said in windows. I run as a limited user, and everything works fine. Sure, sometimes I need to login as admin to install something.

Then obviously you dont run Office Professional, or many other Windows products. While Microsoft has said for years that programmers need to develop as non-admin users, developers dont - and not always by choice. You cant run Office Professional 2000 or later as a non-admin and expect to be able to use it - it does some extra stuff the first time a user uses it after every install/upgrade; and you have to be admin to do it. (Why, who knows.) This is not an issue under *nix.

So, yeah - they have a lot to do (and hopefully they did it in Vista, which so far as what I have read about it they have) to get this right - but theres going to be a lot of third party and even Microsoft applications that are going to break on account of it.

Re:Slow progress

[toadlife]

Somethings wrong here. We run Office 2003 now, but previosuly we ran 2000 at work, and the 400 or so users that used it and didn't have admin privs didn't have any problems.

Re:Slow progress

[Lonewolf666]

The roots of that lie in the past of Windows as an extension to MS-DOS, where things like a proper distiction between admin and user did not exist. And those times are not THAT long ago, considering that Windows 2000 was the first allround (usable for gaming ;-) Microsoft OS with serious security.

As a result, lots of software was written by developers who could assume their creations would have admin-like access and did not bother to plan for a more restricted future. Including some sloppiness by Microsoft itself, consider Internet Explorer being linked deeply into the OS.

Now, Microsoft tries to get away from that sloppy model but has to do it slowly, lest they annoy too many customers by making their applications unusable. I expect that it will take another five years until Windows is really cleaned out.

Re:Slow progress

[Ravenscall]

I concur, one of the departments where I work here have thier WinXP machines locked up tighter than an accountants....well, you get the idea. They have no problem running Office apps in a limited environment.

Re:Slow progress

[Anonymous Coward]

Check your facts. IE doesn't have to run with administrative rights and it never had to. We have here 500 Windows users who compute happily all day long and they don't have the administrative rights.

Re:Slow progress

[pedestrian crossing]

OK, get the newest version of Real Player to run without write access to System32.

Oh, wait, you can't!

Re:Slow progress

[Weedlekin]

"The design of NT was exceptionally forward-thinking."

It was indeed.

"The problem is the lack of such foresight (or even just simple common sense) on behalf of application developers."

No, the problem is that most of the market was running Windows 9X, which was not remotely forward-looking in any shape or form. Thus, while many developers were using NT Workstation because it didn't fall over when debugging, loading the IDE, sitting there for an hour doing nothing, etc., market realities meant that they still had to target Win9X, despite the fact that many of them loathed it with a passion. And guess what? Nearly five years after the release of XP, a lot of us still have to target sodding Win9X, because significant numbers of people are still running the blasted thing.

Re:Slow progress

[Mancat]

Umm, okay. I just did. It runs fine.

Re:Slow progress

[drsmithy]

The roots of that lie in the past of Windows as an extension to MS-DOS, where things like a proper distiction between admin and user did not exist.

No current version of Windows was ever an "extension to MS-DOS".

As a result, lots of software was written by developers who could assume their creations would have admin-like access and did not bother to plan for a more restricted future.

And they've had no justification for not "planning for a more restricted future" since about 1996.

Including some sloppiness by Microsoft itself, consider Internet Explorer being linked deeply into the OS.

Internet Explorer is no more deeply linked into Windows than khtml is into KDE or glibc is into Linux. It's the equivalent of a shared library, nothing more.

Now, Microsoft tries to get away from that sloppy model but has to do it slowly, lest they annoy too many customers by making their applications unusable. I expect that it will take another five years until Windows is really cleaned out.

The "model" of Windows isn't likely to change dramatically any time soon, nor does it need to.

Re:Slow progress

[drsmithy]

You don't need root on a Mac to do this - only admin and admin is not root. My root on my Mac is disabled and I do just fine.

No, the root account can't login - that doesn't mean code can't run as root.

Whenever you type in your "admin password", the subsequent code is running as root.

Or, in other words, you do "need" [0] root to be able to install software.

[0] That said, strictly speaking you _don't_ need root to install software, because the "admin" group (which the average OS X user account is a member of) has write permissions to /Applications - so it's quite possible for an app install to work (if the current user is an admin) without having to raise its privileges to root by prompting for an admin user. Most just do it regardless, however.

Re:Slow progress

[drsmithy]

No, the problem is that most of the market was running Windows 9X, which was not remotely forward-looking in any shape or form.

That's because it was only ever meant to be a temporary, throw-away piece of software meant for transitioning away from DOS and DOS-based Windows. The original plan was for Windows 98 (and later) to never even exist, but people just wouldn't stop writing software that broke under NT. It didn't need to be "forward looking" because it was only ever supposed to exist for a few years.

Thus, while many developers were using NT Workstation because it didn't fall over when debugging, loading the IDE, sitting there for an hour doing nothing, etc., market realities meant that they still had to target Win9X, despite the fact that many of them loathed it with a passion. And guess what? Nearly five years after the release of XP, a lot of us still have to target sodding Win9X, because significant numbers of people are still running the blasted thing.

There's no reason you can't write software for Windows 98 that works fine on NT as a non-Admin user. Windows 9x has supported per-user profiles and similar since the OSR2 release of Windows 95 in 1997 (certainly it can't actually restrict cross-user access, but that's no reason for not storing everything per-user in the appropriate place).

"But it has to run on Windows 9x" hasn't been a real excuse for software that doesn't play well with NT for a _very_ long time.

Re:Slow progress

[Weedlekin]

"That's because it was only ever meant to be a temporary, throw-away piece of software meant for transitioning away from DOS and DOS-based Windows. The original plan was for Windows 98 (and later) to never even exist, but people just wouldn't stop writing software that broke under NT. "

So the fact that Microsoft released _and sold_ no less than two versions of 98, and then WinME can be blamed on third party developers, not Microsoft, who produced them, and made bucket-loads of money from them. An apologist argument if ever there was one!

"There's no reason you can't write software for Windows 98 that works fine on NT as a non-Admin user. Windows 9x has supported per-user profiles and similar since the OSR2 release of Windows 95 in 1997 (certainly it can't actually restrict cross-user access, but that's no reason for not storing everything per-user in the appropriate place)."

This argument would hold water _if_ Microsoft's own Windows-9X Logo guidelines hadn't told people to write applications in precisely the way you are saying they shouldn't have. Of course, from an apologist's viewpoint, the blame still lies with third party developers, who should have known that MS were talking crap and ignored them.

Re:Slow progress

[Lonewolf666]

And they've had no justification for not "planning for a more restricted future" since about 1996.
Still, many ignored the problem and Microsoft mostly chose not to kill their applications with the introduction of new Windows versions. Sometimes even at the expense of supporting applications that were known to be buggy.
The most famous anecdote in that regard is about the Sims which had faulty memory management. Microsoft chose to program an exception for the Sims into Windows memory management rather than saying "tough luck, get a patch from Maxis".

Internet Explorer is no more deeply linked into Windows than khtml is into KDE or glibc is into Linux. It's the equivalent of a shared library, nothing more.
It is unfortunately not uninstallable by default, and shared by the only available shell, Windows Explorer. Thus giving Windows Explorer the ability to go to internet URLs and potentially get infected by IE exploits. Also, several Microsoft applications need IE to be present.
So while you comment may be correct from a programming point of view, IE is still more than an application you can simply uninstall for security reasons. I call that "deeply linked" and a weakness in design.

Re:Slow progress

[drsmithy]

Still, many ignored the problem and Microsoft mostly chose not to kill their applications with the introduction of new Windows versions. Sometimes even at the expense of supporting applications that were known to be buggy.

Yes, that's because just "killing applications" that don't play the way you'd prefer them to isn't much of an option in the commercial world. It tends to lose you customers and, hence, revenue.

It's quite common in the OSS world, of course - but the OSS world has the luxuries of not needing to worry about staying in business or keeping its customers happy.

The most famous anecdote in that regard is about the Sims which had faulty memory management. Microsoft chose to program an exception for the Sims into Windows memory management rather than saying "tough luck, get a patch from Maxis".

The program was actually Sim City - the DOS original. The Sims wasn't even a glint in Maxis's eye at the time.

It is unfortunately not uninstallable by default, [...]

That's because Microsoft are selling an entire product, not a series of bits stuck together like a patchwork quilt. Much like you can't just walk in and buy a new Ford without the engine, fuel tank and seats, you can't buy Windows without essential parts.

[...] and shared by the only available shell, Windows Explorer.

Actually loaded by the shell (or any other piece of software) when required, just like any other shared component in any other OS.

Thus giving Windows Explorer the ability to go to internet URLs and potentially get infected by IE exploits. Also, several Microsoft applications need IE to be present.

As do numerous third party applications. That's kind of the whole point behind modular, reusable code, after all.

So while you comment may be correct from a programming point of view, IE is still more than an application you can simply uninstall for security reasons.

That's correct. It is, in fact, a shared OS-level component. Like khtml, gtk, qt, glibc, quicktime, WebCore, or any of thousands of other pieces of shared codes on dozens of other OSes.

You can remove it if you really want to, but you should be prepared to break anything that depends on its functionality.

I call that "deeply linked" and a weakness in design

Are khtml, gtk, glibc, WebCore and all those other shared components/libraries "weaknesses in design" as well ? Or are bugs in them just one of the engineering tradeoffs inherent to a modular design built around the premise of re-using code wherever possible ?

Re:Slow progress

[Lonewolf666]

Yes, that's because just "killing applications" that don't play the way you'd prefer them to isn't much of an option in the commercial world. It tends to lose you customers and, hence, revenue.

It's quite common in the OSS world, of course - but the OSS world has the luxuries of not needing to worry about staying in business or keeping its customers happy.
It is true that you have a tradeoff between revenue and long-term stability of your architecture here. The Linux kernel developers seem a bit more willing to break things, and it may slow down Linux adoption on occasion. But Linux is far from dead anyway, and has a better track record on security. Sometimes, a long term improvement is worth a bit of pain in the short run. Reports about some application breakage in Windows XP Service Pack 2 indicate that Microsoft is coming around on this topic too. So they are on the right way, they just have a looong way to go yet.

It is unfortunately not uninstallable by default, [...]

That's because Microsoft are selling an entire product, not a series of bits stuck together like a patchwork quilt. Much like you can't just walk in and buy a new Ford without the engine, fuel tank and seats, you can't buy Windows without essential parts.
But I can remove the seats and put in others from a different manufacturer. Actually, Microsoft is quite capable of offering the same flexibility in Windows XP Embedded. If they make it intentionally difficult in standard Windows versions, that decision reduces the value of the product in my eyes.

Thus giving Windows Explorer the ability to go to internet URLs and potentially get infected by IE exploits. Also, several Microsoft applications need IE to be present.

As do numerous third party applications. That's kind of the whole point behind modular, reusable code, after all.
Here I think the modularity is lacking. For rendering HTML, I'd like access to the HTML rendering engine only. Without the implicit ability to pick up malicious Active X controls and the like. Another point where Microsoft is admittedly improving but still has a way to go. At least, the days of Outlook executing VB scripts in attachments without user interaction are over.

Re:Slow progress

[drsmithy]

So the fact that Microsoft released _and sold_ no less than two versions of 98, and then WinME can be blamed on third party developers, not Microsoft, who produced them, and made bucket-loads of money from them. An apologist argument if ever there was one!

No-one is to "blame", it's just what happened.

Customers wouldn't (or couldn't) migrate away from DOS-based Windows, ergo Microsoft had to update the product for them.

If you really think Microsoft _wanted_ the hassle and expense of maintaining, supporting, and marketing two different codebases while trying to keep binary compatibility between them (and their previous releases), you've got a pretty weird idea about a preferable way to run a software business.

This argument would hold water _if_ Microsoft's own Windows-9X Logo guidelines hadn't told people to write applications in precisely the way you are saying they shouldn't have.

That's a rather extraordinary claim. Evidence ?

Re:Slow progress

[Weedlekin]

"No-one is to "blame", it's just what happened."

OK, fair enough -- not much to argue about there!

"Customers wouldn't (or couldn't) migrate away from DOS-based Windows, ergo Microsoft had to update the product for them."

I would be more inclined to believe this if they hadn't launched Windows-95 with so much fanfare. That and the fact that Windows-95 had a new UI and control set, and whole slew of new APIs and capabilities which NT, still in its 3.51 incarnation, lacked (built in networking, TAPI, multimedia, DirectX, system policies, plug-and-play, FAX capabilities, etc.).

"If you really think Microsoft _wanted_ the hassle and expense of maintaining, supporting, and marketing two different codebases while trying to keep binary compatibility between them (and their previous releases), you've got a pretty weird idea about a preferable way to run a software business."

What you claim they wanted is neither here or there: as with people, companies are judged by what they do, not what somebody claims they meant to do. If they were so reluctant to maintain two code bases, then why did they continue to push Win9X hard long after most domestic users had hardware that easily exceeded the requirements for NT, while making no effort whatsoever to market NT to those same domestic users? Why did they launch and push the horrid Windows-ME in the same year as the excellent Windows-2000, when ME was so broken that its compatibility with old applications was actually worse than that of Windows-2000?

"That's a rather extraordinary claim. Evidence ?"

Unfortunately, the Microsoft page for the old "Designed For Windows-95" logo requirements is no longer there, and much Googling reveals many busted links and not a lot else. The oldest on-line version I can find is one for the "Designed for Windows NT and 95" logo, which obviously contains a lot of NT-aware stuff that wasn't in the older Win95-specific one. I still have the MS handbook, but neither the time nor the inclination to scan the whole thing in just for one passage, which basically states that software should store its configuration information in the registry, under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Company/Program name/Version/. You've possibly noticed that a lot of older software does this, thereby rendering it unsuitable for a multi-user system (whose users may not have write access to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE or any other global registry keys), and perhaps wondered why. Now you know.

because its design is "obfuscated". Yes.

[dpilot]

You're confusing the layers, there. There are parts of Windows that Microsoft WANTS people to use, and those are reasonably clear. Then there are those part that Microsoft doesn't want people to use, and those parts ARE obfuscated. I only need name 2, ".doc" and "ntfs", both under vigorous attempts to reverse-engineer ***for the legally protected purpose of interoperation*** by third parties, for YEARS, with only marginal success.

Arguably, a clearly, concisely, well-defined data structure or format would also fall to reverse-engineering fairly readily. Many people have long suspected that Microsoft has deliberately complicated their formats, for the specific purpose of hindering interoperation. There have even been statements *from Microsoft* about "rich binary" data formats and protocols in order to protect their products. But the sword cuts 2 ways... Last I heard, there was no engineering or programming document describing ".doc", the documentation was the source code of the ".doc" reader. Maybe that's ok for a minority-share product, or a SOHO product. But about the time they're insisting that government institutions should use ".doc" as their archival data format, IMHO it just doesn't cut the mustard. Excess complexity also makes it difficult to get all the bugs out - just the thing you want in archival data storage - or a filesystem.

Microsoft may not be guilty of every sin that everyone would like to pin on them. But they DO have plenty of sins that do stick, and to not pin those is a disservice.

The reason Microsoft doesnt care about security

[NynexNinja]

Microsoft is no different than many other large publicly traded companies. They hire inexperienced programmers right out of college who have little or no programming experience background. These people wind up writing insecure applications that become widely exploited by external individuals, groups, corporations and the very programmers that Microsoft hired. Its hard to sit back and assume that these programming errors are indeed actual mistakes. A whole cottage industry has formed around these programming mistakes, the "anti-virus industry".

Microsoft is driven by profit, has made private agreements with other companies behind closed doors. I would not be surprised if in years to come it is exposed that Microsoft has purposefully made their various software insecure to allow the anti-virus industry to thrive and prosper. I'm sure that put in the same position of a powerful software company, most people would do the same thing. Whoever said capitalism was supposed to be moral?

Besides this, Microsoft is in no rush to fix their software problems. Why should they? You already paid for their product. They have your money. It makes no sense for them to fix it after they have already been paid.

Why is the NUMBER of patches released an issue

[innocence18]

Sure Windows has gots it's fair share (and mayb more) of security problems. What I don't get is why it's a big deal that they release lots of patches to fix stuff. At least if they're releasing lots of patches that means they're doing some work. It's the number of patches that don't get released that people should be worried about.

Ubuntu quite frequently tells me there are updates available for a large variety of packages I run, so what's the difference. This close-minded MS hating mantality gives me the shits. Everything is fallible to some degree, it's just a question of how much that degree affects you.

Re:Why is the NUMBER of patches released an issue

[j79zlr]

Actually you have it backwards. Microsoft doesn't release as many patches, they seemingly do no security audits themselves. They wait for an active exploit or a proof of concept to show up on a mailing list, then they get on the patch whenever they get back from vacation. Linux benefits from the lesser installed base in active exploits, but there is also the fact that pretty much noone runs Linux as root, and you pretty much have to run Windows as the Administrator. Linux also proactively releases patches, someone perusing the source notices a bad line of code and submits a patch, it gets committed and released. I cannot remember Microsoft ever preemptively releasing a patch before a proof of exploit. They don't fix their bugs unless they are already being exploited, never before. That would cost money that they don't have to spend.

Re:Why is the NUMBER of patches released an issue

[innocence18]

The article says they have release an endless stream of patches; not me. I'm totally behind you on the benfits of proactively patching. My point is, everyone goes "Oh MS had to release 30 patches last month to fix security holes". Yes they should have written more secure code in the place, I think we all agree on that, but at the end of the day they patched 30 exploits. While that doesn't make up for God knows how many they didn't patch, and it certainly doesn't make up for them being there in the first place, at least they're doing something. As someone previously said, they've already got your cash, it'd be easy enough to turn around and say "not our problem anymore". I just find it worrisome that people focus on the number of patches released when they should be worried about stuff that doesn't get patched. Like you said, they don't patch it until someone reports an exploit. That is scarey to me.

Buffer overflow progress?

[swordfishBob]

I thought they made some change in their compiler/s and libraries last year to preclude buffer overflows, and were working through the code base one module at a time to make it compliant. Haven't heard anything for a while though. Does anyone know more about this?

Re:Buffer overflow progress?

[Mancat]

The majority of system files were rebuilt with stack-smashing protection in the compiler. Many buffer overflows have been eliminated as such. Enabling DEP also helps to mitigate the effect that any exploit may have on an unpatched buffer overflow.

Re:Buffer overflow progress?

[Mancat]

Sorry, I meant to mention that SP2 includes versions of system files compiled with stack-smashing protection.

Firewall

[hackwrench]

A firewall that isn't all that configurable and poorly documented. At what levels in the protocol stack does it work again? I've been looking for a top to bottom firewall/protocol stack that works properly for quite awhile now. What, the good protocol stack is going to debut in Vista? What's this pbonebook error, the connection is already dialing, when my ISP drops the connection. Why doesn't my dial-up connection show up when I type winipcfg.

Prob is that not all patches apply to your system

[Anonymous Coward]

Just encountered this problem with Windows Update. It wanted to apply 6 patches to an XP-Home box that specifically stated they were for SMTP services on Server 2003 boxes only. Now why should WinUpdate tell me to apply Server grade patches to a Home Grade system?

Due to that error, I've been forced to ensure that any so called windows update actually applies to the home systems I'm the support tech for and because of this, I'm currently in the process of developing a linux installation for those computers to reduce my headaches while improving the usefulness of those computers.

Why OS vendors make LOUSY application vendors

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you name me which modern OS shipping made a MARKETING decision to put their video drivers in the kernal? When NT went from 3.51 to 4.0 and they tossed in the Win32 widgets and they FORCED the kernal team to put the video driver in RING ZERO. They did not like the numbers they were getting. Was the user going to pick another VENDOR'S OS? :-) They wanted a reason for the user to PAY for an upgrade. Nobody pays for a SLOWER OS. Those just don't sell well.

Want another example?

How about 'priority boosting'? That is where only MS boost the thread level of the actively running application so it 'appears' to run faster to the user. This has created all kinds of fun problems for developers but 'hey' it SELLS upgrades baby.

Here is a fun one for you.
Why is it when I go into my CMD shell I can do a 'NET STAT'? Where did that stuff come from?
That would be when they put it in the NT kernal to compete with Novell. They have just been too busy helping the customer to take it out. All of the NET commands came from MS Lan Manager. I'm sure there isn't a Netbui stack that has kernal access either. ;-)

And people wonder why Linux runs so much quicker? I mean has anybody bothered to empty the garage lately that we all call the XP kernal? I mean what else is running at ring zero these days? Seriously if MS Basic hadn't been in the EPROM I bet the LOAD command would still work. :-)

You think I'm kidding right?

Has anyone tried to nuke the msmsgs.exe task? That would be MS's Instant Messaging application. This is STUCK in your toolbar and if you TRY to remove it you are told
OTHER applications are USING it! Don't we call other programs that do this viruses or trojans? This is a very rich example of why an OS vendor should NOT be allowed to compete in the application space. But hey it allowed them to KILL Netscape even when they had 80% market share. This might have been OK when MS DOS was seen as a HOBBY only used by kids but NOW IT IMPACTS every companies BOTTOM LINE!

Final point. Anyone ever bother to read what the findings of fact were in the MS anti-trust trial? I mean we all paid several million in taxes for that one and it makes GREAT bed time reading. ;-)

Are you aware that MS MANAGEMENT STOPPED the release of Windows 98 UNTIL AFTER Christmas so key DLLs could be part of the kernal? Since this statement sounds like I'm on a narcotic I'm going to PROVE IT IS TRUE.

BTW

Not one other company could pull this kind of crap NOT EVEN IBM. MS has created their own monster. The reason their kernal has SOOOO many holes in it is because the product managers HAVE DRILLED them there in the first place. I mean even a blind guy can fall into ring zero and take over your system. Why is it folks can READ the code for the kernal in Linux and it is SAFER but I can blind fold you and you 'might' get admin rights in XP?

MS could never allow you to read their kernal code. You would see how too many of their APPLICATIONS work. :-D

The link for the DOJ trial doc is here: <URL:http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudge. pdf>

From page 83 of the above link:

Allchin followed up with another message to Maritz on January 2, 1997:
You see browser share as job 1. . . . I do not feel we are going to win on
our current path. We are not leveraging Windows from a marketing perspective
and we are trying to copy Netscape and make IE into a platform. We do not use
our strength -- which is that we have an installed base of Windows and we have a
strong OEM shipment channel for Windows. Pitting browser against browser is
hard since Netscape has 80% marketshare and we have <20%. . . . I am convinced
we have to use Windows -- this

you nailed it

[Anonymous Coward]

There's too much money to be made having the predominant computer architecture being buggy forever, and there's little practical downside for those who profit from this phenomena. It forces hardware upgrades when users computers are "broken" from bugware and they think it's the hardware, it forces software upgrades because all of a sudden the old stuff becomes "too slow", it creates a perpetual fix-it shop cash cow bonanza from whitebox shops on up, it requires legions of "experts" in the backrooms of industry to continually patch systems, etc. There's some profit in building and selling true quality products, but there's a lot more profit in offering perpetually buggy betaware.

Evolution vs. Intelligent Design

[n6kuy]

I would guess it should be obvious that Windows evolved by random chance. There's certainly no evidence of Intelligent Design there...

Re:Evolution vs. Intelligent Design

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure this isn't *by* design?

Popular

[ramibotros]

Couldn't it be that Windows gets more attacked because it's just more popular? Maybe if other OSes were that popular they would also fall like that.

Re:Popular

[Hosiah]

Windows gets more attacked because it's just more popular?

You know, all the times I've seen this argument, I never asked what that scenario's like. K-Rad Script-kiddie discovers a security exploit that he could write a worm for which would shut down every server at Novell, but he decides not to use it because Linux isn't popular enough? Or he could enslave every MacIntosh on the planet, but he decided not to because Mac's too small and he should pick on somebody his own size?

Re:Popular

[Anonymous Coward]

You bring up an interesting point. For an answer to this, look at actual diseases in the wild.

Pretend you have an only child who is home-schooled. You could look at how often he is sick, and it would probably be significantly less than the average rate for an average public school pupil.

Is this because home-schooled children are more immune from disease? No, it's because they are not exposed to disease by being in close proximity to other children with diseases. Once you participate in a learning co-op where the kids meet at various people's houses in large groups, the disease rates will go up to almost public-school levels.

For another example, look at the plague. Large cities were hit hard, while many secluded villages were unaffected. This might make you think that secluded villages are immune, so you advocate moving to secluded villages. This would likely be good advice for you to follow, but if everybody did this, the village wouldn't be secluded anymore!

Right now Mac and Linux users are mostly living in small, secluded villages. Your average box still has the possibility of getting hit (CERT proves this), but the probability we'll hear about it is much lower for the following reasons:

1. A smaller population means fewer diseases coming into existence: few people target unpopular OSes in the first place.
2. A smaller population density means infections are harder to spread: a virus or worm needs to find many more hosts to infect, and it's not easy to randomly find a Mac box.
3. A smaller population means fewer reports of infections, and epidemics are unlikely: it takes a big infection for it to be reported, and it's quite likely that there isn't a large-enough business running non-Windows desktops for it to make the news.
4. A self-selected population of careful people are going to defend themselves better: people who are conscientous about security are going to have firewalls, the latest patches, and not perform dangerous activities. Novell isn't going to let your worm into its network.

Now those are some good arguments for using a Mac or Linux, but they apply equally well to Windows 3.1, too. Win3.1 is obviously not secure, but who's going to bother writing a virus for it? And if they did, how would they find you to give it to you? The truth is, we just don't know how safe Mac and Linux are because they are not popular enough.

Just like avoiding people is a poor way to avoid disease, avoiding Windows is a poor way to avoid computer problems. Africa has a huge population of AIDS-infected people. If I want to avoid the virus, should I avoid Africa? No, I can go to Africa and just avoid dangerous behavior, such as unprotected sex, sharing needles, and getting blood transfusions. If I'm really paranoid I can wear rubber globes and a face mask.

To avoid Windows problems, I can just not click on untrusted websites, not open untrusted attachments, use a firewall, not install untrusted software, keep my software patched, etc.

dom

Re:Popular

[Hosiah]

Surprisingly thourough coverage of the subject, but it lists to port under too much scrutiny. We "small villagers" have something that native remote tribespeople don't: instant global access to every one of our kind. If I wanted to spread a Linux-only virus, I could find dozens of handy places to plant it like rpmfind.net or linuxquestions.org. Or the Debian package repository. Automated package management would ensure that my trojan would find it's way to most machines without the sysadmin ever seeing it. And if my virus only needs a POSIX-type file system, my target is broadened to encompass Linux, Unix, Solaris, and BSD. Trust me, they'd be easy enough to ferret out (simply put up a web page and grep the access logs, for instance). And since "Unix runs the Internet", I would think it would be twice the attractive target that Windows was. In fact, given that Linux has a larger server share, and runs on everything from XBoxes to mainframes to cellphones, something that could spread itself using *anything* running Linux would probably bring civilization to a screeching halt, if it was devious enough. It could nuke Windows machines as an afterthought, after it infiltrated everything else.

I'm going to stop right there, because I'm giving myself ideas...

Re:Popular

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for Microsoft as well. I do have to agree that security is up in the priority list, but not number one. And as the previous Microsoft employee stated, there is two main sides to this company, business and tech. We're the little slaves that do as we're told. And when the order won't work correctly, they don't care. They want to see product before the see quality. "Lets get this fantastic new product out before we're sure it works right." But in all honesty, we try our hardest. We only do as we're told, not what is right.

What about the 15 years before we knew about this?

[cpu_fusion]

The press focuses on the delay between when the WMF exploit became common knowledge and when the fix was released. That's an important concern, but it distracts from a far more scary question:

How much privacy has been violated in the last 15 years using this exploit?

Before info on the exploit was splashed on news websites, it may very well have been known to intelligence agencies, Microsoft, and organized crime. We will likely never know. However, it is the window of time between when an exploit is privately found and it is made common knowledge that the real mischief occurs. For the WMF exploit, that window may have been 15 years!

It's not hard to see how this simple exploit could have been used for corporate espionage, perhaps against you or your company, and you would be none the wiser today. Government agencies at every level use Windows. Your doctor probably does. Your bank probably does. Someone with knowledge of this exploit before it was widely known would have been in "god mode" in the monoculture of Windows. They could have made a ton of cash rooting a few stock brokers.

There's LOTS of nasty things that could have happened, that it is just as reasonable to assume happened as to not. We'll never know, because digital tracks are very easy to cover up. Why the press isn't asking the bigger question: how could Microsoft (or someone else) NOT have known about this, and how do we deal with a world where some people, right now, might know about the next WMF exploit and might currently be using it to make a quick buck.

So let's not focus totally on the cost to clean up the mess once the problem is known to the script kiddies. The unknown cost of the undetected zero-day exploits is quite possibly much higher.

(And for those who say "there's nothing we can do about that!", I suggest you compare Windows security to something like SELinux.)

RTFA

[Bilbo]

The author specifically mentions this. The problem is certainly compounded because Windows is more popular, but the fundamentally, it goes back to shoddy programming practices, an emphasis on getting releases out before they are tested, and most important, the tight integration of the ENTIRE suite, such that, "If you compromise one program, you've compromised them all."

There is no "power user" in XP home

[toadlife]

"Incorrect. They are the two options available via the control panel's users control, yes. However, if you right click "My Computer" and choose "Manage", you'll have access to the same users and groups admin that's been present since at least NT 4. By default, that gives you Administrators, Power Users and Users, and you're free to create whatever other groups you wish, assigning them whatever privileges you desire."

He's talking about XP Home, in which there is no "power user" group - even when you go into the advanced user management.

MOD PARENT UP

[808140]

It must be Murphy's law of mod points at work again: "As soon as your modpoints expire, you will find something worth modding up."

AC's formatting sucks but he doesn't deserve to stick around at 0. AC, get an account, please, this sort of contribution shouldn't be anonymous.

Although, for the record, it's spelled 'kernel'.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[askegg]

Agreed - MOD UP!

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

I've moved and changed ISP accounts.
Can't remember my password and they mail it to the WRONG address. ;-)

Thanks for the compliments.

Getting hit left and right?

[Anonymous Coward]

XP x64 is just about useless because of the security issues. This box is getting hit left and right, and is constantly stumbling.

Sureley you're not stupid enough to place a Windows box (*any* flavor of Windows) directly onto the public Internet without securing it behind a substantial firewall???? If you did, then Dude..., that's messed up!

Re:Getting hit left and right?

[Mad Ogre]

I've got it behind a firewall. And on a short leash.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

windows auto update

[Joe123456]

windows auto update does not get the Optional Software Updates you need to use the windows update web site for that and you need to be a admin to do that. runas does not work

"Fundamentally Secure"

[ClamIAm]

You know, it's interesting that Gates made this statement, when you look at how MS deals with security issues. Does he also believe that slapping some band-aids on his arms will take away his ability to bleed?

Not true.

[node 3]

How many Linux PC's have been pwn3d this year just visiting a web page?

No, Windows is not "less bug-prone/filled" than Linux (you got that wrong anyway, it's not "bugs", it's "vulnerabilities", that matter in terms of security).

Re:Not true.

[Anonymous Coward]

"No, Windows is not "less bug-prone/filled" than Linux (you got that wrong anyway, it's not "bugs", it's "vulnerabilities", that matter in terms of security)." - by node 3 (115640) on Tuesday January 10, @10:41PM

First of all, that is what the URL showed: Unix based OS (since they are all knockoffs of the original unix designs from Bell Labs/BSD/Minix etc.) had more security holes in them...

The funny part is?

Unix based systems have less softwares than Windows do, and less drivers for the amount of peripheral hardwares out there.

Unix based OS run less peripheral hardwares period, because many platforms UNIX's run on just don't have them, or drivers for them!

(There is little question that x86 platforms are the MOST used between end-user desktops/laptops and servers out there worldwide, and that Windows runs more peripheral devices than any other platform, not only x86, but the hardwares for it)

Unix based OS have less software, and drivers for peripheral hardwares than Windows does no less, yet showed more security holes!

Secondly - See here, tell us otherwise, in regards to what was found having the most security holes, period:

http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/bulletins/SB2005.html

That's no Microsoft sponsored test, and run by an impartial gov't. agency (if anything, they are 'anti-ms' because of all the lawsuits the gov't. targetted @ MS for 'antitrust' etc.) which specializes in that area- security.

APK

Re:Not true.

[node 3]

Again, exactly how many Linux PC's were infected simply by visiting a web page?

If you said, "zero", you would be correct.

I never said the tests were paid for by MS.

Just because vim can be tricked into running arbitrary code does not equate to any easy means of compromise. Whereas if Internet Explorer, Outlook, Outlook Express, and Windows itself, can be tricked into running arbitrary code, with no interaction by the user other than receiving bad data, then you have a very easy vector by which to launch an attack.

Not to mention that if vim is compromised, you can't infect the OS.

Windows is broken. It's too easy to exploit. The list you show is data, but you are interpreting it wrong. Not only is it wrong, but it's idiotic to claim Windows is more secure than Linux. Absolutely, undeniably idiotic. All you have to do is look at the infection rate of Windows vs Linux vs Mac OS X. You have a theory about OS security, and reality shows it to be wrong.

Please, don't be an idiot. Why would you want to be to begin with? Would you rather think you're right, than to actually be right?

Now, show me a list that says Linux PC's get hacked like wildfire, that a fully patched Linux system is vulnerable to exploits that are known to be in the wild. Show me data that Open Source developers "sit on" a patch for a known and severe exploit for weeks. Show me something that actually demonstrates the conclusions of your theory accurately reflects reality, and not data that merely shows the data input to your theory matches reality.

Seriously, idiocy is nothing to flaunt. When a theory does not adequately match reality, you must abandon the theory as it currently stands, or face being an idiot.

Re:Not true.

[Anonymous Coward]

See this url below & eat your very words (especially since you resorted to calling me names, the sure sign of defeat in debate, but here are the facts that will do that to you, using your own examples):

http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/01/06/2043203.shtml?t id=172&tid=125&tid=106

For "how secure" Linux is because of faults in WINE that do not exist on Windows anymore!

That is, if the US-CERT.gov findings that Linux/MacOS X/Unix had more security holes in them than Windows did in 2005 that I posted at the start of this thread aren't enough!

LOL, By the way - Hey man: Ever heard of WINE?

BUT, first, please - Tell us ALL, why does WINE (the security hole I submit proof for above no less) exist if Linux & its apps are "SO GOOD"??

(Because apps for Windows have no peer in many cases on Linux... so, Linux folks use WINE to emulate those apps since no peer is available for them in Linux usually!)

Well GUESS WHAT? The problem with WINE (that I put up URL evidence to above, as of this date it still exists 01/11/2006) is this:

It's STILL vulnerable to the .WMF exploit!

(Which is triggered via Windows emulation of IE in Linux via WINE (and lol, it's FIXED on Windows against the dangerous exploits possible via that file format, remote exploits) & IF you hit a site online like that with that hijack in it)

Thus, this statement by you:

"Again, exactly how many Linux PC's were infected simply by visiting a web page?" - by node 3 (115640) on Wednesday January 11, @04:50PM

It's Already INVALIDATED! Easily mind you... via evidence you can examine yourself which I posted above.

Also - You asked, here is your answer:

Anyone using IE under WINE would have been, & there are those that do that... OR, those that emulated Windows apps under WINE period, that called out IE libs (and ones like WORD do @ times).

Now, if you KNOW what you're doing, you can unregister libs like those in Windows easily & be proof against such exploits, prior to the patch releasing... but, not everyone knows what they're doing in that regard!

(TOO EASY!)

You said THIS about me/to me (in addition to calling me an idiot, the sign of losing in a debate imo):

"Windows is broken. It's too easy to exploit." - by node 3 (115640) on Wednesday January 11, @04:50PM

Funny, but didn't I just point out that WINE (as of this date) is broken on Linux? Tell me, since I answered YOUR questions:

You're talking about an app with problems called IE, not the whole of Windows!

Now also - How many Windows PC that ran the browser I do, in Opera 8.5x (latest release for Windows, & the best build opera puts out in fact, see the URL below as far as THAT is concerned) got infected then?

Again apps DO call some of its lib functions... & Windows itself is now proof against that, but not WINE on Linux, which is used to emulate those apps.

Linux is secure eh? You SURE about that, after what I just put up as proof??

"it's idiotic to claim Windows is more secure than Linux. Absolutely, undeniably idiotic. Please, don't be an idiot."

Ahem, take your own advice! LOL, especially after my added new evidences of WINE vulnerabilities on Linux!

As to the STABILITY of Linux 2.6x latest? Well, let's use a quote from one of the folks here that use Linux & the URL it is in:

APK

P.S.=> I will admit IE does need work, but that's not Windows itself! Wine sure does, & that's Linux emulation of Windows (gee, I thought linux was so strong & as functional as Win32 & its OS + apps are, why does WINE exist then??)...

Again, you SURE Linux & its apps are SO SECURE now pal? If you say yes it is again, then, why does SELinux exist also?? And, if you think Windows Server 2003 SP #1 fully hotfix patched isn't securable?? It is, via SCW (easily)

Re:Not true.

[Anonymous Coward]

WELL, where are you boys now?

Ah, I can't resist it:

To quote Brad Pitt as "Achilles" from the film 'TROY':

"IS THERE NO ONE ELSE?"

* :)

(Didn't think there would be - but, bring it on guys, I'll just wade thru all of you, 1 by 1, & knock your blocks off in the same fashion, FIFO-style, as I have thusfar!)

APK

P.S.=> This is fun for me, but, maybe NOT for you all (obviously not the ones who've tried me thusfar, in all their namecalling & yet being shot-down one-by-one/one @ a time)...

Especially 'node 3', lol!

It's been BIG fun making good ole' node there eat his words, since he is suddenly speechless!

That's to those of you that tossed the names my way, others this is not directed to by ANY means!

Well, I don't see any replies to the points I brought up vs. your own there node... & that only indicates 'victory' on my part in this debate vs. your 'best' here! apk

Re:Not true.

[node 3]

Counting WINE is moronic. You can run every single flawed Linux binary on Windows, too, if that's your metric. But in the context we're discussing, counting programs running under WINE doesn't make any sense, as neither would counting programs running under cygwin, CoLinux or VMWare, etc, against Windows make any sense.

All you're doing is resorting to nihilism, and trying only to appear right, and not actually be right. It's a cheap tactic, and tantamount to, "no, you are". Any rational response depends on the other person to be rational themselves. If you have a logical, rational, response, feel free to post it. If not, don't wait up for a reply from me as there won't be one.

The problem with nihilism is that it makes your point nonsense as well. It's a rhetorical doomsday device which destroys the wielder along with the wielder's adversary. Pretending that you've disproved me does not work if the exact same action has also disproved yourself.

Re:Not true.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Counting WINE is moronic." - by node 3 (115640) on Thursday January 12, @01:24AM

LOL! And, your counting IE isn't?

Your namecalling ISN'T?? :)

* It's generally the last resort of the defeated in debate my boy...

"You can run every single flawed Linux binary on Windows, too, if that's your metric." - by node 3 (115640) on Thursday January 12, @01:24AM

ROTFLMAO... uhm, there's more of them in your precious UNIX based/derived/descended OS according to US-CERT.GOV (an impartial 3rd party agency that specializes in that area- security).

See here:

http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/bulletins/SB2005.html

APK

P.S.=> Gee, I wonder WHO the 'moronic one' is here - the one showing concrete evidences (like the WINE one showing Linux having flaws in .wmf format file hijacks online, when you said "linux has none" etc. in that capacity & I clearly showed you it does - ones Windows has fixed no less as of this date, & linux doesn't)... you talk a lot, but no verifiable proofs as I provided to counter your "BOLD STATEMENTS" from your last posting prior to this one!

TOO EASY... apk

APK

Re:What about the 15 years before we knew about th

[askegg]

Mulder? Is that you?

Two-for-Tuesday

[slowbad]

Just 2 monthly updates from Microsoft for January ... you call THAT support? There wasn't even a reboot!

predicted

[brre]

Although Gates made security and privacy top priority four years ago, not much progress has been made.

Exactly as was predicted by knowledgeable people at the time: "Adding security to an existing, large insecure system will, in my judgment, prove an impossible task." Bill Joy

Not Patching

[Jack_Da_Ripper]

Ok I'll grant, MS has come along way from throwing out the unsecure crap that it had been until about 02-03, and while I generally agree with what people are saying here I would like to add one thing. Even for someone who is very literate like myself its still a pain in the butt installing these patches every week. Now before you jump me and say I'm lazy, wait and let me clarify. Its not that I don't update my software, or that I shouldn't, or can't. The issue that causes me the most time is how about once a month when I install a MS patch, I have go to back and reinstall one piece of software or another because the patch screwed up something else. I'm not saying there arn't perfectly valid reasons for this but the point is that other people who don't want to take the time, or don't know what they are doing, like at least 3 people I know rather well simply won't do it. They refuse flat out to install any MS updates for their system for fear of it blowing up their important software. I can't exactly blame them, but the question I have to ask myself is, if MS put out software that was crap for so long and is finally now trying to get up to par then I think some real support for users should be avaliable, or at least a warning if the program is going to effect something that could interfear with an often used program.

Jack

Oxymoron:

[eyepeepackets]

Microsoft security.

That Microsoft has security like a cheese grater has bouyancy is a very well known fact, but the interesting point underlying the well known fact is _why_ Microsoft has such lousy security.

I suggest it's their attitude towards security. For example, last Thursday Microsoft released a patch for the .wmf file format security hole, a real gapping maw of a hole. The following Monday, YESTERDAY, _two_ (2) more .wmf flaws are reported and posted with exploits.

This is the way Microsoft does security: They wait for users to get hammered and scream, _then_ they might fix it, but just that one thing, anything else related is ignored until the cycle starts again with users getting hammered and screaming about it.

After the past two years of Microsoft "security," the only people who still run that junk are the ones locked in by their PHBs and the clueless pubic who buy PCs based on what they see on TV. Oh yes, and the willfully locked-in Microsoft fanbois who are out in droves today defending their sinking ship against the crush of reality.

Microsoft fans are much like the "Intelligent Design" people: They believe and insist their belief is the same thing as knowledge. This gives them the excuse to ignore reality with it's rather unpleasant (to them) consequences.

Face the reality of the situation with Microsoft products: They want your money first and foremost, anything and everything else is, at best, second thought. This includes security, quality -- everything else.

That's your reality, deal with it in a constructive way by getting off the Microsoft Gerbel Wheel from Hell (tm): It's the only way to be sure.

Cheers.

You can't argue with results

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because this is oh so different from the way Apple handles everything, right? *rolleyes*

I'd say Apple is indeed doing something different, since it's five years and counting without a single instance of OS X-specific malware being seen in the wild.

And if you think it's because nobody's trying, you're deluded. There are plenty of assholes out there who would love to be the first guy to come up with genuine OS X malware. Any fool can pwn a Windows box, but you really have to be 1337 to crack a Mac. So far, nobody's measured up.

OS X was designed to be secure from day one. Until Microsoft give up, chucks everything they've got and starts fresh, Windows will always be betrayed by its roots as a completely unsecure, single-user OS that had the security (and everything else) bolted on later-- it's like a straw hut with a steel door.

This will never change

[denverradiosucks]

Will Microsoft really be more secure? With all the antispyware, antivirus, firewall software with billions invested into it from the makers of these programs, it won't happen. Not if Symantec, McAfee and all those other companies out there have anything to say about it. Besides, 95% of the world out there thinks windows IS the only OS you can load on a computer anyway and changing that is going to take YEARS to do this. Microsoft knows this, and with billions of dollars in revenue coming in, there is not need to really change, as long as the overall impression is given that they are really concerned about security, hence the reason for stupid stuff like the security center that came with XP Service Pack 2.

Houston, we have a problem.

[twitter]

Someone calling himself Dickhead, tells us Winders is secure and we are supposed to take his word for it over our own eXPerience and advice from security experts. Oh yeah, he points to a M$N article, like that's got credibility. This is an obvious case of moderation gaming.

Little troll, the facts are obvious and all your silly games are useless. There's a new M$ nasty every month, and it has a half life of 12 minutes on any network. People who don't use M$ junk don't have problems, people who do get popups and corrupted files and machines that don't boot. As much as you would like to blame the users, admins or anyone but Microsoft, the only thing people with computing problems have in common is Microsoft. Replace M$ with Apple, Sun, Linux or BSD and 99.9% of the problems vanish. It's not the users. It's not the people who have to fix Microsoft's problems, it's the software they use.

Don't give me any bull shit about how much people hate M$ or how M$'s popularity is the cause of all the problems. Sure, anyone who's used computers for more than a year or two knows that M$ sucks. It's the Quality, stupid. Most people have no clue about the ethical problems the company has. Yes, there are many people who actually hate M$. That's what you get when you sue public school systems, lie about competitors and do all that other "sharp" business crap. Only a small percentage of the population keeps up with that kind of thing, but a small percentage of many is a lot of people and sooner or later, everyone will know. Performance alone and broken promises are enough to make many people others without a clue hate M$. You can contrast this hatred with the love people have for about any other OS and see what a turd M$ really is.

In short, Microsoft has EARNED it's reputation and all the apologies in the world won't change a thing. After four years of "Security is job 1" and no real changes in system behavior, the public has had enough.

Re:Houston, we have a problem.

[jacksonj04]

"You can contrast this hatred with the love people have for about any other OS"

MS may have earned a reputation for being insecure, no problem there. I evaluate it at the moment, and at the moment it's getting better.
Linux may have earned a reputation for being awkward to use on a desktop. I evaluate it at the moment, and at the moment it's still a set of apps with no common standards held together by sticky tape and pipes.

Love for an OS? You need to see a psychiatrist.

Re:Houston, we have a problem.

[thsths]

> Linux may have earned a reputation for being awkward to use on a desktop. I evaluate it at the moment, and at the moment it's still a set of apps with no common standards held together by sticky tape and pipes.

I don't want to reiterate that Linux is not a set of apps, but I would like to point out that my KDE desktop looks like a very sensible set of programs. In fact, it is very well intergrated (exactly how Windows should be, sometimes fails to be).

Now if only there was a KDE version of Emacs... :-)

Re:Houston, we have a problem.

[pintomp3]

dude, stop being such a microsoft fanboy.

Re:Houston, we have a problem.

[ModMeFlamebait]

MS may have earned a reputation for being insecure, no problem there. I evaluate it at the moment, and at the moment it's getting better.
Linux may have earned a reputation for being awkward to use on a desktop. I evaluate it at the moment, and at the moment it's still a set of apps with no common standards held together by sticky tape and pipes.

Let me rephrase,
MS may have earned a reputation for being insecure, no problem there. I evaluate it at the moment, and at the moment it's still a steaming pile of security nightmares.
Linux may have earned a reputation for being awkward to use on a desktop. I evaluate it at the moment, and at the moment it's getting better.

There ya go, much better now.

Re:Houston, we have a problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, MS can beat up Linux any day of the week. My daddy said so.

Re:Houston, we have a problem.

[CarpetShark]

Linux may have earned a reputation for being awkward to use on a desktop. I evaluate it at the moment, and at the moment it's still a set of apps with no common standards held together by sticky tape and pipes.

Actually, no, it's earning a reputation for being a viable desktop. All that 'Linux is not ready for the desktop' stuff has been out of date for years now. If you're finding the Linux desktop unintegrated or "held together with sticky tape and pipes", then you need to re-examine your definition of a Linux desktop. Try the latest Kubuntu release, for example.

Re:Houston, we have a problem.

[Weedlekin]

My dad's better than your dad, and my dad says it can't, so there.

-1, Flamebait

[BorgCopyeditor]

Although Gates made security and privacy top priority four years ago, not much progress has been made.

Sounds like Bush. Now more people will switch to Democ^H^H^H^H^H Mac OS X.

taxpayer money

[SgtChaireBourne]

That was some time in 2003. I remember it because of the metaphor. Most of these problems are the result of design flaws and would take more work to fix than Microsoft has time or resources. Thus Bill Gate's allusions to the U.S. Apollo program - $25 billion over 10 years, just to catch MS up with 1998.

However, it is more likely that none of the staff in any position to improve things gives even a rat's asshole about security. They can make money still without it.

So, what were the allusions to the U.S. Apollo program about? Beats me. Maybe a diplomatic way of informing the current administration of a desire to get on the dole. Corporate welfare to the tune of $25 bn of taxpayer's money.

Admin vs. root on OS X

[Jesus_666]

For everyone who doesn't use OS X: The main difference between an administrator and a normal user under OS X is that the administrator may sudo. When using shell programs as a normal user sudoing will fail (because the normal user is not in /etc/sudoers) and Aqua apps that require administrative access will ask you for both the name of an administrator and the corresponding password. As an administrator manual sudo works and Aqua apps will only ask for your password.

root has much greater (and usually unnecessary) privileges than an administrator and is locked by default. I have only had to use root twice, in both cases because I had broke /etc/sudoers.

Re:Admin vs. root on OS X

[ModMeFlamebait]

Consider yourself +1, Informative :)

Oops, forgot a minor thing

[Jesus_666]

When I mentioned that non-admins are not in the sudoers file I forgot to mention that admins are in it via the admin group.

I would tend to agree

[Anonymous Coward]

but *nix has never been marketed as easy-to-operate. Microsoft has made great promises on ease-of-use, and should be held to that. If security is compromised as a result of this simple user experience, then I would consider Microsoft to have over-promised and under-delivered.

(SCNR)

[Jesus_666]

I've been on the internet 25+ years with Linux and Firefox, until recently I didn't even have a firewall or spyware scanner or NIC, I've never been hacked... I don't get it. Even with the base install not having sudo I still was able to perform all tasks with a limited account inside a chroot without being logged in. My issue with the 2.6 code base are issues with BOs* and that's a limitation all OS's will have to encounter. My confidence was severley shaken with the WINE WMF issue, basically at the point the graphics program over every application/OS feature that tries to view WMF graphics is a ticking time bomb the code paths are mind boggling... Jesus_666 shields up!

* Body Odors

Re:(SCNR)

[ohwell]

cool, wasn't saying a thing about linux! Not sure why you brought it up!
tr

Re:(SCNR)

[Jesus_666]

Actually I just took the statement "I've been on the internet for 14 years with NT+", which is slightly implausible (but certainly possibly true) and replaced it with a completely ludicrous assertion (I can't have been on the internet as described because a) Linux, Firefox and the commonly available internet are all less than 25 years old and b) it's hard to connect to the internet without a NIC), mimicing the structure of your post, highlighting some strange points like the "I don't get it", which seems to imply that you don't get why you were able to work with NT4, the mention of problems with "bo's", which are never explained (a search on acronymfinder.com turned up "body odours" as the top result) or the strange second-to-last sentence which I was actually unable to parse. The last sentence is a reference to the fact that when you said "oh well shields up" you almost quoted your own nickname.

I just felt like trolling a post and yours happened to be a good target. ;)

Re:(SCNR)

[ohwell]

ok I was off by a couple of years I had nt 3.5 in 1994 with a modem and a ppp based account (I've been hacking computers since 1979)! And yes your sarcasm was very well understood, I just did not bite!! btw bo's stand for buffer overflow.. The cisco ios was mentioned because at that point I felt pretty comfortable with the security of the cisco ios's yet it was shown to be vulnerable to a bo attack. My point was that I was not attacking linux.

Re:(SCNR)

[Jesus_666]

I wasn't defending it either, Linux is just great for outrageous claims like "I used it twenty years ago and it was better than Windows!!!1111". BTW, what I found hard to parse about the Cisco sentence was the sentence structure, not the meaning.

Shill

[Anonymous Coward]

Slate is a shill for Microsoft. How dare you publish something so stupid? Remember how they blamed their bad software on users?

As for the rest of you below, defending Microsoft: you must be REALLY stupid to not get it.

It's unfortunately not a law you can't be stupid, but it is a law you're not allowed to procreate. So stop fucking around, you morons.

WMF

[aug24]

The WMF problem is a legacy file format

No, the WMF problem is an incredibly silly code insertion technique that was designed in - deliberately allowing the image to embed its own arbitrary code - in the days when anything on a machine was deliberately put their by the user and could arguably be trusted. There's no buffer overflow or anything here - just a windows object which is insecure by design.

This kind of code shows how little windows was designed with networking in mind. It wasn't a problem in 1985, but still working that way 20 years later shows how Windows still includes horribly insecure legacy code that should have been revisited if they were serious about 'secure by design'.

Justin.

Building on a faulty foundation

[ITgrrrl]

Alrighty then, the Win2003, Exchange 2003, and Vista OS are not radically different than the ole NT, Exchange 5.5 and heaven help us Windows 3.3 products. If it is possible to run your 32 bit programs and .dlls ('seamlessly' as one article described it)on the 'new' 64 bit Windows then trust me, it's security and exploit business as usual. The new versions are essentially lipstick on a pig.

Tombstones and advertising and MacOS

[gelfling]

Security is like that. No one wants to pay for it until they need it. Then they want to chisel the price down even though all kinds of flashing red lights and klaxons are going off. See the fact is that MS is simply following the mindset of its customer base. Its customer base thinks of security STRICTLY in terms of identity theft and credit card fraud as per the monthly cable news nuggets. And if their machines crash or slow to a crawl those same customers simply shrug and say "The internet's broken" shut off their machines and hope that it will all magically fix itself soon.

Moreover given that the retail price of MS operating systems hasn't dropped, ever, since 1981, it's unlikely that customers would pay a premium for 'security enhanced MS products. Would you? Would you pay a $50 premium for a fixed version of MS code? I wouldn't.

So here's what MS should be sweating. Apple. Yesterday Apple demoed an iBook they claim runs 3-4x faster on Intel hardware. Combine that with the rugged secure OSX and you have a big hammer with which to smash the MS mindset. If Apple-Intel+ OSX gets anywhere near the price point of MS-Wintel I and millions like me will switch in droves.

Now - will that mean better security? Yes in the short run it will until Apple becomes a big enough target then it will suffer a wave of problems. But once they've let the OSX genie out of the bottle it will be hard to put back in and claim that 'Security's hard' because we'll know that that's not entirely true. Customers will demand and get a better stable BSD based security platform and they'll never look back.

BTW Linux-heads. You ignore this at your own peril too. The value add of Linux versus MacOS X at the price point you'll see on Intel hardware will make Linux irrelevant.

Re:Tombstones and advertising and MacOS

[MagicBox]

There will NEVER be a secure system in existence. Ever. Smart unbiased peple have been describing the perfectly secure system for a long time (somewhere in a bunker in a mountain in south america with an army around etc etc.....do not remember all the details). As long as there is someone interested in breaking into it they will break into it. If you take SECURITY at other levels (not just technology) it's always breached because someone, somewhere wanted to get in badly enough.

So this article's headline "Microsoft vs. Computer Security Why the software giant still can't get it right." Is bull shit. Noone has it right. They will never get it right (or at least for the for the foreseeable future).

I will not even get to the level of admins and their screw ups, that's a separate issue from the OSs security design faults. They only add to the problem

Optimistic

[Hard_Code]

I'm actually a lot more optimistic about security (specfically Microsoft security) these days. I used to think (probably correctly) that Microsoft was incompetent in this regard. Microsoft has apparently been ruled by the cowboy coders on one side, and the irresponsible marketeers on the other. But watching the various videos (especially the Going Deep series) on Channel 9 (http://channel9.msdn.com/) interviewing lead developers of various areas, I am more and more impressed. Microsoft employs some DAMN SMART people in Microsoft Research and even a lot of their core development areas (kernel, tools). In the vista kernel video you can tell they are pretty embarrassed about the history of Windows, the registry, etc., finally understand there is a problem, and are actively trying to solve it (creating gigantic dependency graphs of binaries, trying to sort out the configuration (they refer to it as "state") issue). Given that a lot of this good stuff can be incorporated into a commercial product without the bastardization of the marketeers and cowboy culture, I'm optimistic. Watch the video about Avalon - what the guys is describing is essentially X11. That's not news to us, but I have to imagine it's revolutionary at Microsoft to break down, admit to themselves that the existing display/rendering technology is shit and inflexible and un-extendable, and pro-actively go about implementing a network-transparent graphics framework that mimics alarmingly technology of their arch-competitor (*nix). If they can do that, I have hope they can bury a lot of the other problems they have caused for themselves and maybe start doing the Right Thing.

ok, enough </fanboy> ;)

Microsoft and viruses

[archangel007]

Ive had a windows computer for years....and im about convinced that they are concerned less with viruses and worms and such....until there's a big hullabaloo about it and they have to fix it. And the reason i feel they're less concerned about it is because they're in bed with Norton and/or McAfee. That's what i think.

Have you ever actually used formal methods?

[Viol8]

I have. For a small mickey mouse program they're fine. For a huge program
such as an OS they're pie in the sky. Its almost impossible to formally
prove the entire OS because:

A) Its not a single "process". It has multiple interlinked processes (I don't
mean kernel processes, I'm mean logically seperate processing flows) so
you'd need multiple levels of proofs.

B) Someone has to write those proofs. If theres a *single* flaw in *any*
proof the whole exercise is null and void. Since proofs are written by humans
I can guarantee there'll be flaws.

C) The proofs have to be run through a formal proof program which itself
must be formally proved if its to be of any worth.

You beginning to see the problem?

A good reason for in-house development.

[Richard Steiner]

That's one of the reasons why many companies (like major airlines) do their own in-house software development. That way they can create software in their own way and on their own schedule without having sales weenies interfering with the process, creating unworkable release dates, etc.

Microsoft vs. Computer Security

[sheehanam]

I don't understand why everyone is always trying to kill the Windows OS. Is it that big a deal to make a virus? Ooh, woow, you made a virus that bring Windows down. Aren't you the big man on campus. Grow up and get a job.

A REAL example

[pedestrian crossing]

Current versions of REAL player require user write access to the System32 directory.

WTF?

Yes, Windows application developers force users to run their systems insecurely.

I call BS

[rewt66]

most of those choices were reasonable at the time they were made

No, and some people screamed at the time. What did they scream about? Executing e-mail attachments and ActiveX are the two that I seem to recall, though I'm sure there are others that people said, "That's not a very good idea because of security". But very few listened. In particular, neither Microsoft nor the industry press listened to the idea that a feature could also be a security flaw.

Yes

[jd]

I used Z to help design some code for a high-power particle accelerator. I wouldn't personally call something like that a "mickey mouse" program - fifty gamma ray detectors, data processing nodes, data storage nodes, all interfaced to a user control system. So we're talking grid computing that needed exceptionally high reliability and an exceptionally good response time.

(In the end, those components of EUROGAM I was involved in writing were capable of handling 33 megabits/second - and it was the network that failed before my software. Those components included data storage, linear interpolation of matrices with any size dimensions and any number of dimensions, data display and data upload/download to external storage.)

Project scale doesn't matter, because good software design is all black-box. All contexts and all threads are logically independent except at controlled points, so you push all of the complexities a regular formal language cannot deal with into those controlled points and prove the rest as ordinary modules.

The controlled points then aren't any more complex. They are not really systems, the variation is between threads/contexts and not time, so you simply rotate the problem and write your Z schemas between threads/contexts, and not between operations. There are no operations, you're at a single point.

The reason formal methods are regarded as "difficult" has nothing to do with any actual difficulty and everything to do with the fact that the industry has no desire to pay more for the extra skills needed and get the product later, because for them speed is everything. First to market. First to this. First to that. Gotta have it last week, no matter how broken, not next week, no matter how superior.

You do not have to "prove the whole OS" - that is monolithic thinking. You only have to prove each black box (horizontal slices through the logic, if you like), each thread/state (vertical slices, using the same analogy), each interface and the entire initial state. By taking fragments of slice, you reduce any specific problem to one that can trivially be solved. By slicing in every direction and doing the same, you reduce ALL the problems into ones that are trivial to solve. By finally proving the interfaces between fragments of slice (whether the fragments are in the same slice or not), you prove that all micro-flows are valid.

Provided your proofs are satisfactory, you can now prove by induction any given horizontal or vertical slice in its entirity. Since we know the interactions between the two directions are valid (as that's already been proved), we can now prove by induction the full array of horizontal and vertical slices.

Honestly, the biggest problem I see to the adoption of widespread use of formal methods are the lecturers who introduce it but who completely lack the understanding necessary to apply what they are teaching. Remember, those who can do, those who can't teach. Don't trust those who can't as the source of wisdom.

Re:Yes

[Viol8]

"By finally proving the interfaces between fragments of slice "

In a modern OS there may be dozens of sub systems and any of them could
potentially link to a number of others individually or simultaniously
leading to an exponential number of permutations. Unless you prove ALL
those permutations your proof isn't worth the paper is written on.

"Provided your proofs are satisfactory, "

And here we hit the infinite regression problem. How do you prove the proofs?
And how do you prove the methods that proved the proofs? Some people say
that if the proofs wrong you'll notice because it disproves valid code. Well,
how do you prove that codes valid? Its a circular argument.

Personally while I think formal proofs do have a place in testing , they're
not the panacea that some people would have us believe.

Certifications, timeframes, etc

[jd]

The timeframes are based on the assumption that the original code is essentially junk, that what you want to do is get the APIs, system calls and abstract behaviour from the original system. Once you have that information, you'd then clean up the specification (so it won't necessarily be the same as the original, but it is certain to work), and then and only then would you re-implement, totally from scratch.

The certification system would ideally be fine-grained and cover all kinds of behaviours, but consumers get confused easily. As such, it seems better to reward good practices such that the only way to stay ahead of the pack is for companies to keep improving those practices. The specifics of the bugs will then fall away of their own accord.

Gaaaah!

[jd]

We're not talking about fixing bugs, we're talking about ripping the specification out of the original software, fixing that specification so that it is 100% bug-free, then writing an entirely clean-room copy from that specification alone. A good design should produce damn-near no bugs.

Secondly, bugs only spread in the way you describe in unstructured code. If each module is strictly black-box, no bug can EVER spread outside of that box OR enter into it from the outside.

Thirdly, black-box coders don't talk to each other, so communication is a non-issue. Same with reverse-engineers. You have some block of code, you turn it into a specification, you then prove that the specification is correct and matches the code. Communication between individuals is irrelevent, because there is nothing that one is dealing with that will impact another. That's not the way this kind of engineering is done.

Because no communication is required, no communication problem exists. Remember, the logic of the unit is treated by one person and any given single interface or set of interfaces by another. Even the interface person doesn't need to talk to anyone. They know from the spec what the inputs and outputs are, they don't need to know or care what they do, only how they interconnect to each other or other black boxes, between contexts, processes or threads. ALL they have is the interface to study.

There is no debugging here and none of the usual team rules apply, because you'd have 10,000 independent teams of 1 person, not 1 team with 10,000 people.

The complaints raised by most other people show a woeful lack of imagination on how to apply formal methods. First rule of mathematics: If you can't solve the problem in one domain, apply a suitable transform and turn it into a domain you can solve the problem in.

However, your talk of debugging indicates the malady runs deeper and that there is also a woeful lack of understanding of what formal methods even are.

That is why...

[jd]

You should never prove programs the way CS instructors teach. If they knew - really knew - how to do it well, they'd be off making millions as consultants for designers of mission-critical projects. I've never seen a lecturer turn up in top-quality designer jackets eating caviar, so it is reasonable to assume they're either (a) vegan, or (b) not as knowledgable as they like to claim.

How would I solve the scalability problem? I wouldn't. One of the most important rules in maths is that if a problem is not easily solvable in one domain, you should transform it into one it can be easily solved in.

This applies to formal methods. A Z Specification, for example, describes a set of states and state changes. All problems need to be reduced to something in this format to be usable. When a problem cannot be trivially reduced, you apply transforms until it can.

For example, threading. You describe the thread as the state and the operations that the thread can do are the statements reflecting the state change. You would do a whole different set of schemas for the operations themselves. And then another set for every other dimension that you can identify.

You are correct that proving more than a few hundred lines is extremely hard, but if you assume "black box" development, you only ever have to prove the box. Nothing outside of the box matters, because it will have no impact on the inside.

It is time-consuming, it does require some very skilled mathematicians, but it can be translated into a set of problems where each member of the set is solvable.

Why are we still talking about this

[myfantasyromanc]

In the first place didn't microsoft go back to the drawing board for Vista? Didn't they totally rewrite it from scratch? I thought that is what i read! if not someone please correct me. If what i read back when they started on it is true that it should be a little more secure(hopefully) if they have learned anything. And can anybody answer if Vista was affected by the latest worms. Yes wmf is an old legacy piece o'crap but come on, why does everybody make a big deal out of the microsoft issues. But i bet i can look at most linux distros and find them having multiple if not more patches comming out all the time for there distros. Alot of them are for the core. The reason everybody talks about it is cause microsoft is on most computers. Guess what microshaft is gonna be the target! That is why it is such a big deal. There is nothing secure! Trust me everything can be brute forced or there is someway to crack it! it just takes time. Or lots of super computers. Or maybe just great social engineering!

You're wasting your time

[Anonymous Coward]

The troll you're arguing with will keep misrepresenting what you've said in a vain attempt to make it appear that he's right.

Stop wasting your time.

Re:You're wasting your time

[Anonymous Coward]

"The troll you're arguing with will keep misrepresenting what you've said in a vain attempt to make it appear that he's right." - by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12, @02:12PM (#14456815)

More namecalling, eh? I thought you slashdotters represented the 'cream of the crop' online as far as technical knowledge... it appears I was in error, for once!

LOL, so... that said?

Well, is that reply of yours I quoted above the BEST YOU'VE GOT?

(Instead of namecalling, use some verifiable facts as I did... & disprove the points I put down which were backed by solid evidences & easily verified!
Especially the ones directed to node 3 regarding WINE's weakness (where Windows has none in the SAME area now), for his namecalling & antics... )

Like I said before, I'll wade thru you all, as I have easily by this point, 1 by 1, FIFO-style... & also, like I said before (quoting Brad Pitt from the film TROY as Achilles?)

"IS THERE NO ONE ELSE?" (2x... no challengers!)

* :)

APK

P.S.=> When you avoid disproving the points I put down vs. your own, as I did with node 3 (easily, by showing WINE is weak where Windows is patched vs. the .wmf flaw no less STILL to date it's true as of 01/12/2006)?

You're ONLY defeating yourselves, by avoiding answering my questions & requests to disprove my points... thank-you very much! You guys make ME look good... better than I am really!

LOL, BUT, then again, I have always found that @ slashdot, it's usually fairly simple to maneuver you 'linux penguins" into corners you cannot get out of, because you all toss names, & then avoid answering questions vs. verifiable concrete data & points I put out which you cannot overcome...

TOO EASY! apk