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Dan Geer's Monoculture Bomb Goes Off
Andy Updegrove writes "Three years ago, celebrated security expert Dan Geer lost his job at @stake when he co-authored a paper on the dangers that the Microsoft 'monoculture' represented for end-users. Last fall, he authored a similar warning in a Perspective piece he wrote for CNETNews.com, applauding the action of Massachusetts in adopting OpenDocument Format, thereby reducing its vulnerability to the same type of risk. Four days ago, Dan's prediction came true, when users of Word (but not those that only trade files created in StarOffice, OpenOffice, or other ODF compliant software) began to be infected with the Backdoor.Ginwui virus - a malicious Trojan program that hitches a ride on bogus Word documents. In short, an object lesson that in IT, as in biology, those that exist in diverse gene pools are at a lower risk, both individually and collectively, from those that subsist in a proprietary monoculture."
Object lesson? I think you mean an 'abject lesson' but I could be wrong. Of course, I could predict that some virus will infect Microsoft in the future too. And that a much lesser used format will not be affected. I suppose I could blog about it. Then when it happens, I could blog some more about it, saying how smart I was. Maybe I'd misuse the word 'irony' too as in "isn't it ironic that Microsoft got infected when linux didn't"... It would be a web-trifecta...
"One of the reasons that birds feed in flocks is that it means more eyes to watch for danger. Most of the time, at least one member of the flock will see the hawk coming and sound the alarm." - Hawks at the Feeder
The moral is obvious: living in a "proprietary monoculture" can reduce your risks.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
One time at band camp, I was ...