Slashdot Mirror
The NYT on the Proliferation of Botnets
ThinkComp writes "The New York Times has a up a story on the proliferation of botnets. The article cites a number of security researchers who paint a depressing picture of the state of internet security, and concludes with the suggestion that for home users, buying a new 'updated' PC may be the only real solution. Unfortunately, as most of us know, given the number of outstanding flaws in software and the ingenuity of malicious software authors, that might not even help."
As a current Vista user I can tell you the following: Microsoft has a high priority of not being blamed for security issues. Their solution is to through the UAC (User Account Control) warn the user before he makes any action that could potentially be harmful to the system. This is just about any action. "WARNING! Operation 'use keyboard' is a high security risk. Press any key to abort." Ok, perhaps not that bad - but nearly. If you are an experienced user, you will turn UAC off after cursing at Microsoft for 15 minutes. If you are an inexperienced user you will just blindly accept the warning - otherwise you can't use your computer normally. In effect the operating system is constantly crying wolf and there is no way in hell an inexperienced user will be able to tell the difference between an irrelevant warning and a relevant one. Vista is also supposed to be much more secure under the hood. I really hope so, because their approach to user based security sucks. The only real point that I can see is avoiding getting sued.