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Microsoft Gets Help From NSA for Vista Security
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post is reporting that Microsoft received help from the National Security Agency in protecting the Vista operating system from worms and viruses. The Agency aimed to help as many people as they could, and chose to assist Vista with good reason: the OS still has a 90 percent lock on the PC market, with some 600 million Vista users expected by 2010. From the article: 'The Redmond, Wash., software maker declined to be specific about the contributions the NSA made to secure the Windows operating system ... Microsoft said this is not the first time it has sought help from the NSA. For about four years, Microsoft has tapped the spy agency for security expertise in reviewing its operating systems, including the Windows XP consumer version and the Windows Server 2003 for corporate customers.'"
...OS will always be the most Vulnerable (Spelling?) Maybe the NSA can slow down how fast Windows gets raped.
Indoctrinate : to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments Educate : to develop mentally, morally, or aestheti
Of course I want the NSA I pay for and depend on to protect me working to make Vista safer. Because Vista is part of the security environment, eventually the biggest part. It's such a threat to Americans' security that NSA should be able to require MS to let NSA help secure it.
The problem is that NSA costs money to operate. Tax money. Tax money that Microsoft doesn't pay. Microsoft cuts costs by ignoring security whenever it can (most of the time). While raking in literally untold $BILLIONS in profits. Now their security work is being subsidized by free work by NSA. So I'm paying for Microsoft to be able to brag that "Vista is secured by the NSA", which will increase its sales. I doubt that JoeSchmoeLinux, Inc, gets Microsoft's attention from the NSA, even proportionate to the benefit it would provide.
Of course I want NSA helping secure Vista, because that makes us safer, NSA's job. I just want Microsoft to pay its share of providing it that benefit. That would mean paying at least its share of taxes, something like $30BILLION or more a year, plus a fee for "special treatment" by the NSA that other companies don't get. Or at least make NSA's Vista work public, so the public can benefit, including MS competitors even if they're small.
That would also make the work even more secure, instead of relying on security through obscurity which MS prefers to protect its profits more than its operations. The secret/proprietary work also lets the NSA hide literal spyware in Vista, which is absolutely unacceptable. Since the NSA is busy spying on Americans right now, including filtering this message, I am now in the business of paying the NSA to spy on me, in violation of my inalienable rights, by putting their spyware into commercial code subsidized by my "NSA fees".
When MS pays NSA to produce "open security" that others can share, I'll be safer. Until then, it's all part of the increasingly unsustainable threat to my security at every level, from economics to privacy to tyranny.
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make install -not war
Helping the users? Not really..
This helps microsoft hold their monopoly. If users got tired of dealing with a bug ridden OS with tons of security flaws, they'd move on to a better product.
This helps microsoft alone.
MABASPLOOM!
Funny, why aren't you also bitching about all the other Linux distro's including the patches from SELinux that the NSA also went over and thought would be more secure changes.
You couldn't possibly be biased could you? Nah, didn't think so.