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Symantec Updates Cause Chaos in China
Hello Kitty writes "According to Computerworld, a signature update to Symantec's anti-virus software has knocked out thousands of Chinese PCs. Apparently the latest update for the AV component of the various Norton packages mistook two system files in the Chinese edition of Windows XP SP2 for the 'Backdoor.Haxdoor' trojan. Piracy issues may complicate recovery, since once the updates are installed Symantec says the only hope for reviving an affected system is to re-copy the affected DLLs from the Windows restore disks. Everyone has their official restore disks handy, right?"
I've got no sympathy for the Chinese. God only knows how many of the copies of Symantec Anti-virus over there are legitimately owned. This ought to teach them a good anti-piracy lesson.
Be careful about wishing ill on other people. Your desire to force them to purchase American products might inadvertently end up forcing them to use Linux instead, and then not only will American lose sales form China, but other countries might follow suit. Things are just fine the way they are now, so just try to find some way to be happy about it.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Who cares, fuck the Chinese market. They deserve to have thousands of their pirated computers go down. They are stealing money from the US everyday. It's bad enough we let them suck our manufacturing market dry simply for the sake of 30% off goods, now we are supposed to feel sorry for them that their pirated version of windows got hacked.. awwww.
Shit it probably IS a backdoor virus slipstreamed right into the Xp Sp2 install.
China is said to have a great deal of piracy? Could they actually have been pirated copies with malicious code?
As a Linux and OS X user who only runs Monkeysoft in virtualization, I can only squeeze out a little amount pity for the affected folks.
EEEERRRRK. URGGGGGGGG. Hah! There it is.
1) Monkeysoft Windows is a weak OS that requires anti-virus software to keep it safe. The OS tells you as much itself.
2) Security starts with good design. Any OS that depends on third-party tools to be safe is not designed for networking. And THAT is Monkeysoft's real problem. The Internet has done more damage to their products than any competition.
3) The computing model in which anti-virus software companies manage users' safety remotely is a bad idea. Do they know what they are doing, and do you want them doing it? Probably not, and probably not.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Most likely what will happen is that an edict will come from the highest levels to use Linux, and within months all state information will say that Linux has been fully adopted. However, it will most likely also be the case that the low level managers have kept their free pirated versions of Windows and simply lied to their superiors about Linux to tell them what they expect to hear.
This is also a common cause of famine in China: the central planners tell each region how much rice they will grow in a season, and the beauraucrats tell them that's how much rice was grown. When that fails to be the case, people starve because nobody ever admits to lying, so nobody knows that the surplus regions have a surplus and the deficit regions have a deficit.
dom
The code base for an OS the size of Windows (and any Linux based OS as well) is bound to have security flaws. The great advantage of proprietary software development as that those security flaws are only known to the people in-house...and their friends...and the people they chat with on IRC...and the people they talk with at conventions...
You don't know a thing about social networking yet you somehow managed to influence someone with mod points.
Go AC go!
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac