Microsoft Apologizes To Rival

Geoffrey.landis writes "Microsoft apologized to rival software vendor Corel Corp. for saying that Corel's file format posed a security risk, and issued a set of tools to unblock file types that had been blocked by default in the December Office 2003 service pack. In his blog on the Microsoft site, David Leblanc says 'We did a poor job of describing the default format changes.' He goes on to explain, 'We stated that it was the file formats that were insecure, but this is actually not correct. A file format isn't insecure — it's the code that reads the format that's more or less secure.' As noted by News.com, 'it is the parsing code that Office 2003 uses to open and save the file types that is less secure.' Larry Seltzer at pcmag.com also blogs the story."

Comments

Re:Boiled down

[joe_bruin]

It boiled down to Microsoft, instead of fixing their bad file parsing code, disabled it so customers couldn't access their older files AND blamed Corel's file format. Notice that they are still not admitting that their code is bad or fixing it, they're just re-enabling their buggy code because customers complained that they couldn't open files.

Who neutered Microsoft?

[NullProg]

'We stated that it was the file formats that were insecure, but this is actually not correct. A file format isn't insecure -- it's the code that reads the format that's more or less secure.'

Admitting FUD is uncharacteristic of Microsoft. Speaking the plain truth means Hell just froze over.

I'm at a loss for words....

Enjoy,