Slashdot Mirror
Aging Security Vulnerability Still Allows PC Takeover
Jackson writes "Adam Boileau, a security consultant based in New Zealand has released a tool that can unlock Windows computers in seconds without the need for a password. By connecting a Linux machine to a Firewire port on the target machine, the tool can then modify Windows' password protection code and render it ineffective. Boileau said he did not release the tool publicly in 2006 because 'Microsoft was a little cagey about exactly whether Firewire memory access was a real security issue or not and we didn't want to cause any real trouble'. But now that a couple of years have passed and the issue has not resolved, Boileau decided to release the tool on his website."
Once again, on Slashdot, I say, 'who cares?' This is a Windows vulnerability and I thought Slashdot was an open source outlet for news and for some stories that people so-called 'care about', not Windows vulnerabilities. Yeah sure, every time a Windows Vista (which is always negative, in fact every Microsoft story is negative) story comes out and we can bash all we want and everything, and same for a story similar to this, but this is getting old. It has gotten old. I do not feel the need to bash Microsoft any more, they're going whatever which way they are, bad or not.
I know the poster of this story certainly feels like 'this'll definitely get them started', or whatever. Not me. I could go on and on all day about the mistakes that I feel Microsoft is making right now and past mistakes that are causing all these issues of now, but nothing is going to change substantially until we stop bashing and start pushing open source software usage, if that is what we care about. I am not going to waste much time bashing Microsoft.
I need not go any further than 'Windows + security = joke'. We already know that. That makes this news old. I do not care about this news because I, like most other 'power computer users', know how to use Windows 'properly' enough to not run into these vulnerabilities. Besides, don't we use Linux most of the time anyway? (I know I do.)
All I'm saying is, Slashdot has no need to post these stories about vulnerabilities in Windows or Mac. If stories are going to be related at all to Windows or Mac, then it should have to do with open source. Apple praise/Microsoft bashing is old. Soon enough, if Apple takes over the market, it will become Apple bashing. We all know this. Apple is easily able to be just anti-open-source as Microsoft.
We want open source OS's (Linux, FreeBSD, Syllable, etc) to be the most-used, don't we? Well, posting stories like this just to point and laugh at Microsoft makes the open source community look very pretentious, like looking at a 'Windows admin' and laughing at them because they do not know basic UNIX commands. How about this: teach, do not laugh. It is the only way to get those people on our side.
"Niagara Falls! Slowly I turned... step by step... and I had my revenge! I beat him, over and over, and finally put my hands around his wretched throat..."
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Please mod any "fixed it for you" messages down into oblivion.
It's stupid, tiresome, trite, and is putting words in people's mouths.
... with little root-tubers jutting out of them. Pathetic things, really, because those roots have a tendency to tickle a guy in...