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Black Screen of Death Not Microsoft's Fault
Barence follows up to the ongoing Black Screen of Death Saga by saying "Microsoft says reports of 'Black Screen of Death' errors aren't caused by Windows Updates, as claimed by a British security firm. The software giant claims November's Windows Updates didn't alter registry keys in the way described by Prevx, which said that the Microsoft Patches caused PCs to boot with just a black screen and a Windows Explorer window. Microsoft is now blaming the problem on malware. Prevx has issued a grovelling apology on its own blog."
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TFA says a piece of malware can knock out the null-terminator in a required string, which Explorer relies on to load properly.
While it's good to know that a simple problem can be solved quickly (and the root cause discovered, damn you malware), and it's also good to see that Prevx can apologize when the make a mistake-- but I have to wonder if Microsoft would have been attended to as quickly as they had had Prevx not complained as loudly as they did.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Since when does apologizing to someone for your own baseless accusations amount to "groveling"?
From the post in question:
Having narrowed down a specific trigger for this condition we've done quite a bit of testing and re-testing on the recent Windows patches including KB976098 and KB915597 as referred to in our previous blog. Since more specifically narrowing down the cause we have been able to exonerate these patches from being a contributory factor
. . .
We apologize to Microsoft for any inconvenience our blog may have caused.
Wow. Way to kiss ass.
You know what would be even more pathetic and embarrassing than this kind of "groveling"? Standing behind claims that you know to be false.
Breakfast served all day!
Grovelling? How sad it is that an honest apology gets an insult. If you find "We apologize to Microsoft for any inconvenience our blog may have caused." as grovelling, then I feel very sad for you and your vision of how people should relate to each other.
When users are happy to type "sudo rm ...", it doesn't really matter how impervious the system is.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Yes. I agree. Microsoft Windows should be 100% secure from malware. Not like it is ever the user's fault or anything...
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
The malware is Windows 7.
You assume that accepting blame and fixing the problem aren't mutually exclusive. Just because Microsoft said "that's not our fault" doesn't mean they won't fix it.
Maybe one day Microsoft will get rid of the Windows Registry. It's like putting port holes on the bottom of your boat. Sure, they let you see the fish, but sooner or later one is going to break and sink your ship.
The Windows registry has always been a bane of Windows use since it's inception.
Any OS is susceptible to malware. Malware is what users explicitly run, and then it does bad things to their system. You can't secure against that, and no OS on the market today does that. You can pop up tons of prompts, but then it's the "dancing bunnies" problem - depending on how enticing the malware author can make it sound, the user can be convinced to click "Yes" on each and every prompt.
Not really a surprise though. All the things I've read about Prevx come to just marketing their shit, somewhat like Symantec is. Not really a surprise they'll make shit statements like this and then just 'sorry' afterwards.
DId you rad the link? this is not being reported by very many people at all.
And in fact, it isn't their problem.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Does the sudo part really matter anyway? The most important files on my system are those in my home directory and they're owned by my own user account, thus no privilege escalation is required to touch them.
Having great security around the base OS is a good thing but if you don't also provide good security for the users' files, it's kind of like getting a bunch of guards to protect a bank but leaving the vault in an unprotected building next door.
On the other hand, I really don't want to have to deal with UAC/sudo/etc. every time I edit one of my own documents, so it's kind of an unwinable situation that only good backups can protect against.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
Any OS is susceptible to malware. Malware is what users explicitly run, and then it does bad things to their system. You can't secure against that, and no OS on the market today does that.
Since switching to Ubuntu, I have had no need to install weird things off the internet. I just go to Ubuntu's software repositories, and I can download thousands and thousands of pieces of software that have been tested just for my operating system. No malware, no viruses, no attention seeking software that wants to embed a brand in my brain, no nagging to buy additional products, nothing.
I consider it to be the case that my free OS does indeed protect me against malware, where proprietary offerings that cost hundreds of dollars more do not.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
so, is that why
$ touch ~/privates /home/some-other-user/privates
works, but
$ touch
gives me a rights error!?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
What do you want them to replace it with? hundreds of .conf files scattered randomly about the filesystem, with no standard format?
After having used Linux and Windows and OS X systems for years, OS X does this right.
Yes there are "hundreds of conf files". But they are not scattered around, they are all in ~/Library/Preferences.
And they are usually named via the company name + app convention, like com.apple.mail.
And as opposed to being in "no standard format", they are all plist files (which are basically XML).
So it's easy to find where they are, easy to figure out what plist file belongs to what, and easy to edit or remove them as needed. If there is corruption (which I have never actually seen in practice) it would be limited to a single file - and an app encountering a preference file it could not read would simply replace it with a new default version. You would at worst lose a few custom settings for one app - and even then only as long as it took you to pull a backup of that single file out of Time Machine, since it's easy to restore the preferences for a single application from any backup.
However, I have to add that even if you went with a Linux system where the conf files are scattered all over in many different forms, I can say with confidence it is still 100% better than the nightmare of the registry. In practice the files are very easy to edit regardless of format, it's really only the question of the location that gets annoying.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is a completely bullshi** statement. How does the article in any way suggest that Windows 7 is more susceptible to malware? And more susceptible compared to what? And where exactly are you getting the data that suggests a large percentage is suffering from this? I know this is Slashdot but could you at least make an effort to provide some evidence of statements you are making.
In other words, this problem will never be solved until people finally get over the baseless notion that they need administrator rights to check their email and read the news online.
Not quite...
Were those the only applications required, the notion would indeed be baseless, but...
There is still a huge raft of Windows software that will not perform properly without admin rights. Until that is fixed, the problem will never be solved.
There are several linux distros that won't let you log into gdm/kdm as root. Windows was designed for users to login as administrators.
Microsoft is trying to change that mentality with Vista and 7, except too many applications are having issues with UAC. What Microsoft should have done is said, "you're not allowed to claim your application works with Vista and 7 unless it behaves nicely with UAC."
Even better, it should be following a proper UNIX-esque security model. It could create users/groups for specific escalation. Apps shouldn't ask to escalte to administrator level. They should ask only to escalate the rights they specifically need, such as writing to C:\Program Files\Foo\.
Microsoft is happy to blame the users, but it is Microsoft who established the industry standards. They set the table. They tell the users how to use their OS, and they tell developers how to develop for their OS. If Microsoft shipped a more secure design from the get-go, we wouldn't have as many issues. I'm sure malware authors would still target the market-share king and eventually find chinks in the armor, but right now it is so easy to target Windows that every script-kiddie on the planet pulls it off with ease.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Just out of curiosity, shouldn't Microsoft be responsible for ensuring that only valid data makes it into the registry? If this is the core information source for the system, it would seem that there should be checks in place, at the OS level, that prevent changes to core items.
Ok, I give up, why you?
The vast majority of malware, rootkits, spyware, viruses, etc that plague windows so severely are completely dependent on having administrator rights. If windows users would join the rest of the computing community in the present century and realize that they don't need administrator rights to check their email, they would see the infection rate drop astronomically.
The days of malware failing without admin rights are gone. The vast majority of malware today is coded to be "rights aware", and stay in the users profile if limited rights or UAC is present.
At work, I took away users' admin rights around 2000 and our infection rates dropped to near 0%. Since Vista and UAC became mainstream adware infections are actually up. It's easy to clean though since it remains confined to the users profile.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
I can create an application, put its settings in the registry, and boom -- I can manage it through an MMC for thousands of computers...
If you can control one file, you can control many. Which is why a separate preference file per app would work just as well. Only moreseo because a user HAS to be able to write to the registry, where you can totally lock down a single file. Yes I know you can theoretically lock down sections of the registry but that to me seems like a weaker system, not to mention the danger of registry merges corrupting something.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ubuntu protects you from malware in the same way that a Geo protects you from carjackers.
Actually you can, to some extent. Anything the user runs on OS X for the first time after download issues a warning, and then you need an administrator password beyond that to modify the kinds of system level files we are talking about here.
Vista/7 do both things (warning about launching of binaries that originate from the Net, and requiring a confirmation to elevate to admin) as well. This doesn't solve the "dancing bunnies" problem, however, which is the source of vast majority of infections out there. Why bother with security vulnerabilities at all, if you can trivially convince the user to run the payload himself, and click through all the prompts?
The base issue is that in Windows 7 Microsoft weakened UAC, so even if you have it disabled a program can do some system level things without warning if you are logged in as administrator.
The "weakened" UAC in 7 doesn't let any random programs do any system level things without warnings. The only thing that's weakened is that certain (effectively whitelisted) programs that come with OS can change system settings without elevation - most notably, built-in screens in Control Panel.
I have 700-800 plist files in my Preferences directory. All those widgets I tried, apps I installed, removed, run one time.
It must be like 1 line of command on Terminal or basic "Finder" order by date to find the old/unneeded ones and delete them but I don't bother. Why? Because it has zero effect on OS X. OS X wouldn't really care if there were 1000000 pref files there since it is not its business to maintain them let alone read them.
On Windows, while I hate the idea from the beginning, if you don't clean up your registry, OS will do it for you. Last time it was like 20% overhead required to clean it up at boot. If you get enough junk on that already huge, complex file, it will effect the entire performance of system. Windows _has to read_ that gigantic database to function and find its way in it.
ps: Now you understand why Windows technical user switchers insist on having "uninstall tool" or be amazed at "no add remove programs" on OS X? They generally think having redundant, old files, needless files will somehow effect their system. You can even add "universal binary haters" to that camp. I don't blame them, I blame Windows.
The real question there is really a matter of user freedom vs. turning your choice over to whomever manages those repositories as a gatekeeper. It's an easier choice to make on a smartphone since people are going to generally use it for the same major reasons, but on a laptop or desktop, it depends more on what you want to get out of it.
Some folks don't mind being given the freedom to determine what is going to be bad for them and what is going to be good for them...and some folks want their hands held for them. Linux does give you both options, it just makes it a PITA for "ordinary folks" to do it one way and thus, guides them into the repos.
Microsoft announcing that they'd be the absolute gatekeeper for software installs would probably be like dropping an atom bomb on a lot of legitimate software companies along with a lot of illegitimate companies that produce badware. They had a little experience with this already, what with Palladium and Trustworthy Computing. Didn't go over too well, did it?
When performing a Windows 2000 or XP install, it prompts you to name a user, which is an administrator account.
So it is designed by default to log you in as an administrator.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
On UNIX-like systems, files are not actually deleted from the disk until the last open file descriptor is closed. You can use this to get completely anonymous temporary files that are garbage-collected when the program abnormally terminates by opening a file and then unlinking it. The file still exists, but it isn't in any directory. When you run the rm command, it and all of its dependent libraries are opened and mapped into the process's address space. Deleting them just removes them from the directory that contains them, it does not return their space for reuse until later.
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Actually, the Registry is a good concept. The Registry is just a file system for little data items. The trouble is that any application can write to any part of it. It lacks a security model. (Yes, you can attach security restrictions to registry keys, but nobody does this, because Windows 95 didn't have that, and applications didn't have support for it.)
The big problem with Windows security is Microsoft never put a security model in place under the concept of program installation. The way this ought to work is that there should be several classes of things one can install. Call them "applications", "plugins", "middleware", and "system modifications".
Installers of "applications" should be limited to writing to the application's subtrees in Program Files, Documents and Settings, and the Registry. Uninstalling an application consists of removing those subtrees. Applications cannot install anything that runs at startup or runs periodically. Most programs (especially games and entertainment apps) should be applications. Under these restrictions, installation of applications is relatively safe, and should be allowed with Power User privileges.
"Plugins" are sub-applications which affect one application. They go in their own subtree under the appropriate application. The application controls their installation, and they can't do anything the application can't do. Browser plug-ins fall in this category if the browser is an "application". If the browser is "middleware" (IE is, but Firefox is not), more privileges are required.
"Middleware" is programs run by other programs, like Java. Changing middleware can affect multiple applications, so that requires more privileges. Code signing is appropriate.
"System modifications", which modify the OS itself and may require a reboot, should require both code signing by a clearly identified party and administrator privileges to install.
Of course, if we had something like that, app developers would bitch that they couldn't load their "phone home for update" service or "prelauncher". Tough. You don't really need to know if ZowieApp needs an update until you run ZowieApp again. And if your app needs to be "prelaunched" because it loads slowly, maybe the problem is that it loads slowly.