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Microsoft To Distribute Third-Party Patches
dhiren writes "Secunia on Wednesday announced that their authenticated internal vulnerability scanner, the Corporate Software Inspector (CSI) 4.0, has been integrated with Microsoft Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) and System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). This will hopefully pave the way for other vendors to also make use of Windows' existing patching infrastructure and eliminate the need for the multitude of custom updater applications and services that clutter most systems today."
Oh, just call it a package manager and get over it. Your fancy words don't make it better.
For a minute I read the headline as "Microsoft to Distribute Eye Patches". With the rate of piracy Microsoft has goin on, I wouldn't be surprised.
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
Now we just have to break into one of the machines allowed to submit updates to be pushed, and we can rule the world!
Correct me if I am wrong, but Secunia is announcing that they are going to piggy-back on an existing WSUS server, and not that WSUS is going to start shipping with and deploying Secunia's updates for everyone who uses WSUS? I'm not sure why this is anything special at all. I help people replace WSUS all the time and they want to use less of it, not more. Perhaps I'm not understanding something here...
The Wikpedia says that dpkg came out in 1993.
So Microsoft is only catching up after 17 years.
--
BMO
This will hopefully pave the way for other vendors to also make use of Windows' existing patching infrastructure and eliminate the need for the multitude of custom updater applications and services that clutter most systems today.
Or just go to Linux, where most distributions have had something like this for over a decade now. The worst part is, I'm sure I will star hearing from Windows people how fantastic the new "innovation" is...
It's just a small piece of the pie. When they open it up to some other major players I'll be impressed.
It's not like this is a new concept, get with the times; it is for the security of your OS for christ sakes. Maybe cut down on why OSX or whichever OTHER OS anyone can name has such a virus advantage on you, if even slightly.
Oh and Yes I understand what Secunia entails, but it's still small.
~Mekkah
It's not about copying, it's about sandbagging.
Microsoft as a monopoly gets to drag it's feet for years and years while it's end users suffer.
Some of us are still holding a grudge over that 10 year wait for 32bit and proper GUIs.
They dragged their feet on proper multi-tasking too but then again so did just about everyone else...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Is this going to push updates via Windows Update to Windows 7 and other home versions as well, or just Win Server? Or is it even using Windows Update? Is that different from the "Windows Server Update Service?" I don't have anything to do with servers, so I'm honestly confused.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
In case you haven't heard, the entire history of computer technology has been copying and adding to someone else's idea.
Yeah, but most companies do it in a timely manner, not decades after the fact. This is akin to a cell phone company 20 years from now releasing their first touchscreen phone.
It isn't the fact that they copied the idea. It's the fact that it took so long to do so. I mean Windows has been through how many revisions since Up2Date (Yum's predecessor) and APT have been around? Since at latest 1999 (I'm sure there were earlier, but I know they existed in 99). And in that time, MS released XP, Vista and 7 (as far as desktop OS's go)...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
CNet used to have a similar service... only for the software that they themselves offered to users, of course. Then they discontinued it, re-launched as CatchUp, discontinued it again.. now it's some weird newsletter thing you can subscribe to.
Worked fairly well, though - was just a small utility that I guess checked for installed apps, checked the version info (from registry / files) for those it knew, and checked if there were any newer versions offered off of CNet.
Sucked when they discontinued it.. meant you had to check the pages / author sites manually all the time.. or subscribe to their RSS feeds (which only became popular later on), etc. In addition, half the apps I run now have their own update checking stuff.. some check on startup, some check every day, some check once a week... finding the settings for this (if the settings are even exposed) can be a to of fun too.. etc.
So hooray for Microsoft looking into this... looooong overdue. I do hope they allow -any- developer/application to take part, though.
What could possibly go wrong!
I don't think the editor of that piece had enough comprehensiveness has the second and third paragraphs are practically identical swatches of marketing vomit.
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
The only reason we keep using Internet Explorer at work is because we can patch it with WSUS. So if we could patch firefox with WSUS, it will be the end of IE in our environment! Can't wait for that day to come....
I use PSI (Personal Software Inspector) http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/ \
I don't do windows. Mac and Linux only.
Could someone compare and contrast with apt-get and security.debian.org, which I am very familiar with?
I'm not trying to ignite a flamewar, I'm just curious about the feature set. What one side would have to add to reach the other side's level, etc.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
reply to self - go figure.. I tried to dig up some more information on the old service.. and somewhere buried among the google hits:
http://www.cnet.com/techtracker/
Which sounds like it does what the old app did... except you now need a CNet account to see the results? *sigh*
Some posts in the forum for it ( http://forums.cnet.com/techtracker-forum/ ) seem to indicate some possible issues as well.
Does anyone have any link that would confirm that Microsoft actually did anything besides allowing a third party to use an API? The summary tries to make it sound like Microsoft uses (integrates) some Secunia stuff now.
The article certainly does read like a Secunia ad.
The current version of WSUS includes an API that allows, among other things, anyone to publish third party updates through the WSUS system. I've been working on a project for a few months that does just that: https://sourceforge.net/projects/localupdatepubl
Reading the Secunia website, it seems like this is just a new feature in their 4.0 product, which has been in beta up until today. If the way I read things is correct, it's not like WSUS will be shipping with CSI technology built in; rather, if you purchase CSI 4.0, you'll have the ability to (hopefully, presumably) roll up 3rd party patches so that WSUS will recognize them, and spit them out to clients.
Which is great, not "Wow I just pissed my pants" great like I originally thought, but still. Can anyone comment on this feature, someone who was in the beta, etc? Ballpark pricing?
About time..how long has Linux been doing this?
about the time the geek discovered that compiling from source can be a royal pain in the butt -
and that a solution had to be found for the non-technical end user.
there remains the problem of programs that aren't packaged for your distribution - and the fragmentation of Linux into 200 or so odd distros can make OSX and Windows seem like models of shining sanity.
This is a good thing, if done properly.
It's also part of why people generally smile when they use their phones and frown when they use their computers.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
This is nothing new. MS has a tool called System Center Custom Update Pubpluser (or SCUP). Dell, Citrix, and Adobe Flash all have had catalogs to publish into WSUS/SCCM since 2007. Shavik put out a custom catalog last week.
You showed him!
I've long wondered why Microsoft doesn't use their Windows Update/Microsoft Update infrastructure to offer updates for things like Windows Live Essentials, Sync, Mesh, any other technologies. Microsoft needs to institute a rule that every group at the company *must* use existing API's before inventing their own system... no duplicate functionality.
Funny, I don't worry about the 200 odd distros when I work on a Linux desktop. Admittedly I stick to common distributions, but I think the fragmentation is a non-issue.
Linux doesn't have to worry about licensing problems with distributing 3rd party application patches and users coming to them for support if said patches cause issues with their machines. Not to mention the ludicrous number of different installation and patching mechanisms used by each vendor. Oh, and all those retarded apps that force you to manually uninstall the existing version before you can "upgrade" to the latest one.
Dang! I was excited, but alas WSUS isn't distributing the third-party patches, other software "Secunia CSI" is, which is not a free Microsoft download like WSUS is. You still need two different pieces of software (even if they ARE integrated) to accomplish this. Doesn't seem like big news.
Yes, and we whine even louder when they do it WRONG!!!
Administering an operating system without a package manager in this day and age is just fucking WRONG!!
Admit that, then we can move on to arguing the merits of the various package managers available to real operating systems.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
200 distros? Really? Confining ourselves to Linux - I think there are a half dozen root distros, with dozens of derivatives from each.
There are three main package managers, one of which will work with almost any distro you choose.
I know - half the people in the world can't decide what color socks to wear today, so they only buy black socks, or white socks. Some of the rest of us buy both black and white, and mix and match according to mood. Some daring individuals actually buy COLORFUL socks, and manage to keep up with the pairs.
The point is, not everyone is retarded.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Yeah, but most companies do it in a timely manner, not decades after the fact. This is akin to a cell phone company 20 years from now releasing their first touchscreen phone.
You mean kinda like how the iPhone was released 15 years after the first touch screen mobile phone?
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
dpkg is ported for windows ... take a look at http://windows-get.sourceforge.net/index.php
There are three main package managers, one of which will work with almost any distro you choose.
I know - half the people in the world can't decide what color socks to wear today, so they only buy black socks, or white socks. Some of the rest of us buy both black and white, and mix and match according to mood. Some daring individuals actually buy COLORFUL socks, and manage to keep up with the pairs.
The point is, not everyone is retarded.
Will every package manager have every app - and will every app be installed in the same state?
Will the non technical end user be presented with an attractive and fully functional GUI for the package manager?
The user who is accustomed to application X version Y at work will - quite sensibly - want application X version Y at home.
Every app is available for download. If the user is savvy enough to understand the differences between versions, then he will be savvy enough to use Google to ask for help installing that particular version.
Attractive and fully functional GUI? Yeah, I guess so. Depending on what you mean by "attractive", and "fully functional". If, by "attractive" you mean, "it looks and works like Microsoft", then you're out of luck. If by "attractive" you mean "it has working buttons to open and close, with a title bar, a toolbar with a help button", yeah, it's all there. If by "attractive" you mean "can it get me off" - well, only you can be the judge of that. As for functionality - the GUI's are just front ends for the REAL package managers, and they are all fully functional.
Have you had a particular problem, or are you echoing some of the FUD that the Windows fanbois have posted?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I started to post a comment about how now they could start to tackle something even more useful, like the universal through-browser application installer apt-url. But then I realized they already have that, it just lets the websites decide which app to install, and the results are mixed at best. Maybe they should work on that.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
There is very little that is not packaged for Debian and derivatives. The other major distros have everything that is commonly used packaged, and a lot of the more minor stuff. There are occasionally things missing but they are usually minor,
[Since the trollerators usually don’t care to read the whole comment before making false assumptions, I will point out, that I use Linux as my main system, love it, but as an expert on the area of UI design, am competent to state the facts how they are. If you don’t like it, don’t kill the messenger.]
Just wait. In 5-10 years, KDE and Gnome might create their own clone of it as a frontend for your package manager. It will look very similar, and act very similar too. Down to every little extremely annoying feature. The only difference will be, that the Gnome version will offer only the 3 functions that the developers think the user should use, and the KDE version will beat even MS in annoyance.
That was exactly what happened to the file manager with KDE4. Before, Konquerer was pretty OK. It had some annoyances, but all in all it was usable. But now there is the abomination called “Dolphin”.
Which chose to imitate every single thing that annoyed you in any version of the Windows Explorer, from Windows 95 until now.
Examples: By default, it’s a hover/single-click interface. Which makes it extremely fiddly. By default it has no directory tree, but expects you to use it in the same horribly stupid way that you had only windows of icons in Windows 95. Of course it did not forget to make the icons gigantic, with the text centered below them. No, not on the desktop. In the file manager! Every usability expert will tell you that that is the worst possible choice in terms of readability / eye flow. I could go on, and on, and no. It’s completely and utterly mental.
In fact, I should finally make that video about it. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
That's "Mr. Asshole" to you, son. I haven't spent the past half century becoming the perfect asshole, just to be disrespected by some snot nosed kid who hasn't learned to wash behind his ears. "Mr. Asshole", and get the hell off my lawn!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
This is late, but:
OK. It had some annoyances, but all in all it was usable. But now there is the abomination called Dolphin.
Dolphin, out of the box, is ugly. I guess so that it shows you nearly all of its features and panels. You fold these up and put them away and leave yourself with a nice clean interface. Then you drag out the features you need when you need them. Dolphin *really* can get out of your way if you tell it to.
Only people who have never used Dolphin say "omgwtfbbq" when presented with the default window.
So here's a question:
When you're exposing a user to a new feature, do you keep it rolled up and only let the user enable it or do you enable it and expect the user to put it away when not needed?
I can see arguments for both.
--
BMO