Slashdot Mirror


MS To Share Early Flaw Data With Governments

Trailrunner7 writes "Microsoft today announced plans to share pre-patch details on software vulnerabilities with governments around the world under a new program aimed at securing critical infrastructure and government assets from hacker attacks. The program, codenamed Omega, features a 'Defensive Information Sharing Program' that will offer government entities at the national level technical information on vulnerabilities that are being updated in their products." There's a stream the bad guys would dearly love to tap into.

2 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. WTF? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because governments would never help a company in their nation with industial espionage.....

  2. License to hack! by molo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is insanity! So the government of US, UK, Israel, China, etc. will get information on vulnerabilities before the general public? The obvious outcome isn't a more secure government server, it is that the intelligence agencies will get a headstart on exploiting public and private systems the world over. It is a license to hack, for either industrial espionage or government espionage purposes.

    What is a system administrator to do? There is no way to prepare for this kind of thing, the attack vectors will be unknowable by the general public. My only thought is to switch as many systems away from Microsoft as fast as possible. This is a total security nightmare.

    -molo

    --
    Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.