Microsoft a Weak Link In Possible Cyber War

climenole writes 'Microsoft has vast resources, literally billions of dollars in cash, or liquid assets reserves. Microsoft is an incredibly successful empire built on the premise of market dominance with low-quality goods,' says former White House advisor Richard Clarke in a recent book. Microsoft makes the list of risks because so many people have installed its software for critical systems.

Comments

It is simple Darwinism

[filesiteguy]

If you look at any ecosystem, you'll find that there are pests trying to gain a foothold into that system by exploiting a weakness. If there is only one type of organism, the pests will adapt and exploit the weakness of that organism. This is why you need ever more powerful pesticides when cultivatign monoculture crops such as corn, wheat or even soybeans.

Same goes for ecosystems of comptuers. Given 90% are running Wintendo, you find that the pests (virus and other exploit authors) take adavantage of that monoculture. The weaknesses are then exploited and have to be "patched" in order to ensure survival of data and/or systems.

Given an ecosystem with multiple operating systems - Windows, Linux, Unix/OSX, zOS - you'll find a greater ability to defend against continual threats.

Re:It is simple Darwinism

[vcgodinich]

The fact that at the recent history of security conferences, widows did just as well out of the box as *nix did, and OSX was breached with ease speaks volumes as well.

No matter WHAT MS does, it isn't going to be able to secure home PCs against "cyber warfare" from China. end of story. MS's security isn't bad at all, in fact it's years ahead of it's nearest competitor (OSX).

You can't have secure AND popular

[petes_PoV]

For software to be used by "everyone" it must put as few complications as possible between its users and their objectives. Since most people's objectives are focussed on results, not security, if you try to make an operating system or application suite secure, people will find a simpler, more direct way of achieving their goals. One where their perceived balance of speediness and security (i.e. as fast as possible and damn the consequences) is met.

Once you get away from using popular applications and O/S's, the price rises incredibly quickly. Instead of spreading (say) a billion dollar development costs across 100 million product sales, you have maybe 10,000 customers who can be persuaded to pay for a product. This immediately means no-one will buy it unless forced to by law, or unless they can in turn, pass on the costs to their customers. The smaller market also means there will be fewer suppliers - probably just one. Which in turn will drive up costs due to lack of competition and decrease any incentives to fix problems or develop new wares in a timely fashion.

We know what a secure operating system for the year 2010 will look like. It will look like VMS from 1995, for all the reasons discussed above. Now, which are we prepared to pay for: Microsoft products on every store shelf, running the country or critical systems with the security, features, lack of connectivity from the mid-90s?