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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.
Microsoft is an incredibly successful empire built on the premise of market dominance with low-quality goods.
If he really said that I bet Microsoft execs are spewing their cornflakes as we speak!
One of my computer science professors once stated, quite succinctly, that Microsoft was not in business to make a quality operating system (or quality product). They are in business to make money.
On a related note, if they were in business to make a quality operating system, they would have a tough time selling "upgrades."
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.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
For once, I RTFA. The summary seemed interesting. However, the FA was even more interesting, although it had little to do with all the money that Microsoft had in its back pocket, and how it's market dominance was based on low cost products.
The main thrust of the FA, for those of you who don't want to click the link, is that because the Windows OS is so prevalent in civilian and corporate usage, a Cyberattack could devastate the economy (and western civilization).
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
I am not a Microsoft fan, but I believe the weak link has much more to do with the meat sitting in front of the computer than the software on the computer.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Remember, he was the guy who warned Rice and President Cheney about an imminent Al Qaeda attack. Or depending how you view it, failed to convince them of it. Still, as ass covering goes, his was iron clad.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
But then, to a large extent they helped popularize the PC which became ubiquitous and hence became worthy of attack. The PC also became a reasonably standard platform upon which Linux etc. could be developed and cheap enough that we can all afford to own one and join in the fun. It is by no means certain that this would have happened otherwise because I don't believe security is the enemy of profit, in fact I think we'll see a future where security tightens to the point where hardware will be locked to only run a certain OS - where will Linux be then ?
Nullius in verba
All of the money spent on lobbying the government against using Linux would have been much better spent on developing a reliable, secure operating system. The shortsightedness of large corporation never ceases to amaze me. Since they spent all of this money on lobbying, which ultimately was unsuccessful, they had to spend money on securing Windows anyway. So, Microsoft spent a large sum of money in total, when they could have just made a better product to being with.
Why do you people always say this? Windows is the Single-User system botched into a multi-user environment, not Unix.
There's nothing wrong with the newer rounds of MS software; the problem is the older stuff, which as time goes further back, tends to get less & less secure (all the way to Win98/95 which actually had no security at all).
Even now I occasionally run into boxen running thoroughly rooted Windows.....98. That's your problem.
throw new NoSignatureException();
As such you would expect them to excel at security nowadays since it seems a very big concern amongst most users. Still their security efforts are pretty laid back and half assed. Microsoft dont take security seriously, its a pr problem for them at the most.
As a market leader one would expect Windows spanking Linux, BSD and Apples behinds but in reality Windows security sucks. Not because its more prevalent but because its a sitting duck. At Microsoft, features and ease of development has always stood higher than security on the priority lists. The only thing that can change that is monetary pressure like demand for accountability of their products. Until then, Microsoft security is a game of statistics, lies and damn statistics.
HTTP/1.1 400
[Windows] may be the most widely used desktop OS, but once you include servers and small devices, Linux beats it easily.
Compared to home desktop PCs, servers are more likely to be administered by someone with a clue about locking down and updating the system. Small mobile devices have only a sporadic connection to the Internet, much like home PCs in the dial-up era, and many use an executable whitelist managed by the device maker. So barring a security hole in something like a home router appliance, desktop PCs running Windows are likely the juiciest targets for establishing a botnet.
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?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Film at 11.
I mean, seriously, it's the most widely used OS on the planet. It's also the most likely target.
That's a flawed argument. It isn't bad because lots of people use it, it's bad because it's bad.
That's horseshit. When someone makes a better OS than MS, I'll start believing these stories. ... while windows will run on pretty much any hardware.
Set the koolade down and step back. Microsoft Windows works on a much wider range of hardware than OSX, but it's still quite limited. I will concede that only Microsoft Windows excels at making use of a proprietary piece of crap like a Win-modem or a Win-printer.
Linux may have some technical merit, but is a mess where people without advanced computer skills are left in the dark.
My experience is that the average XP user is more baffled by Windows 7 than by Ubuntu. And don't even think of suggesting that Ubuntu can't be set up by someone knowledgeable.
Sure windows had bugs, but many of those aren't MS's fault, but rather vendors that write crap drivers.
Microsoft provides an ever-changing foundation of thick muck. And like you, they are quick to blame others for any problems.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
Only government agencies can afford to spend a year designing a bullet-proof system, then another year writing the software and a year or two more making sure that no-one can ever break in to it. Are yo prepared to slow down software development by a factor of 8, from 6-monthly release cycles to a new version every 4 years? It would be commercial suicide and far too expensive.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Linux 2.6x KERNEL SECURITY VULNERABILITIES
It doesn't make sense to compare a line of kernels dating back to 2003 to an operating system that came out last year. The 7 kernel is just a derivative of the Vista kernel, for example. And in '03, XP was still going strong. Furthermore, 2.6 or whatever is just a name. I am running 2.6.32. How does the NT 6.1 you are presumably running compare to that?
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
It's a frequently used troll post. It has been completely debunked in the past several times. All of the critical bugs listed for the Linux kernel, for example, were local exploits only -- NONE were remote. In contrast, Microsoft's exploitable bugs are famously remote exploits meaning they can be done over a network connection. Mac OS X is another bag of worms... but thankfully, Apple controls and limits its users such that it will never be big or ubiquitous enough for large scale general use like Windows and will never likely get used in critical government or business operations.