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Microsoft Eyes PC Isolation Ward To Thwart Botnets
CWmike writes "In a paper published Wednesday (PDF), Scott Charney, who heads Microsoft's trustworthy computing group, spelled out a concept of 'collective defense' that he said was modeled after public health measures like vaccinations and quarantines. The aim: To block botnet-infected computers from connecting to the Internet. Under the proposal, PCs would be issued a 'health certificate' that showed whether the system was fully patched, that it was running security software and a firewall, and that it was malware-free. Machines with deficiencies would require patching or an antivirus update, while bot-infected PCs might be barred from the Internet."
I tried to get the idea of "Network Access Protection" for the Internet on the agenda, at Microsoft, for 2 years. We already had the client mechanisms for evaluating health-status, and the signed messages for communicating that status.
I was working with big eCommerce and online finance companies. In my proposal, enforcement would be at site logon. Infected machines could not access account services or cart/profiles, etc. They'd get a re-direct to a clearing-house that would disassociate the online brand from the notice of infection. That protection site would have remediation resources.
In the end, we had some great discussions - but MS can't execute - and no one trusts 'em.
Now, Charney waves this thing around. AND WANTS ISPs TO BLACKHOLE clients! Way to go. I see this as another stealth control measure to create a defacto model for denying service. Today, it is a ZeuS infection - tomorrow an HDCP patched player or WikiLeaks cookie.
You get the idea. Stuff this genie back into the bottle.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Where is the USDOJ when you need them to remind Microsoft about their recent trip down anti-trust lane? Not to mention a nasty little thing called "collusion" - whichever AV and PKI vendors are selected naturally benefit, and I imagine all the ISPs will have to agree to enforce this as well or suffer some consequence.
A framework like this makes two assumptions that spell doom for future innovation by free thinkers: Microsoft Windows on every consumer device that connects to the Internet and every device using "Microsoft approved/recognized security software." Not a bad approach at first blush since that describes a large part of the marketplace and at least 100% of the problem, but honestly - there are better ways to solve this than trying to fit the future Internet ecosystem into Ballmer's limited imagination.
Read the paper. Please. And look for it soon as a key exhibit at the next anti-trust action against Microsoft.