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Inside the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit
Trailrunner7 writes "The Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit has been spearheading botnet takedowns and other anti-cybercrime operations for many years, and it has had remarkable success. But the cybercrime problem isn't going away anytime soon, so the DCU is in the process of building a new cybercrime center here, and soon will roll out a new threat intelligence service to help ISPs and CERT teams get better data about ongoing attacks. Dennis Fisher sat down with TJ Campana, director of security at the DCU, to discuss the unit's work and what threats could be next on the target list."
Is this an article about how the Windows 8 UI was designed?
I want to know exactly what idiot gave Microsoft the authority to create a law enforcement unit other than their jackbooted licensing audit thugs from the Business Software Alliance.
Needs a judge's approval.
But we’re very careful about how we do this. We’re not just going out there shooting stuff. We walk in with a pile of legal documents. We’re asking for a judge to agree with what we found.
This space for rent.
You don't actually think Microsoft is going around kicking in doors, do you? They're mostly working as a legal presence or as a team of civilian experts assisting law enforcement and everything goes through a judge.
... the Windows development team for allowing such a security swiss cheese of an operating system to escape from the lab and the marketing team for trying to sell to innocent consumers?
But it is so hard to read all the way to the first question of the interview.
You mean how they play whack-a-mole with botnets and claim victory when they accidentally hit one, but stay curiously mum when the very same botnet pops up again only two weeks later?
N'mind that they've been criminally lax in improving their software, creating a very easily planted very fertile ground for an entire flora and fauna of malware to grow and prosper in the first place. They created this "ecosystem" on a much grander scale than this "remarkable success" in taking down little pieces of it, for a short while.
You mean like this ?
that the great digital crime of recent note was Windows 8, but I've been beaten to the punch, several times already.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
How come the "Superior UNIX design" that have lead to tens of thousands of +5 Insightful Slashdot posts over the years doesn't protect Android and OS X?
UNIX does nothing to stop the owner of a computer system from wiping out all files by doing su and then rm -rf / or similar. There are only two ways to stop a device's owner from doing that: education, or taking administrative privileges away from the device's owner.
As I understand it, people blame Microsoft for adding Secure Boot support to Windows 8 because of what Microsoft did to the companion product Windows RT at the same time. Microsoft forbids manufacturers of devices that ship with Windows RT from allowing the user to disable or otherwise reconfigure Secure Boot. Devices with an x86 CPU MUST allow user configuration of Secure Boot, but devices with an ARM CPU MUST NOT.
Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit exists alongside the FBI's cyber-crime efforts for the reason that any other private investigation firm exists alongside a police force.
Law enforcement? I think you're confused. This unit is created specifically to commit crimes!
But if youre finally at the questions, things go from bad to worse. One would expect a "Digital Crimes Unit" to:
- investigate security holes (preferably before shiping it out)
- make sure that virus-makers dont have a chance.
- find, cage and string up the idiot that makes Win8 harder to get rid of than a bad case of Herpes.
- see to it that three-letter-agency's (both US and nonUS) place backdoors in MS software.
- Explosions, romance, fast car's, flashing badges and glue-on-moustaches
But noooooooh... They really rather cry about the baddies making stupid botnets.
DCU, pffff what a laugh </roll-eyes>
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
They're not actually doing anything illegal. The situation is like this: the offenders are in plain sight on the internet, they don't bother hiding because there is nobody policing where they're enacting their schemes.
MS is exposing them to authorities basically doing their legwork for them in tracking down these criminals.
They have motivation to do it too, its their systems that are most often affected by these criminals, so they are being uncannily pro-active about it.
It's the rare sight of corporate America giving back to the community. So rare in fact, people seem confused by it.
Ok just one question first; Do we get to ride into battle on the back of a rampaging gnu leading a hoard of penguins and fight iNinjas?
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
If they really wanted to 'stop crime' as their top objective they could just make a more secure product, starting by ejecting all the useless legacy code that lets the bad guys win without hardly trying. Its hard to make a secure design starting from a block of swiss cheese. There are more things they could do to make crime harder than I could ever possibly list in this limited space.
Who needs shills when your competition has been diligently chumming the water in which they live for a decade or two? Microsoft has earned its hatred in this industry, one pissed off user at a time. To pretend this entirely predictable reaction is the work of shills only betrays your own allegiance and paid for status...
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What crimes does this branch of Microsoft commit that the other branches do not?
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.