MS Exec: 'Our products just aren't engineered for security' 740
Various Microsoft news tidbits contributed by numerous readers: Phoebus0 notes that Microsoft's Vice-President in charge of Windows development states flat out that Microsoft products aren't engineered for security, absolutely guaranteeing he'll have tomorrow's Ditherati quote. Many readers submitted this Knowledge Base article stating that Microsoft is mystified by a wave of successful hacks on assorted versions of Windows (there's also a news report on this). Microsoft has another security bulletin out on the digital certificate spoofing bug that has caused them so many problems recently.
well duh... (Score:2)
They engineer for features and for maintaining monopoly control over the OS and word processing market.
Doug
Re:Michael Is A FUD-Packer (Score:4, Informative)
they are putting a spin on it.. (Score:2, Flamebait)
They're thrown together, spend half their time making it look pretty, and the rest of the time (after it's sold) releasing patches that are just as buggy as the original, if not more so...
Experience? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Experience? (Score:2, Insightful)
-asb
Re:Experience? (Score:3, Informative)
That much should be obvious - even to the legendary trolls of slashdot
Re:Experience? (Score:5, Informative)
Consider the above statement. Then go back to 1994 and set up three corporate LANs: one with Microsoft Lan Manager 2.x, one with Novell 3.11, and one with Vines. Use them intensively in a large, multi-site corporate environment for 6 months. Then tell me again that Microsoft's products are "just as well architected" as others on the market???
The point being that the LAN problem (to take one example) had already been solved by 199x. Microsoft ignored everything that had already been done and created its own "standard", which was decidedly inferior to the competition.
sPh
Re:Experience? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Experience? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is correct. Microsoft's genius lies in the marketing. Not that their products are all terrible, and thrive ONLY because of marketing, but marketing got them and keeps them where they are today.
Microsoft's corporate sales pitch deliberately glosses over the technical side of things. The corporate execs aren't technical people anyway, so why try to explain the benefits of a product in technical terms that only a select few understand? No, Microsoft invented the term "TCO" (Total Cost of Ownership) and sold the concept that Microsoft was the less costly way to go. Execs understand the concept of money very well. Everyone responds to emotional sales pitches (unless they are Noam Chomsky or something). Through a combination of $$$ claims about lower TCO and carefully placed FUD, they have established a dominant position on the LANs they were merely clients on ten years ago.
Another thing Microsoft realized is that computers would be everywhere, and they wouldn't always be under the control of UNIX admins with pocket protectors and advanced CS degrees. There just aren't enough uber-geeks to go around for all the offices in the world. Billiant foresight. It might be the CFO who suddenly finds the company has grown and now they need to bring the network back under control. Microsoft has hands down the slickest sales materials I've seen in the computer field.
Microsoft sells a culture, a lifestyle, in which you don't have to worry about computer problems because there are teeming millions of MCSEs and phone support and etc. to hold your hand through whatever problems may arise. And in fact this is true. Microsoft will smile and nod and politely empty your wallet.
A few months ago, there was a story on Slashdot about MS sending the BSA after school districts in the Northwest. After the admins got into a tizzy and threated to install Linux everywhere, Microsoft had the Come to Jesus meeting. "The themes for today are friendly and flexible," the sales lady said. It's the classic good cop/bad cop routine, a pure psychology play, and Microsoft knows their shit in this regard. Geeks, being socially stunted and sexually frustrated, are putty in Microsoft's hands, especially when the nice woman in the business suit shows up to put down the rebellion.
That is how Microsoft has achieved their monopoly. Unlike the other computer companies, they don't try to sell the technology itself. Instead they sell the REWARDS of implementing a Microsoft solution, they sell a warm fuzzy bundle of love, a pre-made community of smiling, personable non-geeks who are there to ease your assimilation into the Collective.
Microsoft was the first to bring big-time Madison Avenue marketing psychology to an exponentially growing computer market, that's why they're on top now.
This T-shirt I saw said it best:
Political <---------- You are here
Presentation
Session
Application
Transpo
Network
Data link
Physical
Re:they are putting a spin on it.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Saying they are "not engineered" is a statement of your naivity. Imagine designing and coding a huge prog. such as Windows or MS Office... Do you think they sit a big room and just piece code together like a puzzle? Please don't say that they are not engineered...
They're thrown together, spend half their time making it look pretty
Making it look pretty is half the battle, hence half the battle is won. The average MS consumer (the majority of the computer users), doesnt care what the nitty gritty underlying code.. they care about ease of use and a comfortable, easily usable system. You can't tell me that their is any linux distro that can match Windows ease of use. If their is, why arent the masses jumping on that bandwagon???
Re:they are putting a spin on it.. (Score:5, Funny)
Hrm... sit in a big room and just piece together code like a puzzle? Yeah, that's exactly what it feels like, half the time. Counter-intuitive commands, shoddy execution, worse then useless help systems.... yup, yup, yup.
Now, was it done that way? Obviously not. But they definitely need some improvement between the design phase, the engineering phase, and the implementation phase.
And quite frankly, I don't want pretty. I want functional. I want an easy to use system, not one that sparkles and gleams. I don't want bells and whistles. I don't want little pop-up paperclip buddies (and how freaking long did it take to add that piece of feces?), and I don't want programs that think they know what I want to do and are wrong half the time.
I want a system that does what I tell it to, not what it thinks I want. I want something that is coded efficiently, smoothly, and takes up a minimum of space.
And I want it by Thursday.
Kierthos
Re:they are putting a spin on it.. (Score:4, Insightful)
NOW who is being naive?
Have you not read the stories about M$'s strangle hold (or maybe a good Ric Flair style Figure-4?) on the OEM companies? Are you not aware that companines can not install ANY other OS in tandum with Win* on their machines? Remember the story about Dell putting FreeDOS on their machines just so they could beat the M$ policy?
So why aren't the masses jumping on it (Linux)? Because they are (almost) not allowed to buy a machine that doesn't run Win*.
Re:they are putting a spin on it.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Think outside your techie box....
sounds like Bruce Schneier ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:sounds like Bruce Schneier ... (Score:2, Funny)
Sounds to me like Bill Gates has gotten to Bruce Schneier.
excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:excuse (Score:2, Insightful)
All I need are my games and I'm done with M$
In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:In other news... (Score:2)
As for the GNU project. I know you were making a joke. But I think it is engineered for user-friendlyness. I've used SysV versions of some of the GNU tools. Those were unfriendly. Missing some of the options I use daily. I think the GNU tools are engineered to work well with user, with features added that really are needed. But it just depends on the user. They probally aren't even usable to someone who only knows how to click through menus and dialog boxes. But they are very friendly to me.
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
I heard you could play a two-hour movie in an hour and a half!
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Informative)
Here's some info...
http://www.xfree86.org/~keithp/render/
http://
You don't want to be using it in remote display mode though. It slows it down quite significantly.
Once again, this requires an *accellerator*! This hardware must also support the render extension. All modern cards do this, and it works perfectly in X.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Informative)
e.g.: foo -v
-- preceeds multicharacter flags
e.g.: foo --version
Not all programs (especially X11 stuff) follows this rule, but gnu stuff generally does.
MS doesn't implement snprintf() (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:MS doesn't implement snprintf() (Score:3, Funny)
#define snprintf _snprintf
#endif
Re:MS doesn't implement snprintf() (Score:3, Informative)
And I doubt they use "%13s" or directives like this in sprintf(), or if their version even supports these constructs.
That works just fine.
Actually, it's wnsprintf (Score:2)
LPTSTR lpOut,
int cchLimitIn,
LPCTSTR pszFmt,
);
Microsoft wraps all its C runtime functions with macros that switch effectively between wchar and char types seemlessly.
They also have a little security note at the bottom of the their documentation detailing how null termination is not guaranteed with this function-- along with some alternatives.
My problem with most of the library documentation they have is that until recently it was rather poor (at least every section I had to use was). Looks like they're taking steps to improve the standard library docs.
sprintf is evil.
Re:What the hell does that have to do with anythin (Score:2, Insightful)
Step 1 (Score:3, Funny)
faster link (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.cw360.com/bin/bladerunner?REQUNIQ=1031
Already Slashdotted, Please Post Mirrors (Score:2)
Full Text (Score:4, Informative)
Friday 6 September 2002
Brian Valentine, senior vice-president in charge of Microsoft's Windows development, has made a grim admission to the Microsoft Windows Server
click here
"I'm not proud," he told delegates yesterday (5 September). "We really haven't done everything we could to protect our customers. Our products just aren't engineered for security," admitted Valentine, who since 1998 has headed Microsoft's Windows division.
In August the company put out eight security bulletins. This month it has released two, so far, with the latest urging users to patch a flaw in its digital certificate technology that could allow attackers to steal a user's credit card details.
Microsoft's regular stream of security bulletins has continued despite Bill Gates company-wide Trustworthy Computing Initiative, announced earlier this year.
The Initiative was launched with a memo from Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect, and saw the company halt production on new code in all of its products while employees scanned every line of existing code in search of vulnerabilities.
"We realised that we couldn't continue with the way we were building software and expect to deliver secure products," Valentine said.
But the company is dealing with a problem that is not easily resolved. Valentine told developers at the conference that as the company works to shore up its products the security dilemma will evolve as hackers become more sophisticated.
"It's impossible to solve the problem completely," Valentine said. "As we solve these problems there are hackers who are going to come up with new ones. There's no end to this."
Microsoft has also been employing new tools developed by Microsoft Research that are designed to detect errors in code during the development process, Valentine said.
According to Chandra Mugunda, a software consultant with Dell who attended Valentine's presentation, buggy software is "an industry-wide problem, not just a Microsoft problem. But they're the leaders, and they should take the lead to solve them," he said.
And in a related story... (Score:3, Funny)
duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Found later on Monster.com... (Score:5, Funny)
Stop picking on the engineers (Score:5, Interesting)
While working at Sony, Microsoft closed down a UK R&D facility. A whole department of ex-MS software engineers came to work in my department. They were the some of the best engineers I have ever worked with, designing innovative and stable code years ahead of its time.
Stop picking on MS engineers for poor products, and level the blame at the correct place - marketing and management.
Re:Stop picking on the engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stop picking on the engineers (Score:2)
Re:Stop picking on the engineers (Score:2)
I'm convinced that if product design was focused on robustness, security and function MS products could be best of breed all the way around. At some point marketing's desire to own markets forces too many directions to be taken at the same time, resulting in a lot of compomises in robustness and security.
Re:Stop picking on the engineers (Score:2, Insightful)
"I'm not proud," he told delegates yesterday (5 September). "We really haven't done everything we could to protect our customers. Our products just aren't engineered for security," admitted Valentine, who since 1998 has headed Microsoft's Windows division.
Come on. This sounds a whole lot like a guy who was given an albatross (DOS) and was told to build an eagle (something remotely secure) from it. He just hasn't been able to do all the things that would need to be done because there's too much because they're saddled with the fact that they didn't realize when they started how important it would be.
Jeez. I know this is Slashdot, but give the guy a break!
Ben
Re:Stop picking on the engineers (Score:2)
Re:Stop picking on the engineers (Score:2)
Maybe.
Ben
Re:Stop picking on the engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
A huge part of the problem comes from never deprecating API's. It is one thing to tell someone to design and build something new - much harder to extend something that was not even close to what it was designed for (and did not have time to abstract things out).
To this day, I am amazed the windows kernel even compiles, much less runs...
Re:Stop picking on the engineers (Score:3, Informative)
But that WORD runs *is* amazing, what with the core bug (writes to a null pointer) that traces back to the DOS4 era and the SHARE fix to prevent DOS4 from leaving files open on disk. Nearly every weird or destructive behaviour in Word or Excel is some manifestation of this bug, from corrupting the document if worked on from a floppy, to refusing to save in native format (insisting your disk is full), to nuking the FAT on that partition. (Yes, the bug *can* do that.) How it manifests is probably dependent on Windows VSHARE, which is borkend to varying degrees in all versions of Windows.
So akin to what you wrote, I'd say their biggest problem is that they never ever clean up a codebase, but rather pile fix upon kludge forever.
The good engineers were FIRED. (Score:2)
Did I understand you? Microsoft fired the good engineers. Maybe that's why the products are so poor. Yup. Poor management.
How marketers ruin code (Score:5, Interesting)
I have not heard of any instances of marketeering guffbags and manglement ruining code, primarily because they don't code.
They ruin the code by ruining the requirements. In a firm that produces mass-market software, the marketing department generally writes each product's requirements document. If resistance to buffer overflow attacks isn't specified as a must-have in the requirements document, then it will surely get cut at the last minute in favor of other requirements such as ship date.
Idiotic replies (Score:3, Insightful)
This event is significant, because from the mouth of someone significantly important in MSFTs power structure, there is an admission of failing.
Maybe the exec just wanted to confess his (their) sins?
Re:Idiotic replies (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed. Read on, though, Macduff..
This event is significant, because from the mouth of someone significantly important in MSFTs power structure, there is an admission of failing.
Hunh?
Where is the Utopia you live in, bud? I'd like to move there.
It would be nice to just take Mr. Valentines statement at face value, applaud them for being honest and move on, but this is Microsoft we're talking about. These are smart, ruthless, paranoid people who never do anything without a reason, that reason normally being protecting or extending thier dominance over a market. In that regard, I'll say "Thanks, Brian. First, if you need some help, I'll do what I can. Second - what are you guys really up to here?"
Maybe the exec just wanted to confess his (their) sins?
Yeah, to St. IGNUcius [stallman.org] hisself. Right.
You know, I'd love to hear something like this from Microsoft and not think "There's an alterior motive here...", but I can't help it - they're too smart and too powerful to NOT be very careful around them. Until there's demonstrative proof that Microsoft wants to just make cool tech and not own or control it all, I'll continue to cast a very cautious, critical eye in thier direction.
Soko
The big Question.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Is whether this will make the national news. Trust me, if CNN and MS/NBC and all the rest choose not to cover this, the general public won't know, and won't really make a decision based on this information.
Of course, this could just be a ploy to get M$'s most vile next O/S out, Palladium, that will let them 0\/\/|\| j00r s0ul (and credit card, and email, and music, and movies, and any personal items that may happen to be sitting on top of your computer...)
Re:The big Question.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The question is will people actually care, even if they did know about it?
There are a huge amount of more important things that CNN/ABC/CBS/NBC do report on which the vast majority of people don't do anything about.
At least it made Infoworld, including the MS FUD (Score:3, Interesting)
However, the "Every operating system out there is about equal in the number of vulnerabilities reported" statement of Valentine's fails to take into consideration that in most cases Unix, open source and free licensed software has been designed [eweek.com] from the outset with at least the issue of security in mind. [dwheeler.com]. Whereas, some Microsoft systems such as their embedded scripting systems [pivx.com] have not.
The result is that is far easier to exploit an easy, scriptable vulnerability in a Microsoft system, that has no patch for months, than to exploit a difficult, binary hole in a LInux/BSD system that has a patch within days.
More Duh (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically, Microsoft R&D comes across as having the mentality of "if it can't be done right by the release date, do it well enough not to crash when Bill demos it on stage."
If MS was interested in security they would have hired everyone who worked on the Back Orifice project years ago. Had MS made that one investment (and continued to this day hiring like-minded individuals), Windows applications and Operating Systems coming out of Redmond would be a lot more secure.
Oh well... I guess when people buy your "inferior" product by the truckloads; you don't really have any motivation to improve upon areas you haven't deemed important.
Re:More Duh (Score:2)
Tries to shift blame (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, you can't make anything 100% secure (short of keeping it turned off), but there is a difference between something that has a few exploitable holes and something that resembles a sieve.
Re:Tries to shift blame (Score:5, Interesting)
The answer is not to make the OS more complex and create more special cases, but to streamline it, and offer a more consistent model for applications and users to interact with the operating system.
This is why pretty much everyone else these days uses some variant on Unix. More than anything else, the appeal of Unix is simplicity at a basic level.
Now, Microsoft doesn't have to ship a Unix-based or compatible OS by any means, but if they want to take security seriously, they need to take what they have now, and what they are planning on for five or ten years down the road, reduce it down to the most basic components that can still address all of those problems, and rethink how Windows is put together.
Also important is to get over their antipathy towards the open source "movement", and realize that it can be a tool. If they released a simplified, streamlined Windows kernel, they could let the world hack away at it, finding flaws, then take that work and put the components on top of it that would make it Windows. They've "borrowed" ideas from Apple and NeXT in the past, why not look at what OpenStep was, and what Darwin and Mac OS X have become and borrow that idea too?
In short, it takes more than saying to your developers, "ship bug fixes in a week rather than a month." They'll hae to really examine Windows, and where the flaws come in, and if there's some other way(and there always is) that those things could be done, then the old way has to go.
You *can* write secure software (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure you can. You start by disabling all contact with the outside world by default. If I'm not listening, they can't tell me what I don't want to hear. You then, slowly and with rigorous testing, implement a small set of interfaces that let you talk where you need to, e.g., by reading and drawing a body of text. Bingo, you just covered most of e-mail, Usenet, web browsing and the rest in one go.
The problem is MS' approach: every application should do everything. For goodness' sake, Office 2002 apps that I use to write my letters and do my accounts have several dozen hooks that try to access the Internet in them. Why? That's just silly, and it's not surprising that in such an environment, people get careless.
Writing basic interfaces to support e-mail, ftp, web browsing, Usenet, time sync'ing and such is not hard. Writing them to be secure requires a modest amount more effort. It shouldn't be beyond the average CS grad, though, and it certainly shouldn't be beyond a group with the resources that Microsoft has at its disposal.
People have been telling me for years that since I program in C++ and don't use a GC, my programs must have memory leaks. I've told them no, because I use good basic practices. They claim I'm wrong. I claim I have rigorous, objective diagnostic tools that back me up on this. That's not hard, either, but most of the programming world would tell me it can't be done. So it is with security.
Billy Boy and Tux (Score:3, Funny)
Billy Boy and Tux
One very hot day in summer, Billy Boy is stilling under a huge, impressive sign. It says "Lemonade, $5 a glass".
Customer: $5 a glass! That's expensive!
Billy Boy: Well, go buy from someone else.
Customer: But there's nobody else to buy drinks from here!
Billy Boy: Aha! I bullied all the other boys and they've gone home!
Customer: That's not very nice.
Billy Boy [Chuckling and rocking back and forth]: $5 a glass. Take it or leave it.
Customer: Damn. You're a nasty little boy, but it's a very hot day and I really need a drink.
Billy Boy takes the money.
The afternoon wears on, Billy Boys coffers fill.
The next day...
Billy Boy: Lemonade! Lemonade! $5 a glass!
A fat penguin waddles up and sets up a stall beside Billy Boy.
He erects a little badly drawn sign "Iced water. Free."
Billy boy [whispering, chuckling to himself]:Loser. You'll not get any custom with a crappy sign like that.
Tux ignores him.
The next customer approaches Billy Boy, but then notices Tux's sign and goes to him.
Billy Boy[angry]: Hey fatty, get off my patch. I was here first!
Tux ignores him.
Billy Boy: Hey stupid. Nobody wants iced water, everyone wants my lemonade, it's the best! I've got 100% of the market in soft drinks in this street.
Tux ignores him.
Another customer comes and has a glass of water from Tux.
Billy Boy: Listen idiot! How do you expect to get rich like me if you don't charge anything! What an idiot you are!
Tux ignores him.
More customers go to Tux.
Billy Boy [shouting at his customers]: Don't drink the penguin's water!! I won't make any profits and, erm, the economy will collapse!
Customers laugh.
Billy Boy [really angry]: If you drink the penguin's water, your next glass of lemonade from me will be $10!
Customers give Billy Boy the finger.
Billy Boy [insanely angry]: Don't drink the penguin's water! It'll give you cancer!
Customers shake their heads and move to Tux's queue.
All customers go to Tux now.
Billy Boy starts screaming and crying and runs home.
Tux and his customers ignore him.
Re:Billy Boy and Tux (Score:2)
Cute... (Score:2)
--Jim
Re:Billy Boy and Tux (Score:4, Funny)
Billy Boy has a large lemonade stand which sells lemonade for five dollars a glass. He makes a lot of money and has a lot of customers despite his competition, which includes:
Steve Jobs: Sells lemonade for fifty cents a glass, but in order to buy his lemonade, you also have to buy a glass and straw from him for nine fifty. The glasses are available in lots of trendy colors, but they're smaller and more inefficient than standard glasses, so Stevey doesn't have very many customers.
Tux: Doesn't have a stand, but he has a lemon tree, some sugar cane and and old-fashioned pump well. You can make your own lemonade if you'd like, and its free, but it takes a couple of hours to pick and squeeze lemons, pump water and extract sugar from the cane in order to make the lemonade, and you're not always guaranteed of its quality. There are thirty or forty lemon trees, and some taste good, while others do not. A few enthusiasts drink Tux's lemonade and rave about how great it is, but most mainstream customers are willing to just pay the five bucks.
Re:Billy Boy and Tux (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately, don't neglect the fact that just up the street are dozens of vendors selling other attractive goodies (let's call them cookies and cake, I guess) that many people depend on, but that don't work unless you have a glass of Bill's lemonade in hand.
In the antitrust case, this was called the "application barrier to entry" and was one of the main reasons that MS was declared a monopolist.
Re:Billy Boy and Tux (Score:2)
Firstly, this is meant to be humor. I hope some people might find it funny. Yes, it is a metaphor, and no it isn't perfect, but it is simple.
It isn't really FUD. FUD stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt. The main feature of the little script is that Tux's water is free, Billy's lemonade isn't. This is true of OSS compared to MS software.
Re:don't bother, it's obvious and boring (Score:2)
Do you think so? Perhaps you might be able to suggest some ways I could improve it?
Palladium, of course (Score:4, Interesting)
Step 2: Allege that problem is fundamental due to the nature of the hardware platform. Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt.
Step 3: But wait! MS has the solution that will solve this crisis -- Palladium.
Re:Palladium, of course (Score:5, Insightful)
The real war will be between this plutocratic regime and the free software movement. The general public doesn't know it yet, but linux is very close to there on the desktop. This represents a serious threat to the universality of palladium, so Microsoft and its allies will try to have laws passed that criminalize free software use, and/or the use of general purpose (i.e. non-palladium equipped) computers.
Sound crazy? It's not. And the issue of freedom & privacy vs. big business & government is going to be huge, front page news as it gets closer and the general public gets a whiff of it. But Disney owns the news, so expect it to be more of a grassroots groundswell-type thing.
Who will win? I don't know. But I see a future that scares the hell out of me, and I really hope we're not too lazy to do something about it.
I hate to say it but... (Score:3, Insightful)
MS needs to stop complaining and fix their buffer overflows.
Re:I hate to say it but... (Score:5, Informative)
Linux came along after Unix had learned to be secure, and was designed from the gound up with that model in mind.
OTOH, DOS was a single user operating system, and didn't need to be secure. When viruses started showing up, they were fixed in DOS not by improving intrinsic security, but by adding on a virus-proofing package. Windows descended from that. (And there doesn't seem to have been a fresh rewrite at any point, MS PR to the contrary.)
So Linux was designed from the start with security as a consideration. Not always a major consideration, but at leas a present one. It's been through many cycles of change and improvement, and at each step along the way, security has been considered.
Windows, OTOH, has always addressed security via add-on programs. (Well, NT made some attempt at security, e.g., it created users that it could be difficult to get into. And admin priviledges. I admit I don't know what they were...)
Still, in Linux security was built in from the beginning, and user interfaces was an add-on. In Windows, user interfaces were built-in from the beginning, and security was an add-on. In both cases the add-ons have gotten a lot better than they were.
I feel that the Linux windowing environment is now on a par with Windows, or perhaps better, but that it still falls short of the Mac. I feel, based solely on news reports, that the Windows security, while improved, is still lacking.
And to me, this is largely irrelevant. The MS licenses are so bad, that I wouldn't recommend them even if I thought that they were the best contender in all other aspects. I intend to file for retirement the day my company installs a system with Windows XP, as I don't want to be associated with any company that is either that suicidal or that unethical. (They've got to be either one or the other. Agreeing to a contract without understanding it is suicidal. Agreeing to that contract [I've only seen pieces, but that's enough] is suicidal even if you *do* understand it. The alternative is that they understand it, and intend to ignore it. [I'm not sure this is possible, but they might think that it is.] And that's too unethical for me.)
Tell me something... (Score:2)
Upgrade Scheme? (Score:2, Insightful)
And in Classic Microsoft style the security bulletin notes that patches are avaible ONLY for Windows XP and NT
95 isn't supported ( ok, I can understand that )
98 isn't supported ( getting a little too close for my comfort )
ME isn't supported ( didn't that just come out 2 years ago? )
2K isn't supported ( What about people running servers? )
Just another tactic to force people to upgrade
With the recent change in Licensing terms and the inability to support products they've made within the past 2 years they have the gall to say that using anything else is insecure on the part of the government?
bullshit (Score:4, Informative)
95 isn't supported ( ok, I can understand that )
98 isn't supported ( getting a little too close for my comfort )
ME isn't supported ( didn't that just come out 2 years ago? )
2K isn't supported ( What about people running servers? )
Just another tactic to force people to upgrade
As someone who is actually subscribed to receive these bulletins from MSFT, I note that they sent a second revision out today. I quote:
Re:Upgrade Scheme? (Score:3)
V1.0 (September 04, 2002): Bulletin Created.
V2.0 (September 05, 2002): Bulletin updated to include patch availability for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Me.
V2.1 (September 05, 2002): Bulletin updated to provide link to single download page for all Windows XP patches.
V2.2 (September 05, 2002): Bulletin updated to give correct reference to XP download locations for supported languages.
I'll Give Them This Much: (Score:5, Funny)
M$ giving up? (Score:2, Insightful)
I thought it was Microsoft's policy to keep their mouth shut when it comes to lack of security in their OS. It just seems that after spending all sorts of money into advertising and marketing Win2k/XP as very secure platforms, M$ would rather not have a SVP in development blow it all away. I wonder how long he will last talking openly about these problems.
What's a PSS Hacking alert? (Score:4, Funny)
What does 'PSS' stand for in that Microsoft Knowledgebase article? [P]lease [s]top [s]niffing? ([s]poofing? '[s]ploiting?)
Our server has been compromised 8 times in a week (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Our server has been compromised 8 times in a we (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Our server has been compromised 8 times in a we (Score:2)
Re:Our server has been compromised 8 times in a we (Score:3, Interesting)
Another possibility is to set up a Linux box with no open ports on the same ethernet segment and sniff all traffic so that you might be able to tell how they hack you, and where they come from (at least the box they are coming from).
But - changing to Linux is also a really good alternative. Just keep in mind that Linux itself does not offer you security, only an improved possibility of security. You will need to stay rigorously patched up, with a good firewall and a good intrusion detection system. I used my IDS to tighten my firewall whenever I found monkey business in the network traffic - with good results. The box ran without external protection or upgrades for a long time, and it was port-scanned every day. Of course, they eventually hit jack-pot at first try. Then, an IDS will only alert you that something is wrong..
Also, whatever application you run on your web server will need to be secure.
Remember - one vulnerability is usually enough.
Re:Our server has been compromised 8 times in a we (Score:3, Informative)
That's not a valid reason to stick with IIS [chilisoft.com].
Re:Our server has been compromised 8 times in a we (Score:4, Informative)
How many people create a restricted user for IIS, rather than running it as LocalService?
I suspect the problem lies more with the components installed on the system, than on Windows & IIS themselves. For example, our Linux server was being exploited for spam recently. They shut down sendmail as a daemon, but the spam still flowed. It turns out that somebody had installed an old version and buggy version of Formmail. Grrr.
he went on to say (Score:2)
Furthermore, we volunteer to personally maintain an extensive database of all your valuable data, including credit card numbers, filenames pirated media files, and love letters from your high school sweetheart. Just in case.
We graciously accept your thanks in advance. You're very welcome."
I admit I am not engineered to give a shit (Score:2)
The real problem is that MS the vendor choses not to deal these problems with any sense of urgency or permanence. I swear it's like being forced to eat green beans and hear about starving children in Asia. Beyond some point it's hard to care or worry about it when you know that your parent doesn't really plan to deal with it.
New PR release states... (Score:2)
Developers! DEvelopers! DEVelopers! DEVElopers! DEVELopers! DEVELOpers! Woo! Developers! Developers! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! YEAH!
Honesty or Palladium FUD, but either way... (Score:2)
Or maybe it's FUD to push the necessity of Palladium. This is strongly hinted at by the way he whines "it never ends," as if any efforts to secure their products are pointless because hackers are so dang clever.
Either way, this shouldn't sway anybody into the Palladium camp. MS is admitting that they have done jack squat for security, in spite of having told many, many lies to the contrary. And now they expect people to buy into their new technology for a "trusted platform?" Trust isn't bought, folks, it's earned.
Yes, there will always be hackers (crackers, whatever, use context people). But you can't argue a complex situation (computer security) in black and white terms. One security breach a month is better than one a day. Defeatism in the face of adversity isn't exactly the lauded "Microsoft spirit."
I'm glad to see this news. Ulterior motives or not, the truth is being spoken. But if they think they're gaining anything by scaring people, they're dead wrong. So let's just hope they're simply being honest. Hey, a guy can dream.
No Big Deal (Score:2)
I think I have to give the guy credit for admitting to the truth. It's a lot less tedious to listen to someone telling the truth than it is someone imputing that your company's virility is related to it's adoption of .NET technology.
What else is true?
Unix was not immune to software not designed with security in mind. I used rsh for years. But a transition was made.
If security is regarded as important, then slowly and inexorably Microsoft will move in that direction. Despite being a monopoly, they will respond in their sluggish way, just as they made Win2K substantially more robust with regards to crashing after everyone laughed at their early versions of NT.
This worries me. (Score:2, Interesting)
In terms of marketing, Microsoft knows what they are doing, and they must believe that admitting this wont hurt their sales significantly. Has their customer base become so lowtech that the idea of insecure products doesn't bother them? Or are they simply so powerful that we (the rest of the world) can do nothing to stop them. I'm hoping that this is some kind of horrible mistake on their part, but I doubt it.
I spoke to a microsoft engineer once about
MS products actually designed for insecurity? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a guy recognized as a genius in the Tobacco industry. I read that twenty odd years ago he told other Tobacco industry executives that, while they could afford to hire the shrewdest, meanest, most dishonest lawyers on planet Earth, they could only fight a rear-guard action.
Eventually, he told his colleagues, even the meanest lawyers couldn't hold off lawsuits over the lethal effects of their product. Once suits go to trial, everything will start to unravel. We have no real defense. So, we need to plan ahead.
His plan? Pretend to fight against mandatory warnings, but actually let them go ahead. Keep stalling on the trials -- so that when the trials happen we have a defense.
"But, your honour, we have had to have health warnings on our products for fifteen years. The claimant can't say they didn't know our products were dangerous."
Are Microsoft executives any more ethical than Tobacco executives?
Nah.
I believe that MS planned ahead too. I believe that MS has wanted to "own" the desktop, to own our computers, all along.
Anyone could have foreseen that embedding a macro language in their data files, that was automatically executed when the file was opened, was a sure guarantee of terrible security problems.
This was not an accident. This was a design decision. They did this on purpose. I don't believe it was a mistake. I believe they knew exactly what they were doing.
I believed that they looked ahead, and planned to distribute insecure products, so that the could harness the publics anger at vandals, interlopers and spam artists to justify draconian security measures that we never wuold have agreed to otherwise.
I'd like to see Gates, Ballmer and the whole filthy crew serve serious hard time.
Re:MS products actually designed for insecurity? (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, the real problem with these kinds of scripts is not viruses...its behavoir the user doesn't want. Popup adds are a perfect example of that : giving a web page control of your browser merely because you visited the site was NOT a good design decision.
Re:MS products actually designed for insecurity? (Score:3, Informative)
Brilliant tactic, almost govermental in design. (Score:3, Interesting)
the public behind palladium. Microsoft has
consistently proven itself to be the masters at
porting govermental public opinion swaying tactics
for their needs. It's almost admirable. Following
tradition, they'll produce stats and figures and
submit them as "proof", and the majority of
America will say "wow, we need to do this". Or,
as demonstrated recently, they'll hint at the
existence of proof for their "cause" and that
alone will swing a majority of people to their
side and give them time to fabricate it, or
draw attention away from producing it. Microsoft
will get palladium, and Dubya will get the war
he wants that nobody a few weeks ago wanted, but
now seem too want since they keep waving the flag
hard enough and hinting at "new evidence" that
probably doesn't exist as of yet.
Step 1: Convince everyone that your selfish
agenda is in their best interests in any way
you can.
Step 2: Pursue your selfish interests.
Being manipulated this way is part of being an
American. Microsoft is the most American company
I know of.
M$ and Mozilla (Score:3, Interesting)
M$ Sucks. I wish that they'd use the standards instead of making their own.
Re:M$ and Mozilla (Score:5, Insightful)
A browser that identifies itself as Mozilla will get served broken HTML. (CSS with negative spacing) If you spoof your browser to identify itself as IE for example, the page comes up fine.
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=159
Interesting, huh?
I guess IBM did the impossible... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, there is an end to hacker breakins. It's called an IBM mainframe. IBM has been able to sell mainframes for millions of dollars not because they are faster than PC's, or hold more storage, but because anyone who needs enterprise class reliability and security simply can't do without a mainframe. Microsoft operating systems simply are not reliable enough, nor secure enough for this task. If I so much as suggested that we migrate our systems to a PC server running windows, I would get laughed out of the conference room.
I don't mean to troll, but Microsoft has completely missed the point. Had they set out to create a reliable and secure OS from the ground up, they might have succeeded. But their focus was on usability, not security, and it shows. If they wanted to produce a secure and reliable OS, they will need to abandon all backward compatibility, and redesign their systems from the ground up. Applying patches won't convince corporate america that you know what you're doing.
Pre-sales for Palladium (Score:4, Insightful)
It's probably a bit late to respond but... (Score:3, Informative)
The jist of it is that there are security problems that cannot ever be fixed by Microsoft with their products. If they wish to stay with Microsoft, they have to remain vulnerable until such time they release their new products which address the concern and in most cases, pay a lot of money to get them.
Meanwhile, free solutions exist to replace the proble products and while they aren't trouble-free themselves, they do tend to get fixed much more quickly and there is no additional cost for those fixes in most cases.
When addressing securty concerns of today, NOW is the time -- not waiting for the next generation OS and then waiting for it to be stabilized.
One of my targets for the message was "Resident Data" (http://www.residentdata.com [residentdata.com]) which is a company that functions by serving up the results of background checks to its subscribers. (It shares sensitive and private information about individuals for money to clients.) They are PROUDLY a ",,,Microsoft Only..." shop.
Frankly, that attitude scares the $#!+ out of me. It's all well and good to favor one product over another due to familiarity and comfort, etc. But it's utterly irresponsible to attempt to call "secure" their data when it's housed in a "...Microsoft Only..." environment.
If the company I cite as an example is any indication of what is actually going on out there in practice, I'm genuinely frightened at how our public and private records are being managed.
To me this is a major privacy concern and there should be an initiative that demands that SECURE STORAGE and SECURE METHODS be deployed to secure the information. If there are significant threats discovered, it should be their legal responsibility and requirement to either secure the data properly or shut down the operation until such a time that is can be certified as secure. This is not "Anti-Microsoft" sentiment speaking -- this is Privacy/Security sentiment.
The problem is much larger than just the products -- it's how and where they are used.
Meditations on security (Score:3, Informative)
I'm fairly well convinced at this point that Microsoft's history of poor security technologies and practices is, if not entirely deliberate, at least unconsciously encouraged. An evolutionary defense, perhaps. If products are touted as secure, but aren't really secure, and if the next generation is claimed to be the fix to all the current problems... then the average person/company will probably eat it up. Why?
Because eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, and most people don't want to believe that. There is no magic bullet for safety or security. The only way to have anything resembling good security, is to keep working at it. The more you work at it, the better it will be. There's a point of diminishing returns, of course, and if you spend all your time on safety, you'll never get to spend any of your time doing the things that you're protecting... but if you spend no time on security, you have no right to complain when it fails. This goes for computer software, physical security, national security, whatever.
But a lot of people don't understand that. They hear about "new, *really* secure" things, and they think, "Well, once we have that, then we'll be secure, and won't need to think about security any more!" But it doesn't work that way. It never has, and it seems unlikely that it ever will. People need to be made to understand, whether they like it or not, that the only way you can have security, is if you keep working at it. And a lot of people don't want to have to think about failures of security, and what they have to do to prevent them.
The worst part is, no matter what you do, there's always ways around it. Before a year ago, how many people would have thought it absurd that terrorists could simultaneously hijack four airplanes and use them to entirely demolish the World Trade Center towers and severely scar the Pentagon? Surely our security was better than that?
This is not a call to action for our country, or Linux advocacy, or whatever. I'm just trying to analyze why it is that Microsoft can keep getting away with this. I think the main reason is that when Microsoft says things, people believe them, even when what Microsoft says is the same known lies they've been saying for years. Why do they believe? Because human denial is an immensely powerful force. And Microsoft knows it.
Directions on Microsoft (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Mac OS X is SLOW (Score:2)
I mean, the Windows 2000, 1.6GHz Pentium 4 stand-alone, un-networked machines at our school, with 256MB of RAM and brand new ATA/133 40GB drives take a blazingly fast 3 minutes from hitting enter to actual log in! That's just frellin' amazing!
Oh wait, my 266MHz iMac, running OS X 10.1.5, with less than the required RAM, significantly more and more memory and processor intensive software, several user accounts(as opposed to 2 on the W2K machines), and a pokey 66MHz bus goes from hitting enter to actually logged in in 30 seconds.
Now that I think about it, something doesn't add up.
Re:Look at the market... (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that you miss exactly what Valentine means:
Windows cannot be secure - MS has finally realized (and admitted) this.
Security is something that must be designed in from the beginning - it's not something that can be 'bolted on' after the product is finished, any more than you can make pudding, and decide you want it to be a house instead - you can't make a house out of pudding.
I think we can all agree that MSFT has succeeded in creating simple, easy-to-use products
You think wrong. I certainly wouldn't characterize MS products as easy-to-use. Easier than some other products, in some situations, perhaps.. but not easy.
As for simple? Have you seen MS Word lately? Bloated with dozens upon dozens of feeatures that nobody uses - you categorize that as simple?
whether you like it or not, there is no easier OS
Spoken like someone who's never tried any other OS.
Ever try MacOS?
How about Amiga?
VMS? Anything besides Linux and Windows?
As an advanced user, I find Linux MUCH easier to use than Windows, because everything is laid out as I expect. I used Windows before I used Linux, and most of the learning curve I experienced came from attempting to do things the Windows way - but after one or two times, I realized that the best way to learn a task was to ask myself "if I had designed this system, how would I implement it?" - and all of a sudden, everything became easy.