Summary: The bribing chipmaker scoops up a firm that is hostile towards Linux and the GPL, which may also mean that future chips from Intel will be more OS-specific and DRM/TC-laden

WHAT does it sound like when one hears about 100 billion vulnerabilities? Well, it turns out that flaws associated with Windows affect many other programs.

An unpatched problem with Windows applications is much worse than first thought, with hundreds of programs, not just 40, vulnerable to attack, a Slovenian security company said today.

As moreover stated in relation to this separate article, "It turns out this is a fundamental flaw in the way almost all apps for that other OS work and how that other OS [Windows] loads programmes, looking in the current working directory first. Oops. The bad guys put some malware in the current working directory and give it a familiar name and voila! the system is owned by the bad guys."

Here are some new statistics from McAfee, which is hostile towards GNU/Linux by the way.

According to McAfee's 2010 Q2 Threat Report, the most widely detected threat was the Genericlatr Trojan, AutoRun malware found on nearly 9 percent of machines scanned by the company worldwide. Then there is Stuxnet, Conficker and other malicious threats that have taken advantage of lax policies toward removable devices.

The news is in about Intel buying McAfee, which probably means lock-down or DRM in more future hardware.

Profit is the number one motive for malware these days with espionage close behind. Intel is in the process of buying McAfee for $7.68 billion. You can image what the whole anti-malware industry is worth if McAfee alone is worth that much. Intel is looking at tie-ins to hardware for this industry. Can you spell DRM? Expect locked-down motherboards and filters on top of Ethernet and USB ports and storage devices.

This type of prediction is further validated here:

Paving the way for embedded devices to include more built-in security features, Intel announced it will acquire McAfee for $7.68 billion in cash. Separately, Odyssey Software and Wavelink Corporation both released upgrades to their management frameworks for mobile devices.

There are other ideas about the purpose of the takeover. Either way, however, Intel taking aboard more Linux-hostile DNA is clearly bad news. ⬆