10.12.10
Posted in Free/Libre Software, Microsoft, SCO at 9:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Matt Rosoff leaves Directions on Microsoft and a 22-year veteran (Brad Lovering) also abandons the sinking ship, which now suffers turbulence in the Interactive Entertainment Business and renames things as a miserable last resort (seven-washing and the like)
Microsoft is like SCO some time around 2004. It has already sued companies over Linux (since last year) and this was not properly challenged in court. Its own products are a hard sale and increasingly fewer (many get cancelled due to budgetary constraints) while competition leapfrogs it technically, although it still has some momentum remaining due to existing deployments, as well as size which decreases.
According to two Microsoft boosters [1, 2], the Technical Fellow Brad Lovering is quitting and a peripheral Microsoft booster called "Directions on Microsoft" has just lost a key person (it’s a small company) whom we wrote about before since he promotes Microsoft at CNET. That would be Matt Rosoff.
“Microsoft should rename itself “Microsoft 7″ and see if that works.”In addition to this, Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business gets “re-orged” (euphemism to use when many people quit or get laid off) and its failed attempt to undermine the Free software community gets renamed [1, 2, 3] to “Outercurve”. None of these are good signs in a company that lost direction. “A rose by any other name,” writes Groklaw, “but I wonder if Microsoft and curve in the same thought is helpful?”
Microsoft should rename itself “Microsoft 7″ and see if that works. Sometimes it does. As stated on Sunday, we no longer track Microsoft as closely as we once did for the same reasons we are no longer called “Boycott Novell” and Groklaw is no longer just about SCO. Threats to software freedom change all the time and Techrights is not fixated on any particular company, unless that company really does a lot to attack software freedom. Microsoft’s attacks are becoming as pathetic as SCO's due to inability to compete technically. █
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Posted in Windows at 7:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
What goes around comes around. Microsoft
needs its own amnesty bin now [photo from fimoculous]
Summary: The heavily-marketed joke which is Vista Phone 7 [sic] and how it leads Microsoft into the past, not the future
Windows Mobile has been a disaster for Microsoft, both technically and financially. The ‘new’ operating system from Microsoft is worse than its predecessors in some ways, but the impact of $400,000,000 in marketing is unimaginable. Techrights chooses not to be too distracted by Microsoft hype anymore (just writing about it contributes to the hype), but here are just some key stories which ought to put things in perspective.
First of all, as sign that Vista Phone 7 [sic] is released before it’s ready, consider the lack of basic functionality like copy and paste (we knew this in March):
So, maybe Microsoft meant “people don’t do that in 2010.” At the mega-corp’s UK-based Windows Phone 7 launch event, we were just informed that its hot-off-the-presses mobile OS will be blessed with a software update that’ll add copy and paste functionality in “early 2011.”
Everything that Microsoft says about Vista Phone 7 [sic] should be taken with a grain of salt because in this marketing frenzy Microsoft gets caught lying. For example:
i. Microsoft getting desperate for Mobile 7 app support?
It appears as though Microsoft either assumes that everyone wants to create for its Windows 7 Mobile platform, or that they can push a few more units by including the logo on their site. This would be fine if the Angry Birds devs hadn’t noticed. Unfortunately for Microsoft they have and an apparent “Angry Dev” has said:
we have NOT committed to doing a Windows Phone 7 version, at least not yet. Icon on MS site is unauthorized.
and
We have NOT committed to doing a Windows Phone 7 version. Microsoft put the Angry Birds icon on their site without our permission.
OpenBytes actually quoted the developers and Microsoft sympathisers did this too (so they must find this equally disturbing):
ii. Feathers fly over ‘Angry Birds’ teaser on Windows Phone site
The company caused a stir this morning when an icon for the popular mobile game was spotted in a remote corner of its Windows Phone site, hinting that it would be available for the company’s new mobile platform, set to be unveiled in New York tomorrow morning.
But Rovio Mobile, the maker of the game, quickly responded with a tweet: “We have NOT committed to doing a Windows Phone 7 version,” it said. “Microsoft put the Angry Birds icon on their site without our permission.”
In a follow-up tweet, the company noted that its response had “nothing to do with if we do or don’t, it’s just that we decide that ourselves.”
For Microsoft to stoop so low ought to seem pathetic. It means that it cannot find genuine support from developers (maybe except those whom it pays).
Those who were foolish enough to put their weight behind Vista Phone 7 [sic] are already receiving bad press and Pogson blames queezed OEMs. SJVN too is very pessimistic and the list of people with a similar opinion goes on and on. “There is nothing to see here, move along” is the sort of message they have.
The situation for Microsoft becomes grimmer as people mock their latest attempt (among several) to enter the smartphones market. Lance Ulanoff, one of the key people at an IDG publication, says that “Windows Phone 7 is Do or Die for Microsoft” because “Today’s [yesterday's] launch is not just about mobile phones, it’s about the future of Microsoft as a business in the 21st century.”
The good news is that despite entryism at HP [1, 2] and at Nokia, there is no defection yet to Vista Phone 7 [sic]. In fact, WebOS and MeeGo are coming next year:
An Intel exec said that MeeGo-based smartphones and tablets won’t hit the market until the first half of 2011, according to an eWEEK report. Meanwhile, HP’s newly acquired Linux-based mobile OS — WebOS — will arrive in new smartphones in early 2011, says another eWEEK report.
Vista Phone 7 [sic] is not going to succeed, but Microsoft must show that it is at least trying to evolve. There are rumours only about an acquisition which may require more debt, but these have dried up as they had no solid basis (just the knowledge that two CEOs met for unknown reasons). Meanwhile at the helm, Mini-Microsoft takes stock of the terrible week preceding the release of Vista Phone 7 [sic]. Most of the items below we have already covered:
Wow, what got in the corporate water for this week? Coming off the glow of last week’s Company Meeting Koolaid we first got hit by the Goldman Sachs downgrade hang-over, then, to channel Mr. Ballmer, “Boom-Boom-Boom!”
* Health care changes on the way.
* Live Labs gets shut down.
* Technical Fellow Gary Flake, one of Microsoft few-TED stars, resigns.
* Technical Fellow Brad Lovering leaves.
* A glassdor.com survey that shows a lowly 50% approval rating for Mr. Ballmer.
* IEB gets re-orged.
* Massive gets shuttered (like we were all looking forward to billboard ads while blowing crap up in Xbox).
* Adobe acquisition rumors.
* Matt Rosoff leaves Directions on Microsoft.
All this right on the eve of Windows Phone 7 being launched. Feels like one big… purge.
We’ve already covered at least 3 more of the above [1, 2, 3]. The rest we’ll cover in the next post. █
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Posted in Bill Gates, Deception, Microsoft at 6:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: To Mr. Gates, consensual monopolisation is as easy as A-B-C because the mainstream press bends over and schools are traumatised enough that they would do anything for money
THE Gates Foundation is quite a propaganda machine, propagating praises of its own works by paying many journalists to do so. Gates recently paid The Guardian to do this [1, 2, 3] and it is the same with NPR, as we last noted in this recent post. There are many other examples and a new addition to the list is ABC News:
ABC News’ highly unusual arrangement with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help fund its coverage of health crises in the Third World has raised red flags among journo watchdogs. But others suggest the pact may be a portent of things to come for news orgs even at for-profit congloms like Disney.
ABC News said Wednesday it had reached an agreement for the Gates Foundation to pay the net a $1.5 million subsidy for a yearlong series of reports on international health, with particular emphasis on conditions that disproportionately affect the poorest countries.
Over at Groklaw, the editor remarked: “So now, if you’re rich enough, you can buy all the news just the way you like it? Blech.”
One of our readers, FurnaceBoy, says that the Huff & Puff is doing it again with Gates (we wrote many posts about Huffington and Gates). The Huff & Puff helps the Gates family occupy the US schools system [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], which the copyright community is affected by and FurnaceBoy is disgusted by.
Even after Microsoft matters a lot less, its co-founder continues looking for new monopolies. The costs include children, farmers, and the media which gets betrayed because somebody wants more power and believes he can do good while gaining this kind of power. People must learn from history. █
“Microsoft does not hesitate to use its operating system monopoly power and application program dominance to try to eliminate competition.”
–Apple Computer Senior VP Avadis Tevanian Jr.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents, SCO, UNIX at 4:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: As a resort to losers there is always litigation and this is where Microsoft is going, still hoping to prove that no Free/libre software is free (gratis), this time because of software patents as opposed to copyrights (UNIX)
MICROSOFT’S DIRECTION increasingly resembles that of SCO. Yes, the “free is expensive” line was previously used against Linux, even prior to SCO’s lawsuit against IBM and others. “Just to point out [...] Android runs on Linux,” wrote Groklaw some days ago, “so this is more of the same old, same old Microsoft. [...] When companies can’t compete any more, like SCO, they think of suing for license fees, I guess. But why would that make you want to buy anything from them? No one respects a bully, as SCO found out.” Groklaw still watches the SCO case against Novell. Techrights has watched the Microsoft patent fight against Linux since its dawn in November 2006.
Further promoting the idea that no mobile operating system can be free of charge, Microsoft recently paid Acacia [1, 2], the patent troll which bothers Red Hat. This leads to the perception that there is debt to be paid, whether this was Microsoft’s intent or not.
Android ain’t free, according to this article from CNN whose headline says that “Microsoft gets paid”. We have warned about this years in advance and called for opposition against it.
On the back of the news that Microsoft (MSFT) is suing Motorola (MOT) for patent infringments related to Android, Steve Ballmer tells the Wall Street Journal that HTC is paying a license fee for its use of Android…and that other Android manufactures may be forced to do the same.
WSJ: Is that difficult in an environment where Android is free?
Mr. Ballmer: Android has a patent fee. It’s not like Android’s free. You do have to license patents. HTC’s signed a license with us and you’re going to see license fees clearly for Android as well as for Windows.
WSJ: It doesn’t seem like the license fee alone is a big financial opportunity for Microsoft.
Mr. Ballmer: It’s one of the opportunities. One.
“Microsoft becoming the next SCO” says this headline from The Source, which takes the opportunity to warn Mono and Moonlight proponents.
And some desillusioned people still believe Mono/Moonlight would be free (and safe from Microsoft) if it ever would have the same sucess as Android…!
ITWire has similar remarks to make in the new article “Microsoft’s new spin: Android isn’t free”:
Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer told The Wall Street Journal in an interview: “Android has a patent fee. It’s not like Android’s free. You do have to license patents. HTC’s signed a license with us and you’re going to see license fees clearly for Android as well as for Windows.”
A trustworthy and typically speculations-free Web site opines that Microsoft’s Android lawsuit may be payback for Motorola’s Windows Mobile defection.
Google responded to Microsoft’s patent infringement lawsuit against Motorola over Android smartphones, saying the legal action “threatens innovation.” Meanwhile, analysts speculate on the timing and target of the lawsuit, with one analyst calling it payback against Motorola for abandoning Windows Mobile, and another suggesting the lawsuit is covering fire for Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Phone 7 release.
Motorola ought to protest against Microsoft’s aggression rather than do something similar under the “he started it” defence. For more information about Motorola, see our Wiki about the company. █
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Posted in Apple, Deception, Marketing at 3:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Apple is trying quite hard to protect its reputation and this involves hiding the truth about known issues that affect existing customers
• Apple reportedly taking steps to head off iPhone ‘glassgate’ [via]
Apple is reportedly working behind the scenes to address scratching and cracking of the iPhone’s glass back panel by certain third-party cases.
• With Antennagate over, is Glassgate next for the iPhone 4?
But there’s another issue brewing behind the scenes that’s sent Apple’s iPhone engineering team back into the bunker for preemptive damage control. If you’ve been into an Apple Store (or visited Apple’s site) recently, you might have caught a hint while browsing iPhone 4 cases (or lack thereof). Although Apple has just this week reestablished a wide variety of cases for sale, as of only a couple of days ago the only iPhone 4 case Apple even so much as mentioned on its site was its own first-party Bumper — and still conspicuously absent from its lineup are slide-on cases. As it turns out, was by no means a cynical ploy to maximize profits.
• Blogger stokes iPhone 4 shatter fears
We’re not sure how seriously to take claims that some third-party iPhone 4 cases can cause the handset’s rear glass panel to shatter.
To be fair, no one appears to have suggested that this has actually happened. But it is alleged by Gdgt.com that Apple engineers are busy investigating this potential problem, implying that the company is sufficiently worried that broken phones – and, by extension, a broken reputation – are a possibility.
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Posted in Microsoft, Windows at 2:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: An analysis of the causes that led to the Deepwater Horizon blowup (or what failed to prevent it), based on the long inquiry
THE previous post spoke about Stuxnet, which endangers many people whose company/authority/personal computer runs Microsoft Windows. Another recent disaster where Windows got some blame was the Deepwater Horizon blowup [1, 2, 3, 4]. An anonymous Techrights contributor wrote an update on the topic — one which we publish below.
“Here’s an update on the Deepwater Horizon story, “he writes, “New testimony spurred me to look up transcripts that had not been published at the time. There were several bombshells worth sharing and thinking about. For example, Windows NT is named and shamed by the expert witness. Windows was not mentioned in most press coverage but it seems to have played a more central roll than even I expected.”
Here is the report in question PDF and corresponding interpretation:
Windows NT and the Deepwater Horizon
A buggy control system left drillers and the rig blind and might even have damaged a critical safety system on the sea floor.
Microsoft Windows may have been directly responsible for Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. Previously, Techrights showed that Microsoft Windows played a crucial role. A 824 page transcript from the July 23 Deepwater Horizon investigation has been posted and we can see that things were as Techrights guessed. Mr. Williams describes Windows NT, “a very unstable platform” as the root cause of most problems. This buggy Windows based control system left drillers blind when it crashed daily was responsible for safety system bypasses and may have destroyed the annular seal. New testimony from Andrea Fleytas, who operated the alarm panels on the doomed bridge and jumped from the flaming deck with Mr. Williams, shows that the drilling team may have had time to escape if the alarms were not inhibited. This interpretation of her testimony, with some quotes, was published by the Times Picayune. The consequences of this disaster and ongoing cover up are well reported in the Florida Oil Spill Law blog.
Mr. Williams describes typical Windows problems in three identical, malfunctioning control systems, A Chair, B Chair and C Chair, on pages 42 and 101. There’s incompatibility, instability, harmful bugs and worries about viruses. On page 42, Mr. Williams talks about the systems, their importance and how broken they were.
The A-chair is located in the dog house. That is the main operating point for the driller to control all drilling functions. It controls everything from mud pumps to top drive, hydraulics. It controls everything.
For three to four months we’ve had problems with this computer simply locking up. [sometimes it was a blue screen, sometimes a frozen display] … We had ordered replacement hard drives from the manufacturer. We had actually ordered an entire new system, new computers, new servers, new everything to upgrade it from the very obsolete operating system that it was using. Those computers were actually using Windows NT, which is a very unstable platform to begin with.
Between the manufacturer and the rig, they could not get the bugs worked out of the new operating system. They couldn’t get the old software to run correctly on the new operating system. Our sister rig, the NAUTILUS, was going through those growing pains kind of for us. We had already ordered all the equipment. We were just waiting on them to figure it all out so that we could copy their learnings and make it work on our rig.
Meanwhile, we were limping along with what we had. We had ordered new hard drives. They came in. We replaced the images on the hard drives for the software imaging, got them back running, the chair would run for two, three days, and they would crash again. … I can’t tell you how many hours or days he [electrical supervisor, Tommy Daniels] spent focused entirely on getting these chairs resolved. … He was still working towards that up until the time of the explosion. It had not been resolved.
In the same discussion, Mr. Williams attributes the blowout to the failure of this system by referencing a previous incident.
[in another accident] It was internally discussed that the chair crashing caused the kick, because they lost all — They lost all communications to the drill package. They had no way to monitor anything for several seconds, and before they could get the B Chair up, they had taken a kick.
On pages 103 and 104, he also describes how a “blue screen of death” could lead to a “kick” while waiting for the backup system to boot and be informed by “servers”. Operators complained about this loss of control every day and it happened at all hours of the day and night.
It should be noted that the problem with the alarms was not the sensors but it could have been viruses. Mr. Williams describes how he made sure all of those were working properly on pages 66 and 68 to 70. On page 77, Williams says, “The chairs themselves were completely independent and isolated from the entire rig network, so there was no chance of infection, virus, hacking, there was no opportunity for that.” This tells us that the rest of the network had problems that might have been carried to the control system via physical media, like USB drives or floppies.
Non free software left BP engineers in the field divided and helpless. On page 102, Mr. Williams tells us, “There was no fixing bad software. We could simply manage it, try to keep it running.” So, BP’s management was told that all they could do was as the vendor says. Money and resources were being spent to fix the problems but they were wasted. When the vendor’s software failed, BP was stuck begging for more from a system that had to be bypassed.
Mr. Williams describes the general alarm, its inhibition and consequences starting on page 30. The whole rig was blind to real danger.
.
You have four states of alarms. You have a normal operating condition, you have an inhibited condition, which simply means that the sensory is active, it is sensing, and it will alarm and it will give the information to the computer but the computer will not trigger an alarm for it. It will give you the indication, but it won’t trigger the actual alarm. [other states described] …
there are several toxic and combustible gas sensors located in key areas, mainly around the drilling package. … When you get two detectors to go into a high state in one zone, what is supposed to happen is the ESD for that zone should trip, which is your emergency shutdowns [designed to prevent explosions], and you should also sound the generator alarm.
The general alarm is set up to inform the entire rig of any of three conditions. … Each one of those conditions has a distinct tone and a distinct visual light. We have light columns throughout the rig. One red — Within the column there’s a red, a yellow, and a blue, with the red being fire, yellow being toxic, blue being combustible. So you get an audio tone and a visual tone with every general alarm. [none of these were used in the accident because the computer was set so general alarms had to be triggered manually. As we will see, they failed to do this.]
… When I discovered it was inhibited about a year ago, I inquired as to why it was inhibited, and the explanation I got was that they — from the OIM down, they did not want people woke up at 3:00 o’clock in the morning due to false alarms.
On pages 40 and 41 we see that Emergency Shut Downs had been set to bypass because the system shut panels down frequently over false alarms. This left everyone at risk of explosion.
On page 37, Mr. Williams drops another bombshell, that the same system may have destroyed the blow out preventer without human input. A reasonable system would inhibit motion, even human directed motion, that would destroy itself. What they had left them wondering about everything.
it took me a few days to understand or to formulate why we were getting chunks of [annular] rubber back. There was an incident prior to that where we were in testing mode and the annular was closed around the drill pipe. I got a call from the night-time toolpusher to come investigate whether or not there was an input to the stick to hoist the block while the annular was closed, and I inquired as to why he needed to know that. He said, “Well, the block moved about 15 or 20 feet. We need to know why. We need to know if it was inadvertent stick movement or if it went up by itself.” [an informal investigation] got into the chair log data and dissected the data. What we determined was one of the sticks was moved in the positive direction. What we could not definitively determine was which stick. The tag system inside the log was not accurate enough. It simply said, “Joystick A, Joystick B,” …
All the logs prove to me is that the computer thought someone pushed the joystick. The signal was erroneous and might also have been spurious.
The most dreadful immediate consequence of all of this was that eleven men died in an explosion and fire. New testimony shows a situation that a more reasonable system should have been able to react to and save the day. The blow out preventer should never have been damaged. Alarms should have sounded, so people could escape. Panels and generator should have been shut down to prevent an explosion. What actually happened? David Hammer of the Times Picayune tells us.
Andrea Fleytas said she felt the rig jolt that evening and saw more than 10 magenta lights flash on her screen notifying her that the highest level of combustible gas had entered the rig’s shaker house and drill shack, critical areas where the rig’s drilling team was at work. … she was trained to sound a general alarm any time more than one indicator light flashed, but didn’t do so immediately in this case because she had never been trained to deal with such an overwhelming number of warnings. … she eventually “went over and hit the alarms” after the first or two large explosions.
[before pushing the alarms] Fleytas received a telephone call from crew members on the drill floor who said they were fighting a kick of gas and oil in the well; she took another call from the engine control room asking what was happening and she told them they were having a well control problem; and she continued to hit buttons on her console acknowledging the multiple gas alarms popping up in various sectors of the rig. … A few seconds after she got off the telephone with the engine room, there was a blackout on the rig. A few seconds after that, the first explosion rang out, Fleytas testified. It was then that she sounded the general alarm.
Keplinger said in his own testimony that it was after the explosion when he first “noticed a lot of gas in there and called” the shaker house to try to get whoever may have been there out, but nobody answered the phone.
Fleytas said she knew of no protocols for activating the emergency shutdown and no one activated it. Gas likely ignited in the drilling area, killing everyone there, and also caused the two active engines to rev so high that all power on the rig was lost, preventing fire pumps from working and keeping the rig from moving away from the spewing well.
Microsoft failure did not end when the rig sank. Those trying to fix things were also burdened with second rate software.
Since then, people from Texas to Florida have been sickened and harmed by the spill. Toxic levels of dispersant have shown up in people’s private pools, the beaches are contaminated with about 200 ppm of oil, oysters, crabs and shrimp have even more. The oil made its way into people’s blood. If the big spill in Mexico is a guide, the spill will linger for decades [2]. █
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Posted in Microsoft, Security, Windows at 2:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The Windows worm which has already raised nuclear tension is claimed to be doing damage all across the planet and outside the planet too
“Did The Stuxnet Worm Kill India’s INSAT-4B Satellite,” asked Sag Arun in relation to this short Stuxnet report from Forbes. It seems reasonable to assume a correlation.
On July 7, 2010, a power glitch in the solar panels of India’s INSAT-4B satellite resulted in 12 of its 24 transponders shutting down. As a result, an estimated 70% of India’s Direct-To-Home (DTH) companies’ customers were without service. India’s DTH operators include Sun TV and state-run Doordarshan and data services of Tata VSNL.
[...]
I uncovered this information as part of my background research for a paper that I’m presenting at the Black Hat Abu Dhabi conference in November. My objective for that presentation will be to provide an analytic model for determining attribution in cases like Stuxnet. My objective for this post is simply to show that there are more and better theories to explain Stuxnet’s motivation than just Israel and Iran, as others have posited. My personal research won’t be available until after Black Hat Abu Dhabi, however I hope others will pick up this thread, give it a good yank, and see what unravels before then.
Iran is now denying that Stuxnet was the cause of nuclear problems:
Delays in bringing Iran’s nuclear plant online at Bushehr are due to a “small leak” and nothing to do with the infamous Stuxnet worm, according to the country’s energy minister.
“Stuxnet Worms On” says Slashdot, which has a new summary with links:
Numerous Stuxnet related stories continue to flow through my bin today, so brace yourself: Unsurprisingly, Iran blames Stuxnet on a plot set up by the West, designed to infect its nuclear facilities. A Symantec researcher analyzed the code and put forth attack scenarios. A Threatpost researcher writes about the sophistication of the worm. Finally, Dutch multinationals have revealed that the worm is also attacking them. We may never know what this thing was really all about.
“Stuxnet ‘a game changer for malware defence’,” says The Register
The worm, whose primary method of entry into systems is infected USBs, essentially ignores vulnerable Windows boxes but aggressively attacks industrial control (SCADA) systems from Siemens, establishing a rootkit as well as a backdoor connection to two (now disconnected) command and control servers in Malaysia and Denmark.
Suffice to say, it is a Windows-only problem. Some of the mainstream press still neglects to point it out. More posts about Stuxnet can be found below. █
- Ralph Langner Says Windows Malware Possibly Designed to Derail Iran’s Nuclear Programme
- Windows Viruses Can be Politically Motivated Sometimes
- Who Needs Windows Back Doors When It’s So Insecure?
- Windows Insecurity Becomes a Political Issue
- Windows, Stuxnet, and Public Stoning
- Stuxnet Grows Beyond Siemens-Windows Infections
- Has BP Already Abandoned Windows?
- Reports: Apple to Charge for (Security) Updates
- Windows Viruses Can be Politically Motivated Sometimes
- New Flaw in Windows Facilitates More DDOS Attacks
- Siemens is Bad for Industry, Partly Due to Microsoft
- Microsoft Security Issues in The British Press, Vista and Vista 7 No Panacea
- Microsoft’s Negligence in Patching (Worst Amongst All Companies) to Blame for Stuxnet
- Microsoft Software: a Darwin Test for Incompetence
- Bad September for Microsoft Security, Symantec Buyout Rumours
- Microsoft Claims Credit for Failing in Security
- Many Windows Servers Being Abandoned; Minnesota Goes the Opposite Direction by Giving Microsoft Its Data
- Windows Users Still Under Attack From Stuxnet, Halo, and Zeus
- EU Concerns Highlight Need to Remove Windows From the Network
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10.11.10
Posted in Microsoft, Security, Windows at 8:59 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Scott Charney from Microsoft wants some money because of security crises and others jail the exploiters rather than actually fix the issue they exploit
LET’S give some credit to Microsoft. It’s a very comical company. One of its satirists, Mr. Charney, has been making many good people laugh when he started preaching about help to Microsoft through taxpayers’ money. It began several months ago [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] and earlier this month he took the stage again [1, 2], telling a sob story and then appealing for donations. His employer created a monster with a back door and it cannot seem to get this monster under control anymore (it only keeps getting worse).
Over the weekend we presented yet another rebuttal and assorted reactions. Here are some more that caught our eye:
i. The day that Microsoft wore a tinfoil hat and shouted la, la, la
Let me run that past you again: if your computer (or network) gets infected by some malware and ends up being part of a botnet, quite possibly courtesy of some zero-day exploit taking advantage of a Windows vulnerability, then that computer (or network) should be forcibly disconnected and put into some kind of cyber-quarantine using an adapted public health model.
Charney clearly hasn’t thought this through. In his speech at the International Security Solutions Europe (ISSE) Conference in Berlin, and also in the accompanying Microsoft white paper “Collective Defense: Applying Public Health Models to the Internet” he pushes the whole public health model approach as a solution to the online security threat. Charney likens an infected computer to an infected individual who puts others at risk by not getting vaccinated, and argues that a public health model which tracks and controls the spread of infection, quarantining folk to reduce the spread, is the answer in the IT world.
ii. Microsoft Proposes Government Licencing of Internet Access
iii. The Sheer Hypocrisy of Redmond’s Stab at Internet Health
One of the benefits of being an 800-pound gorilla in this world is that you can use your strength and influence to help others.
So, apparently, seems to be the altruistic thinking at Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) these days. Not content to rule the world — or at least try to — with its Windows desktop dominance, the software behemoth has now apparently paused to propose a way to tackle the Internet’s malware problems too.
The fundamental issue here is that Microsoft wants the public to cover up the costs of its own disaster. What does it think it is? BP?
Anyway, for Microsoft to think that an Internet tax can bring about a solution is to totally ignore the fact that this money will do nothing to actually fix the root of the issue, namely Windows. And why should the public ever take the burden? Microsoft hardly pays any tax and according to Associated Press, it wants to pay even less.
In a statement released Wednesday, executives for the Boeing Co. and Microsoft Corp. say I-1098 would harm businesses by raising costs for suppliers and making it harder to attract talent.
They already reject local talent and offer no benefits because it’s cheaper. That’s just more baseless lobbying and an increasing number of citizens of Seattle/Washington comprehend this over time.
Let’s go back to the original subject. Under similar posts from the weekend [1, 2] — ones about the Zeus plague [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] and the arrests it led to — that’s again an example where rather than addressing the security issues in Windows, the side-effects get handled. “Zeus Arrests Won’t End Fraud” is the headline of this new article which challenges the approach:
U.S. officials have charged 92 suspects believed to have been involved in cyber attacks that stole $70 million from bank accounts over the last four years. Meanwhile, authorities in London arrested 19 people who allegedly stole more than $9 million in just over three months using the same malware. Police in the Ukraine arrested five suspects on September 30.
But will 116 arrests make a dent into the international banking fraud being perpetrated via Zeus? Don’t get your hopes up, say industry experts.
Microsoft has been trying to get attention off Windows insecurity and it’s working quite well because the media no longer deals with Windows as an issue. The next post will be dedicated to Stuxnet, which is an excellent new example of the severe damages sometimes caused by Windows. █
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