11.13.14
Gemini version available ♊︎Microsoft Windows is Still Designed as a Paradise of Back Doors, Intrusion, Wiretaps, and Interception
Summary: At many levels — from communication to storage and encryption — Windows is designed for the very opposite of security
TO ONE who is aware of what Microsoft has been doing with the NSA since the 1990s it can be rather shocking to see entire nations relying on Microsoft Windows. As a quick recap, aided by one of our readers, back in the 90s there was this article stating: “Rubenstein, Microsoft attorney and a top lieutenant to Bill Gates. By his own account, Rubenstein acts as a “filter” between the NSA and Microsoft’s design teams in Redmond, Wash. “Any time that you’re developing a new product, you will be working closely with the NSA,”he noted.”
There is hardly room any for excuses or misinterpretation here. “How NSA access was built into Windows” is another important article from the German press and it was published back in the 90s. These older articles are merely few among many more (some no longer accessible due to ‘Web rot’) which already made it clear that Bill Gates and Microsoft were fine with back-dooring billions of people. Gates continues to be a vocal proponent of the NSA, even to this date (after Snowden had leaked details that made the NSA exceptionally unpopular like no time before, internationally).
Anyone who still thinks that proprietary software is secure says quite a lot about his/her own intelligence (and disregard for facts). It is also widely known why it is risky to connect Free software to proprietary software, which basically compromises the trust that Free software carries with it. Germany, based on this new article from Dr. Glyn Moody, is beginning to see the light as well. Here is a portion:
You Can’t Trust Closed-Source Code – Germany Agrees
Similarly, moves by both Microsoft and Amazon, among others, to set up local data centres in the EU will not on their own protect European data unless that is encrypted by the companies themselves, and the cloud computing providers do *not* have access to the keys. Indeed, if the data is encrypted in this way, local storage is not so important, since the NSA will have an equally hard time decrypting it wherever it is held – as far as we know, that is.
Because of that recent US court judgment ordering Microsoft to hand over emails held in Ireland, many people are now aware of the dangers of cloud computing in the absence of encryption under the control of the customer. But very few seem to have woken up to the problems of backdoors in proprietary software that I mentioned at the start of this post. One important exception is the German government, which according to Sky News is working on an extremely significant law in this area…
The NSA could get back door access into every data stored in Windows and now it can get access to data stored remotely, too. It’s total surveillance. Not even encryption can help.
I was contacted by a manager from Microsoft last week and after we exchanged some messages about the farce which is encryption in Windows he no longer had a counter argument. He found out, after some research, that I was in fact right. I was previously (almost a decade ago) ridiculed by top-level Microsoft staff for suggesting that encryption in Windows could easily be subverted, by design. Around that time Microsoft’s Allchin was seemingly worried about back doors and he was quoted on it (the Allchin article is hidden to many as the link has changed). Some of it is very old, but we have written about Bill Gates’ support of back doors since the early days of this Web site. Microsoft back doors in Windows go beyond just remote access and descend down to encryption, caused by a deficient-by-design (or generally bad) encryption. When we cited Cryptome's findings we received an overwhelming (and supporting) attention. The management from Microsoft tried to change our article (asking for changes) despite the article being correct. As stated in comments in Soylent News: “when my Windows 8.1 tablet recommended that I turn on encryption, as soon as I clicked “no” to handing my administrator user over to Microsoft, it disabled encryption.”
I showed it to Microsoft management, whereupon they checked and confirmed that this was true. No response since, hence we can assume there’s no counter argument.
In summary, Microsoft betrays the privacy of Windows users at many levels. No nation should deem Windows suitable for use (at any level) and ridicule is probably well deserved where one defends Windows as ‘secure’. █
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