Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft is Still Attacking Free/Open Source Software With Security FUD

Nana the cat



Summary: Free software's "many eyeballs" defence is being slammed by Microsoft employees who cite their own reports and continue to show incompetence and extreme negligence when it comes to security

IS MICROSOFT really changing? Is Microsoft finally accepting that "open source" (as it insists on calling it) is acceptable? Hell no.



Back in December we showed that Microsoft was smearing Free software even though it can run on Windows and now we find the monopolist using its own lies that its arrogant employees have manufactured in order to fuel this latest security spin and lies about Free software's security. Microsoft titled this FUD "Microsoft’s Many Eyeballs and the Security Development Lifecycle". Blankenhorn states in his response that "Closed source still state religion at Microsoft"

But closed source remains a sort of state religion at Microsoft, as I learned this week from Fred Trotter, an expert in open source medical software.

Fred wrote this week about some FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) Shawn Hernan of Microsoft is spreading within the security community — that open source is less secure despite its being visible.


Yes, that would be Microsoft, which is still doing extra PR work to pretend that it has an "open source" side and that CodePlex is not just a shell/front for Microsoft. To advertise the CodePlex Foundation as not tied to Microsoft, these liars previously recruited Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza (before he was officially their MVP). They also exploit their long-standing friendships with British Library staff in order to achieve this. The true intentions are so obvious to see that it takes gullible or misinformed individuals to fall for it.

Regarding those Microsoft claims of "better" security in proprietary software, here is a new article which attributes the rise in E-mail malware to Microsoft Windows botnets (zombie PCs). The article says: "Malicious spam volumes increased dramatically in the back half of 2009, reaching three billion messages per day, compared to 600 million messages per day in the first half of 2009. But this is still a tiny fraction of the estimated global spam volume, thought to be about 200 billion messages per day.

"A new report by net security firm M86 Security points the finger of blame for the torrent of malware, phishing and other scams (collectively defined as malicious spam) and junk mail more generally towards botnet networks of compromised machines. It reckons five botnets were responsible for 78 per cent of the malicious spam it fought in the second half of 2009.

"M86 reports that the major spam botnets such as Rustock, Pushdo (or Cutwail) and Mega-D continue to dominate spam output, supported by second-tier botnets such as Grum, and Lethic. Rustock alone pushed out 34 per cent of spam in 2H09. Pushdo zombie drones puked out one in five spam messages (20 per cent), with Mega-D zombies account for 9 per cent of the global junk mail nuisance."

“[S]ince 2007, 5 major maintainers on Ubuntu are linked to Novell [...] Mostly the one maintaining .NET packages.”
      --Oiaohm
Needless to say, this is only affecting Windows and Microsoft's utter negligence [1, 2, 3] contributes to it. The last thing we need is for GNU/Linux to inherit the same security problems through Mono and Moonlight. In today's IRC conversations (the relevant part starts here), it came up that "since 2007, 5 major maintainers on Ubuntu are linked to Novell [...] Mostly the one maintaining .NET packages." That's a claim from Oiaohm, who added: "Matt Asay will allow .NET to infect more. Then end of next year MS can drop the patent wall on them." Maybe this is a good opportunity to ask Asay some questions in Slashdot. Well, Slashdot treats him like a celebrity and some months ago he was mentioned in their front page because former Microsoft employees voted him one of the "most influential in FOSS" (no coders at all were seen as worthy for this list, not even Richard Stallman). But then again, as the new call for questions states, "Matt [Asay] is on the board of advisors for Slashdot's parent company, Geeknet." We previously complained about Slashdot's new Microsoft slant [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], not to mention the hiring of former Microsoft employees who can change the agenda and groom particular people who are helpful to them (Matt Asay is the one who brought Microsoft to OSBC [1, 2, 3]). MinceR says that "Geeknet is completely corrupted". Why is it that Slashdot picks questions for Jim Zemlin, for example (he is a marketing person from the Linux Foundation), whereas technical people from the heavily-disrespected GNU receive no opportunity to offer their side of the story? Slashdot reached out in the same way to some Microsoft employees.

DaemonFC, a former Microsoft MVP, says: "I still don't get why many large companies with lots of lawyers don't flinch at shipping Mono if it really is so bad... you'd think they'd clear something like that with their legal dept first..."

MinceR says that Microsoft "does everything they can to make the legal situation about mono-related patents as unclear as possible" and Oiaohm tells DaemonFC that Intel and other companies do know about the problem, which is why they stay out of Moonlight, for example [1, 2]. "Intel will not touch it," Oiaohm insists, "due to legal issues."

MinceR adds: "we see canonical pushing mono... if their legal department didn't warn them about this, when exactly will they do so?"

At a later stage in the day, Oiaohm dropped this interesting new link ("2010 CWE/SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors"). "Good read for those who think languages like .net are majorally more secure," he said. "That is the new list for bugs that common breached systems last year. Lot of them don't link to what .net and java languages protect against. To be correct php and other equal languages have been breached."

"The continuous and broad peer-review enabled by publicly available source code supports software reliability and security efforts through the identification and elimination of defects that might otherwise go unrecognized by a more limited core development team."

--CIO David Wennergren, Department of Defense (October 2009)



Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Get Rid of Back Doors, Don't Obsess Over Bounties and Other Corporate PR Stunts (or Needless Reboot Rituals)
Security as a term has mostly lost its meaning due to repeated misuse for many years
Serial Sloppers Are Killing the Web (They Probably Don't Care, Either)
Slop is a disease on the Web
IBM's Debt Ballooned by 8.5 Billion Dollars in Just 3 Months!
Hallmark of a company in a state of disarray, trying to spend its way out of trouble
Big Trouble in GNOME
even GNOME people admit the CoC went wrong
 
Richard Stallman and the Unix Philosophy
When asked about systemd people must remember that RMS speaks as an active Board member of the FSF and also the founder of the FSF
The Cost (to Linux) of LLM Slop
Slop 'artists' like Fagioli are far from harmless
Links 25/04/2025: Ubisoft Spyware, Hegseth Fails at Tech on Every Level
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/04/2025: Food Forest Update and Facebook Destroying the Net
Links for the day
Streaming Apps Are “Investor Fraud” That Kills the Planet
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Things Get Increasingly Nasty at Microsoft Ahead of the Fake Results and May's Mass Layoffs Wave
They try to get people to 'resign' so that they won't count as layoffs and the company's 'wellbeing' will seem better
Slopping the Trough: Disney Plus Loses Billions and the Decline of Physical Media in America
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 24, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, April 24, 2025
Links 24/04/2025: GAFAM Problems and No Peace (or Ceasefire) in Sight
Links for the day
Slopfarms on the Web Almost Always Generate Anti-Linux FUD When They Produce "Linux" Output
Welcome to the dying Web
Richard Stallman's Oxford Talk Has Just Ended, Here Are Some Photos
he might hop over to another European country
Gemini Links 24/04/2025: Birthday and Good Work of Academia in Esotericism
Links for the day
Links 24/04/2025: EU fines Apple and Facebook, Another Microsoft GitHub Security Blunder
Links for the day
New Article Explains How the GPL Came About and WordPress Having Copyleft Obligations
Having been involved in the WordPress development community since almost the beginning, I know why it chose the GPL and how it restricts abuse by Automattic
IBM Gained Almost 6 Billion Dollars in "Goodwill" Value in Just 3 Months, According to IBM
Congrats to the management!
In Belarus, Yandex is Now Measured as 50 Times More 'Popular' (by Usage) Than Microsoft
Yandex continues to gain, whereas Bing cannot even register at 1%. Last month it was registered or measured at a measly 0.65%.
IBM Cannot Lie to Shareholders Anymore
"I would not be surprised if we see a layoff every quarter this year."
Dr Richard Stallman (RMS) Gives Talk in Oxford University in 4 Hours
If you live nearby, go there (it's free as in gratis)
Using a Law Firm's Licence to Exercise Politics Through Frivolous SLAPPs and Nastygrams (to Silence People, Remove Pages, Demand Fake or Forced 'Apologies')
Things must be getting really bad when lawyers act for raving antisemites
We're Working to Make Full-Site Search Available
This site has over 1,000 'wiki' pages, many thousands of documents, several thousands of videos, and about 50,000 blog posts or articles. We need to make them easier to find/navigate.
Links 24/04/2025: IBM Loses Many Contracts, Intel to Lay Off Over 20% (Not Counting Those Who Leave 'Voluntarily')
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Can Explain to Oxford Artificial Intelligence Society Why LLM Slop is Not Artificial Intelligence and Why It Hurts Society
another 'crop' of LLM slop that damages GNU/Linux and facts
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 23, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Promoting Microsoft and Proprietary Software Using Microsoft Operatives
Because nothing says "Open Source" like GPL violations facilitated by Microsoft
Another Site Bites the Dust: "Open Source For You" Becoming a Slopfarm (LLM Slop)
What a shame. Another dead site.
Links 23/04/2025: Crackdowns on Dissent, Palin Loses Libel Retrial Against New York Times
Links for the day
Links 23/04/2025: Hard Times and Digital Amnesia
Links for the day
The GNU/Linux Site Formerly Known as "linoxide.com" is Back... as an LLM Slopfarm!
Better for linoxide.com to go offline than to do this
Richard Stallman to Speak in Oxford University Exactly a Day From Now
outsourced to GAFAM
Links 23/04/2025: "Hiding Corruption" and "The Cost of Defunding Harvard"
Links for the day
Microsoft 'Studies' Again? Leon Musolff is Writing Papers With Microsoft.
Even if one can see/find a link to "the study" (in the Bezos-controlled publication), most people won't look any further and just take everything at face value.
Towards GNU World Domination
The FSF led by Geoffrey S. Knauth with his friend Richard Stallman in the FSF's Board [...] Let's encourage people to adopt GNU/Linux. There has never been a better time.
statCounter Helps Visualise Just How Deep in Trouble Microsoft is (Especially in Africa)
Microsoft sabotaged efforts to connect Africans and equip them with GNU/Linux laptops
The Register is Using Linux-Hostile Clickbait in Articles of Linux Proponents
Don't be a "whore" to advertisers, team El Reg
Microsoft Windows in Cyprus Lacking a Future
Most people access the Web there from mobile
Matrix Has a Severe Problem With Illegal Images
If Matrix cannot get the CP problem under control, many projects and people will dump Matrix
Never Try to Justify Strangulation of Women (Not in the US and Not in the UK)
Joint post by Mrs. Rianne Schestowitz and Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Links 23/04/2025: Tesla Profits Plunge 71%, Intel Ready to Lay Off 20% of Staff, Microsoft and IBM Layoffs
Links for the day
Microsoft's Most Profound Issue is That People Moved to 'Mobile' and "App Stores" (Microsoft's Presence There is Negligible)
Expect a wild ride for Microsoft this year
Google News is Amplifying FUD and Lies About Linux (and OpenSSH/SSH) by Promoting Slopfarms With Machine-Generated FUD and Slop Images
Google should know better
Gemini Links 23/04/2025: Librarians, Anubis, and Refactoring a Gemini Capsule
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, April 22, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, April 22, 2025