Summary: Latest security issues and systematic deception, mostly from Microsoft and its various boosters across the Web (giving credit to Microsoft after Microsoft messed up)

Gratis as in Lock-in

A FEW days ago we wrote about Microsoft's attempt at disconnecting the air supply from third-party AV vendors, at least in small businesses. This would only decrease security due to monoculture, decreased competition, and lack of incentive to improve. The funny thing here is that Microsoft sells a vulnerable operating system and then claims to be distributing "free of charge" (only to some people) what ought to have been a characteristic of the operating system, not an add-on. The spinners from Seattle call it a "free" anti-virus software and what's meant by free is not freedom. It's free as in gratis, with lock-in. It decreases one's personal freedom and also impedes freedom of choice. A better headline than "Free Anti-Virus Protection Spurs More Robust Options" would be "Free-of-charge Anti-Virus Pseudo-protection Depresses More Robust Options".

Watch the Indian press turning the whole thing into Vista 7 promotion: "IT major Microsoft has launched a campaign to help computer users identify threats to their systems and how their networks can be made secure using Original Windows 7 that now comes with the advantage of Microsoft Security Essentials."

So Microsoft wants to dump Security Essentials on the market (as expected by many people all along) and already we learn that "Scareware Apes Microsoft Security Essentials". Microsoft has always performed very poorly among the security products already available and well established. "Anti-virus systems get tested" says The Inquirer which gives the following details:

A NUMBER of the most common anti-virus security systems have had a beady eye passed over their effectiveness and fitness for purpose in an assessment.

The study, which was carried out by the Austrian AV Comparatives group, looked at twenty products from the main providers that volunteered to take part.

We do not know who if anyone refused, but AV Comparatives said that it had limited test subjects to no more than twenty and required that participants adhered to its undisclosed criteria.

"Over half of all apps have security holes," claims Veracode (which we mentioned in [1, 2]).

More than half of all software applications failed to meet an acceptable level of security, according to a study based on real-world code audits by application security firm Veracode.

Around 57 per cent of applications failed to pass muster when first submitted to Veracode’s cloud-based testing service. A similar 56 per cent of finance-related applications failed first testing by Veracode’s security audit. The quality of the code used in many business-critical banking and insurance operations was simply not up to snuff.

ASP.NET Under Attack, Spin

In security news, the other major issue last week was the Microsoft ASP.NET vulnerability, which we wrote about in [1, 2, 3, 4].

“Is this really praise-worthy, especially when someone responds to flaws which the same someone is responsible for?”The ASP.NET problem alarmed Microsoft a great deal and the PR spin strives to make Microsoft be seen as responsive. An advisory was quickly issued [1, 2, 3] because of bad publicity and because it was already being exploited (a demo existed). There is only a temporary fix, not a permanent one. There are third-party fixes.

So, once again Microsoft pays attention to flaws a tad too late and then scrambles to limit damage it could probably prevent. Is this really praise-worthy, especially when someone responds to flaws which the same someone is responsible for?

Just like in the case of Russian spin [1, 2], Microsoft is trying to make itself look like the saviour rather than the problem. Lee Pender of the Microsoft boosters is trying to make Microsoft look good by painting it as responsive and responsible. To quote: "Well, late last week, we got an update from a Microsoft spokesperson who wanted to tell us that Microsoft hasn't just buried its head in the sand on Stuxnet."

We wrote about Stuxnet in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14].

Microsoft-Police

Over in Australia, Microsoft is involving the police right now (funded by taxpayers) [1, 2, 3, 5]. It's about a computer scam that affects Microsoft.

Twitter and Fog Computing

The other day we wrote about the major problem Twitter.com was having. Half a million Twitter users are said to be affected by a Twitter worm and Slashdot discusses the matter before and after the patching. Here are "the names and faces behind the 'onMouseOver' Twitter worm attack". It's one of those risks of Fog Computing. Even a teenager turns out to have been smart enough to do it.

But later, some mischievous users of the site started using the exploit to make people "retweet" infected messages (when they hovered over a tweet with the code inserted) that they had not authorised.

The guy is Australian, so will the police get involved? Or does the Australian police get involved only to help Microsoft? ⬆