Bonum Certa Men Certa

Hosting With Microsoft Software a Terrible Idea, as United Airlines Serves to Show

United Airlines



Summary: The United Airlines Web site, which uses Microsoft software, gets cracked, but the corporate media ignores the role of the underlying platform

"United hackers given million free flight miles," says the BBC right now. Go to the United Airlines Web site and you will immediately see that they use Windows (ASPX is exposed at the URL of the front page, which is bad security practice in its own right). The United Airlines site is hiding behind Akamai (i.e. GNU/Linux), but it still shows a lot about the back end, which suggests that Microsoft frameworks are largely to blame (maybe poor programming, too).



This comes at an interesting time because, to quote other British media, "Microsoft Ends Windows Server 2003 Support But What Now?"

"The bottom line is, nobody should ever trust Microsoft for hosting of any kind of site."Well, any company that still chooses Microsoft for public-facing site hosting would have to be dumb or seriously irresponsible. Microsoft is now hoping to also become the host of GNU/Linux sites. Microsoft's booster Pedro Hernandez re-announces Microsoft propaganda right now ("Microsoft Rolls Out Linux Support Services on Azure") even though it is not new, it is merely entrapment by Microsoft. Microsoft's propaganda network "1105 Media", featuring Microsoft's booster Kurt Mackie, adds to it [1, 2] and promotes hosting by Microsoft. The latest Microsoft Channel 9 propaganda (we saw quite a bit of that recently), goes as far as openwashing Azure.

The bottom line is, nobody should ever trust Microsoft for hosting of any kind of site. The company is incompetent and it puts the NSA's interests (e.g. back doors) first.

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