12.05.15
Vista 10 is ‘Swiss Cheese’ With Critical Bugs, More Microsoft Layoffs (HoloLens) Announced. So Why Did OpenBSD Accept Microsoft’s $1,000,000 Bribe?
New evidence of Microsoft’s advocacy of back doors and of dangers to SSH security
Summary: Concerns about OpenSSH and its acceptance of Microsoft (after relatively huge payments), which not only facilitates back door access (with secret code) but is already descending into oblivion anyway
MICROSOFT’S business, as we pointed out this morning, is in a sorry state. The common carrier, Vista 10, is widely rejected, so Microsoft is now trying to force people to download and install it. This is a new kind of aggression from Microsoft. It forcibly gives people software that they don’t ask for and explicitly reject.
“One has to be seriously misinformed to actually believe that effective disk encryption is possible in Windows. There are back doors and it’s intentional.”There are permanent back doors in Vista 10, as leaks about Microsoft’s special relationship with the NSA serve to highlight. The British technology press calls Vista 10 “spyware-as-a-service” and points out that drive encryption in it is permanently broken. One article shows that security not a priority at all in Vista 10 and another states that “Microsoft can be pretty secretive about its spyware-as-a-service Windows 10, but Redmond has now taken its furtiveness to a whole new level.” The clever headline says “Microsoft encrypts explanation of borked Windows 10 encryption”. Well, Microsoft doesn’t make drive encryption that actually works. There are back doors in it, as we explained last year and earlier this year. There are even bits of material related to this in leaks-oriented sites such as Cryptome. One has to be seriously misinformed to actually believe that effective disk encryption is possible in Windows. There are back doors and it’s intentional. We know this, at the very least, based on Edward Snowden’s leaks. The FBI does not even publicly complain about encryption in Microsoft’s products; that’s because the FBI already has a door into everything from Microsoft. Remember CIPAV?
“To make matters insanely dangerous, OpenSSHL “will also have Redmond’s proprietary cryptology interfaces rather than standard open-source implementations of the Secure Sockets Layer” (in other words, compromise of security is almost guaranteed).”To make matters worse, Microsoft is now trying to bring this whole crazy mentality into FOSS projects like OpenSSH (hence into BSD, Linux, Solaris, and so on) — a move which we criticised here before (even quite recently). OpenSSH, according to this article, is getting closer to NIST (the NSA’a back doors facilitator, which recommended ciphers with back doors in them). To make matters insanely dangerous, OpenSSHL “will also have Redmond’s proprietary cryptology interfaces rather than standard open-source implementations of the Secure Sockets Layer” (in other words, compromise of security is almost guaranteed).
“Microsoft needs them more than they need Microsoft, but Microsoft handed them a nice bribe in order to do this (we covered this earlier this year).”What are NIST and Microsoft doing anywhere near SSH? Both of them are proponents and facilitators of back doors? IETF is there too. We already wrote a great deal about its malice over the years. What are OpenSSH developers getting into here? Microsoft needs them more than they need Microsoft, but Microsoft handed them a nice bribe in order to do this (we covered this earlier this year).
Microsoft itself continues to collapse. The people who made Vista 10 marketing gimmicks are being laid off right now. More Microsoft layoffs are being reported this month. Just notice the trend. It is an ever-shrinking company trying to reinvent itself and find a new identity, with a new logo and new CEO, led by Bill Gates (the real boss who amasses all the money, hoarding more and more of it while pretending to run a ‘charity’ in order to get tax breaks, like Mark Zuckerberg).
We are saddened to see the OpenSSH community opening its door (maybe its back door) to a dying company which they neither need nor can trust. █
“In doubt a man of worth will trust to his own wisdom.”
–J.R.R. Tolkien
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