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February 11, 2004

Microshaft Warning: Windblows Flaw

The sky is falling. For the second time this month, Microslosh has bypassed the "the second Tuesday in each month" restriction on frightening the customers. Apparently, six months ago someone found YAMF (Yet Another Microslosh Flaw) and they just got around to fixing it. It is apparently really, super, especially urgent that you not take as long as they did to implement it. You can check the scary details at Cnet and then you can:
1. Run around like a chook without a head patching everything in sight (the patch is guaranteed to break at least 10% of the systems you install it on), OR
2. You can wait another until your system is infected (again) and then reinstall it after the fuss dies down, OR
3. You can disconnect from the net and put a real computer between you and the internet to protect you (a Linux, BSD or Darwin box would do a fine job at this), OR
4. You can sit back and chuckle because you have a Mac and this doesn't apply to you.

Given such broken code it doesn't matter how careful you are or how often you patch your system. It's like gambling in the casino. You will lose in the long term because the casino will always take the house cut. The cost in lost productivity will be enormous but the normal blinkered IT vision will fail to realise that for the cost of just one of these attacks they could replace all the Windblows crap with something secure (Mac, Linux, OS2, TRS-80) and still save money.

Meanwhile, some employers (like mine?) will actively look at migrating more and more of their Unix solutions onto Wintel hardware because it is so much easier to work with. After all, they never see the Unix admins running around doing this sort of patching - obviously it is too hard to patch Unix boxes.

Posted by Ozguru at February 11, 2004 08:02 AM

Comments

From Wired:
A Microsoft security executive, Stephen Toulouse, said the flawed software was "an extremely deep and pervasive technology in Windows," and urged customers to apply the patch immediately. The disclosure comes just weeks before Microsoft chairman Bill Gates delivers a keynote speech in San Francisco at one of the industry's most important security trade conferences. Microsoft has struggled in recent months against a tide of renewed criticism about security risks in its software, the engine for computers in most of the world's governments, corporations and homes.

Of course you can just delete the words "an extremely deep and pervasive technology in" and the sentance would then read: "the flawed software was Windows" which be just as accurate and a tad more honest.

Here's a nickel son, get yourself a real computer.

Posted by: ozguru at February 11, 2004 08:02 AM