Promised Vista security falls flat in betas

[unixronin]

We've been yearing for years now about Windows Vista, formerly called Longhorn, and how it's going to be so much more secure than previous versions of Windows and will prevent the kind of trivially-executed machine compromises that have plagued existing versions, leading to the creation by crackers of zombie botnets of tens of thousands of

Comments

[ithildae]

Messrs Balmer, Gates, and Co. are in a severe bind. They seem to have real competition. If they sacrifice backward compatibility, they lose application lock in, and the competition picks up market share. If they fail to implement security, they are no worse off than they are today.

The cruel fact of the situation today is that only those who understand technology really care about security. For most people and businesses, having to reinstall is factored into the cost of owning a computer.

Fraud risks to companies are covered by higher prices to all. That means the only consequence to better security is higher profit margins. Something desirable, but not necessary.

The bottom line is that Micro$loth has nothing to gain, and much to lose, by keeping promises of better security. Nothing to see here, move along...

[unixronin]

The cruel fact of the situation today is that only those who understand technology really care about security. For most people and businesses, having to reinstall is factored into the cost of owning a computer.

The real cost isn't in reinstalls, nor only in fraud. It's in lost, stolen or destroyed data, man-hours spent repairing the damage, liability for disclosures of confidential information, and in people having to completely reconstruct their legal lives because their identity was stolen.

[ithildae]

I agree. How has that impacted Micro$loth's bottom line? What is the impetus for change? I don't see anything significant for either answer.

Government should be the final guarantor of protections from identity theft. (Is this really me saying that?) Corporations are not properly concerned about it. However, government seems to be beholden to the major players in this fight. (Witness the stupidity in MA and the ODF "fight".)

I really feel a bit helpless in this conflict. But I absolutely do not expect Micro$loth to change it's proven behavior or tactics. They have a monopoly to lose. They will do anything to protect that. Even if that means leaving end users to the wolves.

"If you make yourselves into sheep, the wolves will eat you." -- B. Franklin

[unixronin]

All sad, but true. Microsoft has gotten rich on peddling an OS that never saw a virus it didn't like.

[unixronin]

That's good to hear. Just sandboxing ActiveX would be a big step forward.

[darthgeek]

Wasn't that the entire impetus for ActiveX? Act like java without the security restrictions?

[unixronin]

Well, that and "be under Microsoft's control, not Sun's" ... the good old Microsoft "Embrace and Extend Plagiarize and Pollute" standards philosophy. Microsoft wanted something that worked like Java, but which would lock people into Internet Explorer, and would do things that Java couldn't because it had access to the entire system, and feh, who needs all that stupid sandbox security stuff anyway .... after all, why SHOULDN'T untrusted content be given unrestricted access to everything on the machine? All those security restrictions get in the way of the Shiny.