Hackers Delight

[Peter Piper]

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. faces a proposed class-action lawsuit in California based on the claim that its market-dominant software is vulnerable to viruses capable of triggering "massive, cascading failures" in global computer networks.

The lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, also claims that Microsofts security warnings are too complex to be understood by the general public and serve instead to tip off "fast-moving" hackers on how to exploit flaws in its operating system.

The suit claims unfair competition and the violation of two California consumer rights laws, one of which is intended to protect the privacy of personal information in computer data bases. It asks for unspecified damages and legal costs, as well as an injunction against Microsoft barring it from unfair business practices.

[Sc00by]

Yeah that's got no hope of suceeding I'm afraid. Well certainly not before I start drawing my Pension...

[[OLSC]Fizban]

Much as I dispise M$, I don't think the case has much to stand on:

1) Windoze Update isn't difficualt to use (maybes unreliable at times, but fairly simple)

2) There are two levels of security bulliten icludiding a comsumer version (well your honour, people coundn't understand the bulliten so we made it easier for them)

So I'm not sure how it can be confusing.[1]

3) M$ don't publish expliot examples or exploit test tools until the brown stuff has hits the fan.

4) IIRC one of the recent RPC problems was in the wild before M$ became aware of it and had to do a patch in a panic

So I don't see how they tip off crackers.

Fizban

The cause of the problem is:
runaway cat on system.

[1] but it's California, look who's going to win the governer job...

[[OLSC]LtTomWoolley]

security warnings are too complex to be understood by the general public and serve instead to tip off "fast-moving" hackers on how to exploit flaws in its operating system.
This is the dumbest part of the whole thing as Fiz has pointed out - if you don't know where or what the flaw is, how do you prioritize rolling out the fix or even decide how vulnerable you are? If you do get done before you read/MS releases the warning, how can you tell if have been and how you were attacked?

My enemy's enemy is not always my friend, sometimes he's just my enemy's enemy. See that idiotic plug-in patent lawsuit frex.

[wintermute]

LtTomWoolley]My enemy's enemy is not always my friend, sometimes he's just my enemy's enemy. See that idiotic plug-in patent lawsuit frex.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=81403&cid=7152828

Rob

[[OLSC]LtTomWoolley]

Yes, lovely. One of our products is essentially an ActiveX control (or a few of them). Funny though, no-one else seemed to have heard of this and needless to say they were not impressed when they found out...

[wintermute]

On a related note, the EU Council is currently trying to push through legislation to give us a patent system for computer software like that which exists in the US (so that companies can sue you for not paying royalties on things like eg. progress bars, mouse pointers, drop down menus). The EU Government (the elected bit) has, following massive opposition from the open source movement, recently voted against the legislation, but the EU Council seems keen to force it through anyway:

http://www.ffii.org/

To sign the petition, click the big green 'Support Now!' link...

Rob