Flutterby™! : National Secruity 2000-12-29 14:50:05+00

National Secruity

2000-12-29 14:50:05+00 by Larry Burton 1 comments

I'm not one of those perpetual critics of Microsoft, I actually like Windows 98 and NT when they are working, but there are some things about Microsoft that is troubling to me. Mostly it is the reliance that I'm seeing on this company's products. IDG.net is reporting that I'm not alone in my concerns. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has released a report calling the recent breech in Microsoft's network has national security implications.

"It is doubtful that the millions (sometimes billions) of lines of code required to power Microsoft's products could readily be sanitized," the CSIS report states. "With most military and government systems powered by Microsoft software and more generally reliant on [commercial, off-the-shelf systems], this recent development can pose grave national-security-related concerns," the 73-page report concludes.

It isn't the break in and possible theft of code that worries me as much as the fact that the code that so much business is dependent upon is only available to a relative handful of people that I'm not quite sure I can have confidence in their long term motives.

I've been watching for a major class-action lawsuit against Microsoft lead by large corporations that bought into the 'everything Microsoft' policy and then lost millions of dollars when the ILOVEYOU and other viruses hit. I expect that an internel Microsoft memo will turn up from a lead software engineer working on Outlook describing how the built-in scripting features are a major security risk and generally a very bad idea. Most Microsoft software engineers are actually VERY bright people and have a good understanding of the technology they are working on. I'm sure the engineer's concerns weren't shot down by their marketting department. These memos would establish Microsoft's negligence in developing an inherently insecure email client and marketting it as an 'enterprise' solution. The fact that Microsoft themselves got hacked through a backdoor created by an email script only stokes the fire.