OT: Windows Vista security 'rendered useless' by researchers

[Richmond Mathewson]

I just love phrases like 'rendered useless'. Now I am not a great fan of MicroSoft products, but:

I ran a Pentium 3 with Windows 2000 for a year; running about 16 hours a day, with not a single virus, trojan or relative of pinocchio causing problems. How did I do it?

1. By realising that the makers of the OS probably didn't give a d**n about the security of my computer, and in fact might favour my rig being a leaky sieve.

2. By realising that the only person who was likely to care about my rig was me.

3. By reading an awful lot of boring stuff about firewalls and then implementing most of it.

4. Steering clear of 'funny' websites, and not downloading software (ran FireFox and Open Office and nothing else).

So, I successfully rendered Windows 2000 useful.

Every time I install an operating system on a computer (doesn't really matter who made the OS) I have to render it useful; this is because I start with the idea that the system is probably fairly leaky. This takes considerable time and effort. I spend quite some time every year helping people who bought PCs with Windows pre-installed, because, of course, the person who installs these OEM versions doesn't care about the customers, he/she has to install the max. number of OSs in the minimum of time - by the quickest method (i.e. keep clicking the default button).

I am quite sure that Windows Vista, for all its millions of jazzy windoids that go on and on and on and on about security, is no better than half the experienced people who find joy in breaking into operating systems. It would, for the sake of argument, be perfectly possible to write a "nasty little widget" in Runtime Revolution that would delete an awful lot of the 'C' drive before anybody noticed; why anybody would want to do that beats me.

People who use phrases such as the header of this message to urge people to change their OSs and/or computers also so look a bit silly as they beg the question: how long will it be before there is a full-scale attack on the Mac OS? or a Linux distro?

I'm digging out some Rhapsody DR2 disks that a friend gave me in about 1999 (neither he nor I ever used them) and going to have some "holiday fun" installing them on a partition on my G3 iMac - why? well, lots of reasons really; but one of them is that by using a fairly old and obscure OS I might be less vulnerable online. I wonder if I can use the PC CD to breath some life into a P2 I have lurking under the bed.

One should also pause and reflect on the fact that both Microsoft and Apple produce their operating systems to make money, and if they waited until they had a rock-solid OS that nobody could ever touch they would never make any money at all and the computer industry would collapse, and people like you and me would die of inanition.

sincerely, Richmond Mathewson.
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A Thorn in the flesh is better than a failed Systems Development Life Cycle.
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