- Site menu:
- Latest Discussions
- Latest Newswire
- Archives
- Submit Story
- Story HOWTO
- Syndicate
- E-mail Alerts
Hadopi Law: Spyware Provisions
|
|
|
Comments (6)
So: MSFT can't make windows "malware proof". But like in any kind of practical epidemiology, they could do things to raise the barrier to epidemics. A less baroque, more documented system call interface would help. They should probably just junk the native NT and Win32 APIs and start over. A custom of separation of privileges would also help. True multi-user capability, and reorganize and make orthogonal their permissions and file naming (which they linked by making "exe" file extensions make the file executable).
And yes, if MSFT made WIndows a more basically secure system, instead of spackling over a foundation of sand with things like ASLR & etc. it would reduce their ability to leverage anti-competitive things like anti-virus. In 1996, I remember some Windows 3.11 users bemoaning the fact that the Anti-Virus Companies no longer supported Windows 3.11: the plague of malware that grew around Windows 3.11 even after the release of Windows 95 forced them to move to Win95. Once Norton, Symantec, F-Secure, MacAfee, etc abruptly moved to Windows 95, the Windows 3.11 users were left without protection. Viruses for Win3.11 written after AV support for Win3.11 got dropped really did them in.
I really only mentioned viruses (and worms, Nov 1988!) as a Unix/free software invention as a form of humor. It always seems to me that the stuff that MSFT appropriated as their own, from The Internet to WWW, got its start as some kind of free software. Mosaic was available for X11 long before it was available for Windows 3.11, the first web browser ran under NeXTStep, Fred Cohen wrote some of the first viruses under 4.xBSD, and RTM wrote the first computer worm for SunOS and Vaxes running 4BSD. The TCP/IP based Internet started on BSD - Windows is a latecomer
Quoting:if Windows suddenly became a malware-proof, fully secure operating systemOh, you mean like that Sooper Sekure Windows Eks Pee that they developed for the US Air Force? /sarcasm
Of course, if they have now proven that they can develop a properly-secureable OS, the next question becomes, why didn't they do that in the first place, rather than foisting onto the public a product with known, dangerous design defects? /not-sarcasm
Post a comment
A free account is needed to post. Write your comment here first: your text is kept in this browser while you sign up or log in, and is waiting for you when you come back.
Your message:Sign up and post (it is free) or Log in and post
And that really bothers me, for an economic reason. Such laws impose top-down restrictions on invention/innovation. That is, if you don't conform to The Law, you can't run your new web service/web site/whatever. Such laws seem expressly designed to freeze the use of computer technology to what was available in 1995, plus a few things like better typesetting. Major market forces remain major market forces, no upstarts can displace them.
What are they thinking? Virtually every innovation in computing has come from the bottom, from the World Wide Web itself, to viruses to PPP to TCP/IP (MSFT backed "NetBUI" as I recall, while DEC backed the OSI standards) to web rating services, to blogs to ICQ to you-name-it. Top-down "innovation" always (without an exception I can recall) turns into a nightmarish swamp of regulation, red tape and expensive failure.