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Report: Microsoft dominance poses security risk | |
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| Time: 10:52 EST/15:52 GMT | News Source: CNET | Posted By: Robert Stein | ||
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A computer industry group critical of Microsoft plans to release a report on Wednesday arguing that the software giant's dominance in key technologies threatens national infrastructure. The report, issued by the Computer and Communications Industry Association, argues that the reliance on a single technology such as the Windows operating system for such an overwhelming majority of computer systems threatens the security of the U.S. economy and critical infrastructure, according to a draft seen by CNET News.com. The paper, written by three security experts, also warns that many security improvements planned by Microsoft are likely designed to raise the barrier that deters customers from switching to another operating system. | ||
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| #1 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 9/24/2003 12:24:54 PM |
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"In fact, when Macs were the most popular PCs, they were the primary target of viruses."
What the hell are you talking about? Not one part of this statement is true. |
| #2 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at 9/24/2003 1:57:52 PM |
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flachance - "I can already predict what people are going to post here"
Obviously because such criticism has merit. |
| #3 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 9/24/2003 2:13:32 PM |
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Please, dkg, please explain. The Mac has never accounted for more than 30% of the market (and that's being generous and is also from a time where there was specifically a personal computer market rather than the blurred market of desktops and servers, workstations, back end machines, etc... so if you wanted to consider a larger market the Mac was much, much smaller).
There has also never been a single day EVER where there were more Mac viruses than MS viruses (or going way back IBM-compatible PC viruses). At this very moment, there are 30,000 viruses, trojans, or worms for Windows and there are ZERO for Mac OS. So, seriously, what the hell are you talking about? This post was edited by sodajerk on Wednesday, September 24, 2003 at 14:19. |
| #4 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 9/24/2003 2:24:24 PM |
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"Obviously because such criticism has merit."
Number one is ad hominem. I though ad hominem was never a valid criticism, never mind what merit it may possess. Your opinion has certainly changed about ad hominem lately, soda, hasn't it? Number two says it's a lie that a monoculture is a security risk. You think such a statement has merit? Ridiculous--in fact, the softy rebuttal is dependent on the truth of it "if Mac or Linux was dominant, they'd be attacked the most too and would be a threat if people were dependent on them." |
| #5 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 9/24/2003 2:27:45 PM |
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dkg, Apples and Macs are apples and oranges, dumbass.
The only thing thing you pointed to that mentions the Mac is this: "1991 370–678 known strands of MS-DOS viruses, over 30 Mac viruses" Stand up, talk to someone, and get a clue. |
| #6 By 37 (64.109.30.2) at 9/24/2003 2:29:49 PM |
| Nice work dkg! |
| #7 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 9/24/2003 2:34:23 PM |
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"You first." "No you." "No you."
Stop being a b!tchy little kid, dude. You don't know what a Mac or an Apple ][ is? Jesus Christ! What clues am I missing if you don't know that and you're pulling articles from 1991 on viruses from 1981 for a platform that was for all intents and purposes dead in 1985? |
| #8 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 9/24/2003 2:35:16 PM |
| parker, your 9/17 exploit was patched 9/22. And yes, SSH is running. |
| #9 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 9/24/2003 2:53:15 PM |
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I could have told you that the first viruses were created on an Apple... All the cool stuff was at the time. By the time there were more than three or four, there were just as many or more for other platforms. And yet, they were still the dominant platform. This post was edited by sodajerk on Wednesday, September 24, 2003 at 14:54. |
| #10 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 9/24/2003 4:33:21 PM |
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They pulled it, but I applied it with no problems. Otherwise, you could just update OpenSSH which was updated even before the 22nd.
I understand your point, but it doesn't hold much water. Sendmail is off by default. OpenSSH is off by default. All ports are closed by default. Hell, root user is locked by default, and you have to unlock it to get root access. This post was edited by sodajerk on Wednesday, September 24, 2003 at 16:35. |
| #11 By 7754 (216.160.8.41) at 9/24/2003 6:21:18 PM |
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sodajerk: "...there are ZERO [viruses, trojans, or worms] for Mac OS."
sodajerk: "'...over 30 Mac viruses'" Hmmm... |
| #12 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 9/24/2003 6:46:33 PM |
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Umm, yeah. Bluvg, and? Did you not notice that the quote also included the year 1991. Do you think Windows can still be affected by the Jerusalem virus, smartypants? There are currently no known viruses that can affect the current Mac OS.
Are you fools really content to make an argument locked into info that's well over a decade OLD? |
| #13 By 135 (208.186.90.91) at 9/24/2003 8:01:10 PM |
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sodajerk - "Number one is ad hominem. I though ad hominem was never a valid criticism, never mind what merit it may possess."
The argument is one of proper disclosure of bias, not ad hominem. "Are you fools really content to make an argument locked into info that's well over a decade OLD? " Now see that's an ad hominem argument.... calling people "you fools"... |
| #14 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 9/24/2003 8:11:54 PM |
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"The argument is one of proper disclosure of bias, not ad hominem."
No, it's not. We all know who it is. You and others claim it can be dismissed just because it is them. Claiming bias without addressing the points they raise, without determining whether their points are valid, is most definitely ad hominem. "Now see that's an ad hominem argument.... calling people "you fools"... " No, it's not. Here's a simple test: "Are you really content to make an argument locked into info that's well over a decade OLD?"Okay, sounds to me like there is an argument to that statement. My statement is insulting, yes, but my argument isn't based on the dismissal and avoiding the evidence (the evidence being bluvg claims I'm contradicting myself when CLEARLY I'm not.) If I said, bluvg you are wrong because you are a fool, yeah, ad hominem. But what I said was, you guys are using irrelevent and old data, AND I threw in some descriptive language by calling you fools. But my contention is 100% valid because it is 100% a FACT that Mac OS is not susceptible to the viruses it once was TWELVE YEARS AGO. An adjective does not make a statement ad hominem. My statement may attack you, but that's not what ad hominem is--ad hominem is a fallacy in which evidence is avoided and attention is redirected at the arguer. I have all the evidence to support me; why would I avoid using it? So again: "Are you really content to make an argument locked into info that's well over a decade OLD?" By the way, you still haven't explained where the merit is to such claims... you deflected attention to my remarks which no one is yet to rebutt, but that's about it... This post was edited by sodajerk on Wednesday, September 24, 2003 at 20:37. |
| #15 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 9/24/2003 8:16:00 PM |
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Description of Ad Hominem
Translated from Latin to English, "Ad Hominem" means "against the man" or "against the person." An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of "argument" has the following form: Person A makes claim X. Person B makes an attack on person A. Therefore A's claim is false. The reason why an Ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made). Example of Ad Hominem Bill: "I believe that abortion is morally wrong." Dave: "Of course you would say that, you're a priest." Bill: "What about the arguments I gave to support my position?" Dave: "Those don't count. Like I said, you're a priest, so you have to say that abortion is wrong. Further, you are just a lackey to the Pope, so I can't believe what you say." |
| #16 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 9/24/2003 8:18:35 PM |
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Example of Ad Hominem
Bill: "Over dependence on MS creates a security risk." Dave: "Of course you would say that, you represent Oracle and other competitors to MS." Bill: "What about the arguments I gave to support my position?" Dave: "Those don't count. Like I said, you're a representative of a competitor of MS, so you have to say that MS is a security risk. Further, you are just a lackey to Oracle, so I can't believe what you say." |
| #17 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 9/25/2003 12:15:23 AM |
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Of course not. Those are insults. Ad Hominem is a form of an argument, or a rhetorical technique which requires the presence of a fallacy masked by an attack against the arguer.
When I stated: "Are you fools really content to make an argument locked into info that's well over a decade OLD?", I posed a question of whether the argument was going to continue to be phrased in ancient history. (It included an insult. So what. An insult is not an ad hominem argument.) Particularly when my facts were straight -- "Did you not notice that the quote also included the year 1991. Do you think Windows can still be affected by the Jerusalem virus, smartypants? There are currently no known viruses that can affect the current Mac OS." -- and the arguer's (bluvg) sentiments were not -- "Hmmm...". If I am posing a question rooted in fact, how can I be engaged in an ad hominem argument? I was asking the softie audience what their argument was. When someone proposes an argument, and a person says: that is not valid because of the source of the opinion" -- that is ad hominem... It provokes the retort: "but I don't care WHERE the argument from, what about the actual argument?" Citing BIAS (OooooH, BIAS!) is ad hominem: the argument is irrelevent because of the source of the argument. This is a fallacy. The argument exists despite its source. This post was edited by sodajerk on Thursday, September 25, 2003 at 00:18. |
| #18 By 20 (67.9.179.51) at 9/25/2003 12:24:24 AM |
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No, I think this article is right. Having computer systems, running MS or not is a security risk.
I think we should have dozens of disperate systems all running different OSes from different vendors at different stages of maturity and concern for security so that we don't have to waste our time worrying about one OS from one vendor when we could worry about dozens of OSes from dozens of vendors, some of whom may or may not release patches in a timely manner. That's a great idea! |
| #19 By 7754 (216.160.8.41) at 9/25/2003 1:53:58 AM |
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"Umm, yeah. Bluvg, and? Did you not notice that the quote also included the year 1991. Do you think Windows can still be affected by the Jerusalem virus, smartypants? There are currently no known viruses that can affect the current Mac OS."
I just wondered if you'd EVER admit to a mistake on your part, which it's obvious you won't. "The Mac OS" doesn't imply exclusively OS X, as you well should know (you didn't say the "current" Mac OS originally), and the "current Mac OS" for a lot of people is NOT OS X (funny, since a typical Mac faithful argument is the one about how Macs are used much longer than their PC counterparts). In addition, the Classic mode present in OS X makes it possible for the execution of pre-OS X viruses. It doesn't really matter much, but you can't say there are "ZERO [viruses] for the Mac OS" and get away with it. |
| #20 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 9/25/2003 2:24:58 AM |
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"I just wondered if you'd EVER admit to a mistake on your part, which it's obvious you won't." What mistake? I haven't said anything factually incorrect. I originally had written "OS X", but I edited it out because I checked to determine what OS 9 viruses there are... There aren't any. I think covering my bases with OS 9 and OS X are sufficient measure. Can you even tell me what version of MacOS was available in 1991? System 7.0 came out in 1991. Yes, that's right, not even Mac OS. System Software 7.0!
Check it out! It's amazing the ripoff that is Mac Virus Protection. All of the viruses they detect and protect against have been protected against by the OS (either 9, X, or Classic). Go ahead. Check it out. "It doesn't really matter much, but you can't say there are "ZERO [viruses] for the Mac OS" and get away with it." Prove me wrong; show me a Mac virus that affects OS 9 or OS X. This post was edited by sodajerk on Thursday, September 25, 2003 at 02:25. |
| #21 By 7754 (216.160.8.41) at 9/25/2003 3:57:33 AM |
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"Prove me wrong; show me a Mac virus that affects OS 9 or OS X."
from http://www.symantec.com/mac/security/open_door.html: "Mac-specific viruses attack OS 9 as well as earlier versions of the Mac OS." For example, SevenDust, Code 9811, MBDF, AutoStart 9805. |
| #22 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 9/25/2003 4:22:36 AM |
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Mac/CODE-9811 was discovered in 1998. It hasn't had an affect on OS 9 in a while if it ever did. This is the old Praetorian hack. Funny sh1t, thanks for reminding me of this old sh1t. Symantec is trying to sell product.
Mac/Sevendust-A through Mac/Sevendust-J same thing -- June 1998. And fixed. Mac/Autostart-A discovered in May of 1998. Exploited a flaw in the AutoPlay feature of QuickTime and has since been fixed both at an OS level and within QuickTime. Mac/MBDF-A goes back even further, almost as far back as your earlier trip in the wayback machine -- February 1992. Also fixed. AplS/Simpsons-A -- you don't even mention. It was an Applescript worm that was discovered mid-2001. It too has been repaired. It also required and exploited Outlook Express or Entourage. And MS has made changes to prevent this worm's execution. Again, name a virus or worm that OS 9 and Mac OS X are susceptible to. A quote from a general Mac guidebook about using antivirus software doesn't tell me anything. Which virus? What does it exploit? When was it discovered? When was it repaired if ever? This is the info I want. Giving me a quote from a wishy-washy newbie book posted on Symantec's site where they are trying to sell product is pretty pathetic. Let's even quote what Symantec says: "Many viruses, including cross-platform viruses, can infect Macs. Viruses attack applications such as Outlook Express, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, or PowerPoint, all of which exist on both platforms. Furthermore, platform-independent viruses can easily infect your Mac, spread from PCs via email from friends and colleagues. You may also be vulnerable to a Mac-specific virus. While more viruses are written for PCs, numerous Macintosh-specific viruses do exist. These include commonly known viruses such as Mac.Simpsons@mm, SevenDust, Code 9811, and MBDF." Sounds like a real threat, no? Well, no, it's ancient history, but it's difficult to sell antivirus software on heuristic merits alone--customers want to believe their are virus definitions that are able to detect active threats. But in fact, they are selling FUD. If you understand this, you can see how vague their own statements are. Hell, dude... just look at the infection rates of any of these. Every single one is 0-49, 0-2 sites -- the lowest possible value. And all but the Simpsons (which after all requires and truly exploits Outlook/Entourage) were discovered in 1998.... Well, there's MBDF which is truly, truly ancient history-- 1992 history, 11 years old. This post was edited by sodajerk on Thursday, September 25, 2003 at 04:48. |
| #23 By 37 (64.109.30.2) at 9/25/2003 7:32:13 AM |
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Sodajerk,
Face it, he found the the answer to your question, and now you are in denial for being wrong. |
| #24 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 9/25/2003 12:02:56 PM |
| No, I'm not. I knew the answer ahead of time and allowed it to play out like this. Not a single one of these viruses affects Mac OS 9 or X today. |
| #25 By 37 (64.109.30.2) at 9/25/2003 1:09:56 PM |
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ROFL@Sodajerk.
dkg, this guy is a card! |
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