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Ask Microsoft's Security VP
Posted by
Roblimo
on Wed Jan 18, 2006 01:15 PM
from the My-OS-is-better-than-yours dept.
from the My-OS-is-better-than-yours dept.
There's always lots of discussion on Slashdot about Microsoft's security problems, and whether Windows is or isn't more secure than other popular operating systems. In a "Let's clear the air" move, Mike Nash, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Security Technology Unit, has agreed to answer 12 of the highest-moderated questions you submit here. (You can skip the "Microsoft and security in the same sentence?" comments we've all heard 1000 times, and ask actual questions, since Mike is answering for himself instead of having PR do it for him.) We'll post his answers next week.
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What has changed? (Score:5, Interesting)
From what I've heard, even though most of Vista is being rewritten from the ground up with more scrutiny on what code goes into it, it will still have major flaws generated by the way Microsoft works internally as a company.
Are you afraid? (Score:5, Funny)
Differences Between Windows & Other Employers? (Score:5, Interesting)
WIndows OneCare status? (Score:5, Informative)
Most regretted design decision (Score:5, Interesting)
Patch Release Cycle (Score:5, Interesting)
Security versus Quantity? (Score:5, Interesting)
Has Microsoft tracked the "security bug" to user ratio on their products and found that products with fewer users seem to have fewer bugs? If that is the case, I wonder if it is the normal process of higher supply leading to more people spending time looking for bugs.
It is like the population:innovation ratio -- as a population goes up, the amount of innovators being born goes up, too, leading to more innovations.
Security/user friendly tradeoff (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, file and printer sharing defaulting to off prevents people from unknowingly sharing their resources, but requires non-technical users who do wish to set up a small network to know more about the process than in previous versions.
Top priority for security in 2006 (Score:5, Interesting)
Outside influences on security (Score:5, Interesting)
Question (Score:5, Funny)
What is the basic approach to Microsoft security? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know the easy answer is to say "both, of course" but a 50/50 split is unlikely. So, does testing take the backseat, or does the code?
Question from China (Score:5, Funny)
I'm from China and I was wondering [remainder of message censored by People's Center For Internet Enhancement - Powered by Microsoft]
Audit of Software (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you ever spend time with "average users"? (Score:5, Interesting)
How often do you (and the members of your team) spend time with average end-users-- not just in large corporate settings but in small businesses and (just as importantly) in real-world home settings? I believe that if you would spend time with Joe Average and see just how badly his computer's performance (not to mention his personal privacy and the integrity of his data) is suffering from the exploitation of certain bugs and design decisions (e.g. the fact that most end-users run with Administrator privileges) in Microsoft software, it would cause a significant shift in Microsoft's security strategy.
No matter how often $LATEST_WINDOWS_VERSION is touted as more secure than its predecessors, I still keep getting called to average homes to remove countless items of spyware which infected Windows systems via holes (and/or poor design decisions, e.g. the handling of ActiveX controls and the abilities they can have to alter files on the system) in Internet Explorer, and to this day (despite the wide use of antivirus software) most end-user systems I examine do contain at least a few viruses (which entered the system via Microsoft Outlook).
What are you doing to secure Joe Average's PC? Do you have any interaction with average end-users? And if not, why not?
Will you ever sort and modularize Windows? (Score:5, Insightful)
Rationale: Many security problems are due to everything running as Administrator, with privileges, or as part of the OS. One thing I like about GNU/Linux is that each part is separate, so Firefox runs on X which runs using services, which runs using the kernel, with only the kernel having privileges. Generally a buffer overflow problem in X, or Apache doesn't let someone format my hard drive. Also you can put something to analyze or intercept things between such layers - even things like ltrace or strace.
Windows updates to unregistered machines? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know a person who doesn't have his copy of Windows registered. His PC got infested by spyware, so my deduction is that his computer was probably used to send SPAM, spread viruses and whatnot. When He called me for tech support, I told him to download the Microsoft Anti-spyware from Windows update, but his answer was that it required a registered copy.
My question is this: If Windows updates make the Internet SAFER from hackers, spyware and viruses, why limit them to registered copies of Windows? (IMHO this is analogous to not giving the vaccine of the bird flu to illegal aliens)
What do you plan to do about this?
Did MS culture change as promised in 2002? (Score:5, Interesting)
In your opinion, has Microsoft succeeded in changing its culture so that every developer now considers security first, features second?
WSUS Release Dates (Score:5, Interesting)
With the current advances in smart viruses and malware, that release schedule seems unrealistic. OS security threats have been addressed with emergency patches, but that does not seem like a sustainable methodology.
What is Microsoft's long-range vision on OS patches to ensure that our Server and Workstation Operating Systems are secure, safe, and patched in a timely manner?
Rewriting Internet Explorer (Score:5, Interesting)
Application software (Score:5, Interesting)
Spyware (Score:5, Interesting)
In regards to spyware MS has already taken some steps to try and stem the flow (asking about running exe files, the Spyware Removal Tool, etc), however as a consultant I find many of my clients are still infested with the stuff. From my perspective it appears that many users are affected still by these programs and that they are either unaware of how to prevent them in the first place, or how to get rid of them. Many times it is significantly faster and easier (and in some cases, safer) to just format the machine in question and start from a clean slate. Does MS feel that spyware is still a major problem, and if so, what new measures MS doing in order to combat it?
Regards,
Petyr Rahl
User privileges (Score:5, Interesting)
Industry best-practice out-of-the-box? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a number of industry best-practices that any system administrator will tell you are vital for proper security. I will not claim to provide a complete list, but the two that seem to have the most frequent effect on an OS's percieved security are:
Windows has been steadily improving on the first point, but the second point has long been a problem for administrators; there is no generally-used near-transparent way for a program to request higher privileges, for instance.
Worse, many third-party (and, for that matter, some Microsoft) programs will fail silently or with obtuse errors if you run them as less-privileged users because they demand the ability to, say, write to system areas - often without warning - and require heroic gymnastics by administrators to resolve (if a resolution is even possible).
Is this issue of least-privilige being difficult to acheive being addressed in future versions of Windows? What changes can we expect to come down the line soon and in the near future?
Microsoft DOES NOT have 300,000 coders. (Score:5, Informative)
Yeesh. This sort of quote reminds me of when I was a naive little proto-geek, wondering what sort of supercomputer my favorite MU* ran on.
Microsoft has only 60,000 employees [wikipedia.org] TOTAL.
Of that count, surely no more than 50% (and probably much less than that) are programmers. Remember, that count includes not only the veritable hordes of management types and marketroids, but the guys who clean the toilets and the ladies who answer the phones. (And the ladies who clean the toilets, and the guys who answer the phones. And the guys who clean the phones, and the ladies who answer the toilets...)
So you're off by at least a factor of ten.
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