[geeks] Odd uptick in spam...

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Fri, Sep 07, 2007 at 07:34:39AM -0500, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> "not much we can do about it"?  How about someone convinces a judge
> somewhere to prevent Microsoft from selling their bug-ridden garbage
> until they make it fit to see the light of day?

I'm not sure that any other operating system would be better. While *NIX
derived or look-alike operating systems are more secure, if about 85% of
the computers ran one of them, there would be an enourmous effort to 
break it.

As we all know there were some glaring holes in things like sendmail
and telnet, but they were fixed long before enough people cared about them
to cause a problem of this scale. Unfortunately there are plenty of existing
holes that no one knows about or have been publicised and there are new
holes being created every day. 

You also must consider that many of the computers infected are running
versions of Windows that have not been supported for years. They don't
have the latest (or even several years old) security fixes, and probably
don't have antivirus or antispyware programs or are running old or free
versions.

When the Windows Genuine Advantage program started, I wrote Bill Gates,
and later received a nice answer from someone lower on the food chain. I
suggested that they provided an agressive antispyware and antivirus
program and forced it upon ALL computers that did not pass the WGA test.

That way, IMHO the advantage of buying windows legally would be that you got
to turn off their programs to protect the Internet. This way the people
who bought Windows could choose the level of protection they wanted,
and the ones that used pirated copies no longer affected the paying
customers.

Obviously the idea was not accepted. 

Geoff.
-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
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