March 28, 2009 5:17 PM PDT
Vast spy system loots computers in 103 countries
Researchers said that the spying, which infiltrated the offices of the Dalai Lama, was controlled from computers based almost exclusively in China.
(From The New York Times)
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Well indeed.
DUDE! Is that an exact quote?
The other obvious choices of LINUX and Mac OS are massively more insecure than Windows with many times more hackable vulnerabilities that take much longer to get fixed. e.g.
http://blogs.technet.com/security/archive/2008/10/28/download-h1-2008-desktop-vuln-report.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/the_hardman/archive/2008/04/13/report-microsoft-fastest-to-issue-os-patches-sun-slowest.aspx
This is why the military run their nuclear submarine and aircraft carrier command and control systems on Windows, and LINUX was rejected as too hard to keep secure.
Let us know when an independently run security report agrees with the MS propaganda machine and doesn't, oh say, report that "of the 227 vulnerabilities Red Hat patched in 2007, 226 of them involved third-party applications" while "Microsoft released 38 patches (two of which involved third-party applications)".
Yes, I'm sure it's easier to patch a flaw faster when the flaw is entirely of your own making. Also, let's have look at how many vulns were found in XP in he first year and compare that to now. I wonder if absence of proof is not in fact proof of absence and if it takes time for the crackers to learn their way around a relatively new system?
Nice how that link also completely glossed over the number of ActiveX vulnerabilities compared to other browser plugins or that "Microsoft's Windows XP and Windows Vista, meanwhile, have the dubious distinction of being the only operating system where a full 82 percent of vulnerabilities were found either client-side or directly within the browser."
Amazing. I feel more secure already.
Spin, spin, spin, spin, spin.
Cyberspittle: Comparing the Windows that the US military run to any version anyone else uses is an exercise in futility, it's been stripped down to the bare minimum necessary for the task and hardened. I wonder what's going to happen given that the US military has been reported to be looking at moving as much as possible onto PPC based systems (as the lower commonality will make them a harder target)?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10154662-83.html
The Macintosh and base Linux kernel operating systems have dominated the top spots for vulnerabilities by operating system over the past three years
Can't imagine why you linked to an editorial piece instead of the actual report itself. Unless...
Quite apart from this being a measure of _disclosed_ vulnerabilities (which is useless when MS is known for including 3 patches as one and sitting on vulnerabilities it knows exist, admitting them only when someone else finds them) it says nothing about how many are left unpatched or the severity of the vulnearbilities.
The sections covering IE and ActiveX as compared to Firefox or Flash are much more illuminating.
nb - I note that MAC OS lost the annual PWN2OWN hacking contest for the 3rd year in a row and was owned in less than two minutes, lol.
There you go... you should have spent the extra money on an Apple....
LOL - what could that dude possibly have on his computer? ;^)
He should put some religious teaching on there, and covert the communists...
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I bought a Lenovo S10 netbook a few weeks back and while poking around to eliminate the usual preloaded crapware, came across the little "power management" program. A quick check for malware turned up that this program is the property of "Lenovo [Beijing] Ltd." That started wheel turning and with a bit more digging it turns out that the program comes with a "hook" in the background that allows Lenovo Beijing - I suppose, since the hook dll is from same source - to monitor my keyboard, watch the screen and God knows what else. I erased the files associated with the program, but am not at all confident that that did the job.
In any even the bottom line is that a couple of million S10s, not to mention all the other made-in-China models from Dell, HP, etc, etc, are flooding the market with already installed [potentially dangerous] software. That's not to even broach the question of Chinese made chip sets.....yikes!
Wonder if the rocket scientists over at NSA and other organizations have taken into consideration this type of possible threat. After all, their employees and possibly even the organizations themselves have countless laptops, netbooks, etc up and running.
I bought a Lenovo S10 netbook a few weeks back and while poking around to eliminate the usual preloaded crapware, came across the little "power management" program. A quick check for malware turned up that this program is the property of "Lenovo [Beijing] Ltd." That started wheel turning and with a bit more digging it turns out that the program comes with a "hook" in the background that allows Lenovo Beijing - I suppose, since the hook dll is from same source - to monitor my keyboard, watch the screen and God knows what else. I erased the files associated with the program, but am not at all confident that that did the job.
In any even the bottom line is that a couple of million S10s, not to mention all the other made-in-China models from Dell, HP, etc, etc, are flooding the market with already installed [potentially dangerous] software. That's not to even broach the question of Chinese made chip sets.....yikes!
Wonder if the rocket scientists over at NSA and other organizations have taken into consideration this type of possible threat. After all, their employees and possibly even the organizations themselves have countless laptops, netbooks, etc up and running.
As mama used to say, I'm slow, not stupid.