Microsoft Windows Security is an Afterthought

And security afterthoughts have never worked.

Get It Try It

So we're sitting at our Macs and getting maximum benefit from our Internet connection. (This is significantly more than if we'd be running Linux - no maintenance time to speak of with OS X.)

And we wander into a mainstream Swedish site and learn there's a new fright about. (And as per usual, especially in the Duckpond, when there's a fright about, Microsoft are right around the corner.)

This time it concerns a programmer running Internet Explorer online. (Hello? What kind of programmer is that?) And this genius is using Windows and Internet Explorer to access his bank's website. (Is this guy on drugs?) And the site tells him his security information must be checked again. And then it asks him to reenter his PIN. Which this brilliant programmer does. And as an afterthought he rings his bank, only to discover $287,000 has just been transferred to an account in Poland. The programmer is shocked. (He must be the only one outside the Duckpond.)

A 'Privileged' Position

Sweden has long had a privileged position with Microsoft. Swedes are raised on välling and Windows and cannot easily conceive of anything else. They go through severe logical contortions to explain away all those woes that befall them. Time after time. Year after year.

Use an alternative safe operating system? Are there any? Professional course catalogues with hundreds of pages of courses in hundreds of abortive Microsoft technologies are offset by perhaps one page (or two at most) offering rudimentary skills in Unix.

Returning to Sweden to visit former colleagues is like taking a trip in a George Carlin phone box. Back to an era one can't really believe still exists. With so much water under the bridge since the first big calamities hit twelve years ago (and with so much having changed for the 'enlightened' of this world) one would assume even the Swedes would have caught on by now. But no. They haven't.

The latest attack to now hit Swedish shores is called 'Zeus/SpyEye'. And a quick perusal of Google News reveals this thing hasn't just hit Sweden. It's all over the place, with damage estimates in the billions. How can people still use that wretched system after all these years? How many times have security gurus warned about Windows, stated that this latest Attack To End All Attacks will finally be the wakeup call people need. Several European governments have gone out actively and told their citizenries to not use Windows or other Microsoft products. Every security guru - every last one - advises against using Microsoft Windows. Yet what happens?

Amongst those hit by Zeus: US Department of Transportation, Bank of America, NASA, Monster.com, ABC, Oracle, Cisco, Amazon, BusinessWeek, Facebook - and according to several authorities, more than 2,400 corporations around the world.

Battleships crippled at sea. Airline booking systems knocked out. Always Microsoft Windows.

But It'll Get to You Too!!1!

For years the smart people have had their ears bleeding listening to all the childish sidesteps by the retards on Windows. And it's truly amazing how so many of them - from your common Joe Blogs to some of the most renowned virus experts in the world - simply don't get security and the difference between Windows and a 'real' operating system.

People wonder if a site like this can hold a grudge against Microsoft for some reason. People are always looking for an excuse. They simply don't want to accept the truth. People read things at Rixstep and write to ask if things are as bad on OS X as they are on Windows. Unbelievable.

Almost every major malware outbreak since 2000 is directly related to (and directly caused by) Microsoft and Windows. The Sadmind worm attacked Solaris. But it also attacked Windows. (Who wouldn't?)

Why Windows?

The classic retard argument about why it's safer on Windows is that this fate happens to whatever system has the greatest marketshare. Which is of course utter nonsense. Of course the black hats like the Windows marketshare. But that would be for naught without Microsoft's classic track record when it comes to security.

You can't build security into a system as an afterthought. Windows started as MS-DOS - the MicroSoft Disk Operating System. A disk operating system is not an operating system. All it does is operate the disks.

David Neil Cutler came to Microsoft to save them, but they refused to be saved. They took his stellar work and force-fitted it back on their own defenceless standalone model. So much for security.

Microsoft have spent billions, have spent far more trying to create spin to keep their bruised customers, than they've spent fixing (or replacing) their excuse for an 'operating system'. Microsoft could have done the right thing fifteen years ago, twenty years ago, twenty five years ago. They could have done the right thing when they first acquired their Unix source code licence sin the early 1980s.

Are they evil to the core or just downright stupid?

The Zeus botnet targets only Microsoft Windows machines. The botnet does not work on Mac OS X, Linux, or any other operating system.
 - Wikipedia