Saturday, December 22, 2001

FBI and Windows XP -- 11:26 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Defense have issued a bulletin about the WindowsXP exploit that was recently discovered in their plug-and-play code. I'm not so sure how I feel about this. Government pressure on Microsoft wouldn't be bad since they appear to be their old, arrogant selves about this. They have refused to contact customers about this patch, even given the severity of it. On the other hand, I've always felt it necessary to keep the government out of people's lives as much as possible. Thanks Slashdot.

This is a classic case where security through obscurity doesn't work. M$ refused to issue any warning about this until a patch was available. As a result, anyone using WindowsXP and connecting to the Internet was wide open to a complete takeover of their box or to become a zombie for a DDoS attack. I find that to be utterly unacceptable. They're hoping that since this was not publicly announced, no one would know about it and exploit it. Are you willing to bet your box and your data on it?

News for 12/22/2001

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