Thursday, January 17, 2002

Microsoft Security? -- 11:44 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Bill Gates apparently wants to make "Microsoft Security" an oxymoron no longer. He issued a memo calling security "more important than any other part of our work." Here's what he plans to do:

The new emphasis on security will include the unprecedented step of stopping development on new operating-system software for the entire month of February and sending the company's 7,000 systems programmers to a special security-training program. The company also plans to re-examine all of its Windows operating-system code in an effort to find security flaws.

Time will tell if this is an actual philosophical shift at the software giant or if it is merely a p.r. ploy. I sincerely hope that it is the former, but I want proof, not words. Thanks Slashdot (N.B. I found a new link to the article since the one on Slashdot's front page is broken).

J.t.Qbe comments: The whole memo is an interesting read--you can catch it at The Register, along with The Register's typically interesting commentary. If you get Usenet, check out the thread on comp.os.vms too. In toto the memo is rather arrogant (so it must be authentic billg), implying that there is no such thing as a secure platform, but Microsoft will be the one to give it to us. And it'll involve .NET. Uh, Bill? VMS? OpenBSD? Oh wait, those don't put cash into his pocket.

News for 01/17/2002

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