Internet dangers- is Windows at fault?
A previous post related problems that botnets are causing Internet users. How did these botnets get created? The proximate answer is that it is because Windows (particularly older versions) has so many security holes that it is easily infected in any number of ways. Among those pointing a finger at Windows is Steven Vaughan-Nichols, who comments on the recent Twitter outage in a post at Computerworld titled It’s time to get rid of Windows:
Let me spell this out for you. Some people out there used no fewer than six Windows botnets to go after this one guy. And, in the process, they knocked out, for hours at a time, most of the major social networks.
How did this happen? It happened because Windows is an insecure piece of junk. Anyone who knows anything about security knows that this kind of disaster was only a matter of time. Windows botnets are responsible for DDoS attacks and most of e-mail spam.
You cannot secure Windows. Microsoft keeps saying that they will, and they always fail. Period. Windows has been insecure since day one and it’s still going to be insecure when Windows 7 shows up.
As you can tell, Vaughan-Nichols is no fan of Windows and he is a little over the top. However, the kernel of his argument has validity. Of course, the situation is more complex than just blaming Windows security. It is true that, prior to Windows XP SP2, Windows security was a sieve. But defenders of Windows point out that Microsoft has worked very hard to upgrade security in Windows and that Vista and Windows 7 contain many security features. I think that a knowledgeable person who is careful can feel pretty secure with a newer Windows system. But that little phrase, “knowledgeable person who is careful,” is the catch.
What the technical professionals seem to ignore is that the Internet has hundreds of millions of users who are not knowledgeable persons and who are not careful. These are people who understand little or nothing about PCs or Windows. Furthermore (and this is what the technical professionals can’t seem to fathom), these are people who have absolutely no interest in learning anything about PCs or Windows. They won’t go beyond learning how to turn the PC on and memorizing a few icons to click on, no matter how much you preach to them. There are also myriads of PC users who do not understand how or do not want to be bothered with constantly applying the never-ending parade of security updates. In fact, the security firm Secunia says that the majority of PC users probably have unpatched applications. And these unpatched PCs are vulnerable to malware. Combine that with the large numbers of people who will click on anything or who download from dubious sites and you get botnets. So to some extent I agree with the Vaughan-Nichols comments. I see no possible end to the botnet problem until a simpler, consumer-oriented Web appliance is the choice for average Internet surfers.
I do think that Microsoft has been so oriented to the desktop that it has not understood what a big change occurred when hundreds of millions of technically unskilled users started using the Internet. Recent announcements about cloud computing indicate that Microsoft may be beginning to wean itself from the cash cows of Windows and Office. Now, if Redmond could only stop selling an operating system far too complex to hundreds of millions of users who haven’t a clue how to use it properly. It shouldn’t be hard for Microsoft to come up with a simpler, safer operating system designed for all those people who just want an Internet appliance and only sell the more complicated version to the enterprise and those who know something about Windows. Perhaps, the threat (slim as it currently is) of low-cost notebooks with a Google operating system or other Linux variation will spur Microsoft on. I hope so. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s reaction so far has been to try to limit netbooks as much as possible. For example, see this PC World post.
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