lummox Posted February 13, 2004 Posted February 13, 2004 i read that microsoft source code leakage might compromize my puters security. is this more attorney general style scare tactics (though hats off to the central scrutinizer ashcroft for not losing his composure yesterday while announcing the indictement of the bay area steroid distributors i woulda had a hard time keeping a straight face) or should i be worried? wtf? Quote
badvoodoo Posted February 13, 2004 Posted February 13, 2004 Well, MS does use some sound security methods for basic security authentication and networking such as Kerberos, so their fundamental layer shouldn't see any change in vulnerability, but it's widely accepted that MS subscribes to the "security through obscurity" theory for bugs left in the code, so I wouldn't be surprised if their hand was forced to do a major code scrub and release a whole slew of new security patches. But, they might just turn a blind eye until it bites them in the ass. On the other hand, it will also likely result in some very interesting new Windows hacks being released on the internet... Quote
iain Posted February 13, 2004 Posted February 13, 2004 it's a ploy by microsoft to "accidently" release their source code so that open source programmers see it. Anything these open source writers write in the future will be scrutinized by the microsoft attorney spanish inquisition for copyright infringment, and will make them unhireable. It's actually a brilliant strategy, so I'm convinced microsoft didn't mean to do it. The code tree for NT and the like has to be enormous though, I doubt the entire thing is just prancing around the internet. Quote
badvoodoo Posted February 13, 2004 Posted February 13, 2004 Ya, the index TXT file alone is 3MB zipped. This code isn't exactly going to be passed around in a hurry... Quote
iain Posted February 13, 2004 Posted February 13, 2004 It will only be valuable to competitors by providing an example of exactly how it should not be done. I also noticed some gnumake files in the index I saw. Hmm. What will be really interesting is if they find stolen copyrighted code in there. The comments alone must be a fun read. Quote
badvoodoo Posted February 13, 2004 Posted February 13, 2004 I can see it now: "SCO files lawsuit with Microsoft over newly revealed stolen code. 'And we invented the Internet, not Al Gore,' says SCO spokesman." Quote
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