[ Thanks to Steven J.
Vaughan-Nichols for this link. ]
“More than a week after Microsoft released an XP patch
that seemed to cause BSODs (Blue Screen of Death), Microsoft
announced that the immediate cause was the Alureon rootkit. Fair
enough, but what about the 17-year old Windows security hole that
the rootkit was exploiting?“I mean, come on. This bug dates back to 1993 when Windows for
Workgroups 3.11 and Windows NT 3.1 instead of Windows 7 were the
hot new versions of Windows. Many of you have never even seen those
operating systems much less used them. Since Microsoft has left
this security hole open almost long enough for it to be old enough
to vote, shouldn’t they get some of the blame?“After all, the hackers behind Alureon, aka TDSS, Tidserv and
TDL3, botnet were able to fix their malware to work around the
Windows’ fix before Microsoft finally figured it out. Maybe
Microsoft should hire them to work on Windows security instead of
relying on their own in-house software engineers. Nah. They’re
probably making more money from their botnets than Microsoft is
willing to pay them.”