Even Microsoft Knows It
Published on 4 Apr 2006 · Filed in Rant · 193 words (estimated 1 minutes to read)I hope Microsoft Vista is going to address the malware problem that is plaguing Windows users worldwide right now. Even Microsoft knows it’s bad. How bad? Read on.
In this article from eWeek, Mike Danseglio, a program manager in the Security Solutions group at Microsoft, is quoted as saying:
“When you are dealing with rootkits and some advanced spyware programs, the only solution is to rebuild from scratch. In some cases, there really is no way to recover without nuking the systems from orbit…”
Doesn’t this say something? If a program manager at Microsoft says what everybody else already knows, then even Microsoft has gotten to the point where they’re admitting that Windows has a problem.
This related article, published in early December 2005, notes that as much as 20% of all malware removed from Windows XP SP2 systems are considered stealth rootkits. Considering that some of the Internet Explorer security flaws have allowed malware to be installed by simply visiting a web site, that’s pretty serious.
Microsoft has taken an excellent first step in Vista by making sure that the browser runs in a reduced-privileges environment. Let’s hope they don’t stop there.