| |
M1CUK > INFO 05.07.02 20:55l 67 Lines 2941 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 65020-GB7FCR
Read: DB0FHN GUEST DL4GAO
Subj: MicroSoft at it again!!!!
Path: DB0FHN<DB0ZWI<DB0MAB<DB0FBG<DB0CHZ<DB0ERF<DB0FBB<DB0GOS<ON0AR<ON0AR<
GB7FCR
Sent: 020630/0749Z @:GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU #:65020 [Blackpool] FBB-7.03a $:65020-GB
From: M1CUK@GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU
To : INFO@WWW
MS security patch EULA gives Billg admin privileges on your box
By Thomas C Greene in Washington
Posted: 30/06/2002 at 05:56 GMT
If you caught our recent coverage of the Windows Media Player
trio of security holes you may have followed a link to the
TechNet download site for a patch, or you might have activated
Windows Update.
If you did the former (though, oddly, not if you did the latter),
you would have been confronted with an End User License Agreement
(EULA) stating, most ominously, that:
"You agree that in order to protect the integrity of content and
software protected by digital rights management ('Secure Content'),
Microsoft may provide security related updates to the OS Components
that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer.
These security related updates may disable your ability to copy
and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer.
If we provide such a security update, we will use reasonable efforts
to post notices on a web site explaining the update."
"Reasonable efforts to post notices" somewhere on the Web.
I think it's clear from the wording that MS has absolutely no
intention of bringing this behavior to our attention.
Instead, Microsoft has just assumed the right to attack your
computer and surreptitiously install code of its choosing.
You will not be warned; you will not be offered an opportunity
examine the download or refuse it.
MS will simply connect remotely and install what it will,
or install it secretly when you contact them.
This means MS will have administrator privileges on your personal
computer. What they feed you may be infected with viruses;
it may break your applications, corrupt data files, destroy
weeks or months or even years of work, but you'll have no
recourse if it does. By downloading this WMP critical security
patch, which you must do to operate WMP safely, you'll agree to
give Billg deed and title to your personal property and to leave
Microsoft immune from legal retaliation if they damage your machine.
The pusillanimity of wrapping what amounts to a digital land-grant
into a needed, critical security patch is matched only by the
arrogance of assuming that Windows is now such a fundamental
linchpin of a human life worth living that no retaliation in the
courts or at the retail counters is conceivable. (And that's not
to mention 'informal' retaliation by outraged IP warriors, which
we fully expect to see.)
We've heard the Billg rubbish about Trustworthy Computing until
we're sick to death of the trivial incantation. Ironically,
Microsoft has just taken steps to make the Internet immensely
more untrustworthy than it already is. When we know that
arbitrary code will be secretely installed on our connected
boxes by software vendors who are not accountable for the
damage they may do, any issue of trust is obliterated.
--------------------------
Regards
Trev..
Read previous mail | Read next mail
| |
