Tuesday, June 06, 2006
News story about malware, supposed to be funny
The story is that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer couldn't remove malicious software from a friend's machine. We're apparently expected to point our fingers and laugh.
There's no story there. Steve Ballmer is a CEO and not a repair technician.
The story starts getting interesting when Ballmer took the PC back to Microsoft and had some engineers work on it. They couldn't disinfect it. That's a tribute to how vicious malware is these days, but that's still now news. Microsoft already recommends erasing infected machines and reinstalling Windows ("Hello? My house has cockroaches." "Have you tried burning it to the ground and rebuilding?").
The real story is the company response:
Microsoft does have a problem with being isolated from industry news and trends (they almost missed the Internet), but this is ridiculous. Their home customers have been seeing this for years, their corporate customers have been spending big money on problems like this, the industry press has been reporting on unremovable malware, and you know about malware that disables antivirus because you've read about it here. The most notorious removal-resistant malware, CoolWebSearch, has been in circulation for three years as of last month.
They must know better. They have to. They bought an antivirus firm years ago. They bought an antispyware company in 2004.
Enough ranting, time for advice. Keep backups of your data in case you have to start over, and remember that your email does not live in My Documents, but in Application Data. Keep the Windows installation disk handy if you were lucky enough to get one. Find some handy storage for the install disks for the software you depend on. Don't download software from weird places. Limit your use of Internet Explorer to Windows Update and to sites that absolutely require it and that you need to visit to make a living.
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There's no story there. Steve Ballmer is a CEO and not a repair technician.
The story starts getting interesting when Ballmer took the PC back to Microsoft and had some engineers work on it. They couldn't disinfect it. That's a tribute to how vicious malware is these days, but that's still now news. Microsoft already recommends erasing infected machines and reinstalling Windows ("Hello? My house has cockroaches." "Have you tried burning it to the ground and rebuilding?").
The real story is the company response:
Among the problems was a program that automatically disabled any antivirus software.
"This really opened our eyes to what goes on in the real world," [vice president]Allchin told the audience.
Microsoft does have a problem with being isolated from industry news and trends (they almost missed the Internet), but this is ridiculous. Their home customers have been seeing this for years, their corporate customers have been spending big money on problems like this, the industry press has been reporting on unremovable malware, and you know about malware that disables antivirus because you've read about it here. The most notorious removal-resistant malware, CoolWebSearch, has been in circulation for three years as of last month.
They must know better. They have to. They bought an antivirus firm years ago. They bought an antispyware company in 2004.
Enough ranting, time for advice. Keep backups of your data in case you have to start over, and remember that your email does not live in My Documents, but in Application Data. Keep the Windows installation disk handy if you were lucky enough to get one. Find some handy storage for the install disks for the software you depend on. Don't download software from weird places. Limit your use of Internet Explorer to Windows Update and to sites that absolutely require it and that you need to visit to make a living.
# posted by Frederick @ 9:44 PM Email to a friend:
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