Postulating Microsoft == Borg, one must ask

	Where do you want to be assimilated today..?

Bob Jarvis
Compuware @ Timken

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeff Szuhay [mailto:jeff at szuhay.org]
> Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2001 2:02 PM
> To: Squeak Public Maliing List
> Subject: [Computering] The Death of TCP/IP
> 
> 
> Forgive me for posting this here, yet I came across this
> article which is so plausible yet so monumentally horrifying
> that it deserves consideration. You may also want to consider
> Bob's several previous posts on MS and Security.
> 
> The internet _will_ have a
> toll booth, and MS will be the onc collecting <shudder>.
> 
>  article URL: <http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010802.html>
> 
> The Death of TCP/IP
> Why the Age of Internet Innocence is Over
> By Robert X. Cringely
> 
> "As events of the last several weeks have shown, Microsoft Windows, 
> e-mail and the Internet create the perfect breeding ground for virus 
> attacks. They don't even have to exploit Windows flaws to be 
> effective. 
> Any Visual BASIC programmer with a good understanding of how Windows 
> works can write a virus. All that is needed is a cleverly titled file 
> attachment payload, and almost anyone can be induced to open it, 
> spreading 
> the contagion. It is too darned easy to create these programs 
> that can do
> billions in damage. ..."
> 
> some exercpts:
> 
> "The wonder of all these Internet security problems is that they are 
> continually labeled as "e-mail viruses" or "Internet worms," 
> rather than 
> the more correct designation of "Windows viruses" or 
> "Microsoft Outlook 
> viruses." It is to the credit of the Microsoft public 
> relations team that 
> Redmond has somehow escaped blame, because nearly all the 
> data security 
> problems of recent years have been Windows-specific, taking 
> advantage of 
> the glaring security loopholes that exist in these Microsoft 
> products. 
> If it were not for Microsoft's carefully worded user license 
> agreement, 
> which holds the company blameless for absolutely anything, they would 
> probably have been awash in class action lawsuits by now."
> 
> and,
> 
> "And now, we have the impending release of Windows XP, and 
> its problem of 
> raw TCP/IP socket exposure. As I detailed two weeks ago, XP 
> is the first 
> home version of Windows to allow complete access to TCP/IP 
> sockets, which 
> can be exploited by viruses to do all sorts of damage. 
> Windows XP uses 
> essentially the same TCP/IP software as Windows 2000, except that XP 
> lacks 2000's higher-level security features. In order to be backward 
> compatible 
> with applications written for Windows 95, 98, and ME, Windows 
> XP allows 
> any application full access to raw sockets.
> 
> "This is dangerous."
> 
> furthermore,
> 
> "According to these programmers, Microsoft wants to replace 
> TCP/IP with 
> a proprietary protocol -- a protocol owned by Microsoft -- 
> that it will 
> tout as being more secure. Actually, the new protocol would likely be 
> TCP/IP with some of the reserved fields used as pointers to 
> proprietary 
> extensions, quite similar to Vines IP, if you remember that 
> product from 
> Banyan Systems. I'll call it TCP/MS.
> 
> "How do you push for the acceptance of a new protocol? First, 
> make the 
> old one unworkable by placing millions of exploitable TCP/IP 
> stacks out 
> on the Net, ready-to-use by any teenage sociopath. When the Net slows 
> or crashes, the blame would not be assigned to Microsoft. 
> Then ship the 
> new protocol with every new copy of Windows, and install it 
> with every 
> Windows Update over the Internet. Zero to 100 million copies 
> could happen 
> in less than a year, and that year could be prior to the new protocol 
> even 
> being announced. It could be shipping right now.
> 
> "Suppose you are a typical firm that also has some 
> non-Microsoft servers. 
> You will want to use this new protocol between your Microsoft and non-
> Microsoft servers. Microsoft could charge Sun millions to put 
> TCP/MS on 
> their systems. Microsoft can promise open support, but make it 
> financially 
> impractical. Then use it in a marketing attack against competitors. 
> Zero-Footprint network drivers, ODBC, and MAPI are examples 
> of Microsoft 
> "open" standards that took years for non-Microsoft firms to 
> use. Almost 
> anyone who would have wanted to use these open standards has 
> been driven 
> out of business. "
> 
> and finally, (here's the horror)
> 
> "MS/TCP will ostensibly be a solution to the problems businesses are 
> having 
> with the Internet. It will assign priorities to packets. It 
> will insure 
> that 
> all connections and packets can be traced, authenticated, and 
> monitored. 
> And since all these connections to the Internet have to be 
> authenticated 
> to someone, it will likely be hooked into a credit card or 
> some sort of 
> account, from which Microsoft can extract its price as the 
> gatekeeper for 
> the authentication via Hailstorm, Passport and .NET.
> 
> "But how will this stop the "I just e-mailed you a virus" 
> problem? How 
> does 
> this stop my personal information being sucked out of my PC 
> via cookies? 
> It won't. Solving those particular problems is not the 
> protocol's real 
> purpose, which is to increase Microsoft's market share. It is 
> a marketing 
> concept that will be sold as the solution to a problem. It 
> won't really 
> work."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
>    **************************************************
>    Jeff Szuhay              A randomly-directed 
>    www.szuhay.org           chaotical wetware pattern 
>    jeff at szuhay.org          recognizer/generator.	
> 
> 
>    "The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like 
>    a knight in shining armour to lead all customers 
>    out of a mire of technological chaos neatly 
>    ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling
>    second-rate technology, led them into it in the 
>    first place."
> 			                 -Douglas Adams, on Windows '95
> 
> 
> 
>