Posts Tagged ‘monoculture’

Microsoft Downplays Stealth Update Concerns

2007/09/17/1215

RTFA: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/1372…

“Windows Update is a service that primarily delivers updates to Windows,” said Nate Clinton, program manager in the WU group on the team’s blog Thursday. “To ensure ongoing service reliability and operation, we must also update and enhance the Windows Update service itself, including its client-side software.”

Microsoft was moved to respond after the popular “Windows Secrets” newsletter looked into complaints that WU had modified numerous files in both XP and Vista, even though users had set the operating system to not install updates without their permission. In many cases, users who dug into Windows’ event logs found that the updates had been done in the middle of the night.

Whatever - shady is shady.

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Storm worm botnet more powerful than top supercomputers

2007/09/17/1034

RTFA: http://www.itnews.com.au/News/60752,storm-worm-bot…

The Storm worm botnet has grown so massive and far-reaching that it easily overpowers the world’s top supercomputers.

That’s the latest word from security researchers who are tracking the burgeoning network of Microsoft Windows machines that have been compromised by the virulent Storm worm, which has pounded the Internet non-stop for the past three months. Despite the wide ranging estimates as to the size of the botnet, researchers tend to agree that it’s one of the largest zombie grids they’ve ever seen — one capable of doing great damage. “In terms of power, the botnet utterly blows the supercomputers away,” said Matt Sergeant, chief anti-spam technologist with MessageLabs, in an interview. “If you add up all 500 of the top supercomputers, it blows them all away with just 2 million of its machines. It’s very frightening that criminals have access to that much computing power, but there’s not much we can do about it.”

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