Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Thousands of Brits fall victim to data theft
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | British law enforcement agents are trying to contact thousands of
> | U.K. computer users who have fallen victim to a massive personal data
> | heist.
> |
> | The Metropolitan Police said on Tuesday that a computer seized in the
> | U.S. had been found to contain personal information from around 2,300
> | PCs based in Britain. This included e-mail addresses, passwords, credit
> | card numbers and details of online transactions.
> `----
>
> http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6124342.html
>
> Imagine the inconvenience, the loss and the unnerving uncertainty. The BBC
> says (backed by a survey) that people are more afraid of crackers than
> they are of burglars. Look what Windows computing has brought upon us...
This is yet another that supports what I say about this. That we all need MS
to get it's act together on safety and security, because they are holding
us all back from advancing.
By now the Internet should be a safe and capable market and it should also
be much more than that. But as long MS are adding to the vulnerabilities of
clients and as users are afraid to risk using it, the Internet will not be
able to grow into something more meaningfull.
Because MS has shown no interest in this area I believe it must be forced
upon them by governments and legal agencies. What ever the cost to MS we
must have this area resolved even if it does call for a complete rewrite of
their system.
It is no use the Windows advocates responding with the likes of 'Linux might
be just as unsafe if more people used it'. This simply isn't true. They may
well be more security problems not yet discovered, but the point is that
the Linux community deals with these issues as they arise. The speed from
discovery to solution makes the vulnerabilities that have been discovered
useless to hackers. Linux's user system is already a proven security
system, adding the application caging which major distros now include and
enable by default, these together give us the next logical step in our
continuing road to full security.
Linux vendors could have sat back on just the user system, because it hasn't
been cracked from outside of the system. But they haven't been lazy, they
have continued to build on this area with caging. There are more steps in
this direction yet to come.
We not only want secure home and office users, we *need* it and so does the
Internet.
Something I have thought about with the server for the Internet, but I am
not sure how it would be implemented, is that all Internet security should
be set in stone. Rules based on the strength of the UNIX/Linux system, Then
any other OS must conform or they simply don't get in. A sort of Kite Mark
for internet servers, then extend that to clients. At the moment MS clients
wouldn't stand a cat in hells chance of earning the Kite mark.
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