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____/ Mark Kent on Thursday 21 Jan 2010 08:20 : \____
>
>
> Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>>
>>
>>
>> ____/ Mark Kent on Monday 18 Jan 2010 16:28 : \____
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ____/ nessuno on Thursday 14 Jan 2010 23:17 : \____
>>>>
>>>>> On Jan 14, 6:10 pm, bbgruff <bbgr...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>>> "Hackers who breached the defenses of Google, Adobe Systems and at least
>>>>>> 32 other companies used a potent vulnerability in all versions of
>>>>>> Internet Explorer to carry out the attacks, researchers from McAfee said
>>>>>> Thursday."
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "The previously unknown flaw in the IE browser was just one of the
>>>>>> vectors used in the attacks, McAfee CTO George Kurtz wrote in a blog
>>>>>> post. Using a sophisticated spear-phishing campaign, the perpetrators
>>>>>> barraged employees from at least 34 companies in the defense, finance and
>>>>>> high technology industries with a "cocktail of zero-day vulnerabilities,"
>>>>>> that installed backdoors on their computers."
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "Our investigation has shown that Internet explorer is vulnerable on all
>>>>>> of Microsoft's most recent operating system releases, including Windows
>>>>>> 7."
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/14/cyber_assault_followup/
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I suppose it could have happened to any browser.....?
>>>>>
>>>>> Big surprise.
>>>>
>>>> It's also the "click attachment to execute" mentality Windows encourages.
>>>> Some attacks were targeted.
>>>>
>>>
>>> This suggests that corporates really ought to consider, from a security
>>> viewpoint, the Airbus approach to systems, particularly where security
>>> is such an issue.
>>>
>>> If all corporates were to insist on, say, 3 different browser types all
>>> concurrently in-use, then it's amazingly unlikely that the same flaw
>>> would be replicable so readily.
>>>
>>> If they were to go a step further forward, and insist on 3 different
>>> operating system code-bases, then this would further reduce the
>>> likelyhood of repeatable flaws.
>>
>> Diversity is crucial for survival. There are many cases of famine in
>> history* where limiting the diversity of crops led to mass-scale starvation
>> (viruses and bugs, not in the computer sense).
>>
>> Monoculture in agriculture is one massive risk in GMO.
>>
>
> GMO is all about Monsanto gaining global monopolies on staple crops. I
> have no doubt that they would claim that should there be some new
> disease affecting their "patented" life, then they could just develop a
> new variant which would be immune.
>
> The fact that enormous numbers of people might starve to death in
> between is no doubt carefully airbrushed out of Montanto's utopian
> picture of plenty.
>
>>> Whilst there are now 9 possible combinations, at least this has reduced
>>> the threat to almost 10% of what it was at the beginning of my post,
>>> which is pretty good for a relatively inexpensive and utterly dramatic
>>> improvement in security.
>>>
>>> If these were to be run on, say, 3 different processing platforms, such
>>> as ARM, x86 and Cell, then we're now at 27 possibilities.
>>
>> But the machines inside the companies are interconnected. It's like a
>> submarine with chambers...
>
> Yes, indeed.
>
>>
>>> Perhaps, once these 27 combinations have been in play for some time,
>>> companies might then analyse the number of genuine threats to each of
>>> their platform combinations, and/or the expense associated with each
>>> platform combination in order to keep it clean, then the worst 3 could
>>> be removed, and perhaps replaced with some other alternative. This
>>> process could continue until a reasonable level of security has been
>>> achieved.
>>
>> Agreed. Linux has well over 10 Web browsers (a repo away), all of which are
>> potent.
>>
>> ____
>> *IIRC, there was one even in Ireland not so long ago, with a million deaths.
>>
>
> The potato famine, yes. It was truly devastating, and resulted in
> enormous migration of Irish people to both the mainland UK, North
> America and elsewhere.
There are only 4 forms of potato left in this planet's fields... there are also 4 type of
cell tissues.... spot the anomaly?
We /engineer/ food. Oil, not soil.
- --
~~ Best of wishes
If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the
process of putting them in. -- Dykstra
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