We can only hope

Two of the 20, that's right twenty security fixes released this month by Microsoft for Windows are as a result of vulnerabilities reported by HD Moore, the Director of Security Research at Breaking Point Systems.

You may remember Moore as a peripheral player in the bogus wifi exploit saga, and for his involvement in the Month of Kernel Bugs, as well as being a contributor to those layabout Moabites.

With any luck this points to at least one esteemed security researcher tiring of never finding any problems with Tiger and moving to look at an OS with enough flaws to keep him busy for the next couple of years. We can only hope that this is really the case.

Reports are also starting to surface of a serious security flaw in Vista's much vaunted User Access Control module. So much for Gates' most secure OS ever.

Russian schools ditch Windows for Linux

Digg is linking to a report saying that Russian schools have decided to switch to open source software to avoid the fate of one of their colleagues who is facing jail-time in the Siberian Gulag for apparently unwittingly pirating Windows.

Notwithstanding the merits of this particular case, it is an interesting demonstration of anti-piracy measures failing spectacularly.

At the end of the day it comes down to a simple value proposition. People are quite happy to pay a premium for stuff they perceive to be worth the money. Steve Jobs gets it, the RIAA, Microsoft and this bozo definitely don't get it. It's no wonder his rants are generally greeted with blank stares.

It seems to me that HTRegz, being a good zealous little Windows fanboy, and a security researcher to boot, is upset that computer users are pointing out that the emperor's got no clothes.

There's no two ways about it, an increasingly large number of people don't see the value in Vista. They resent being forced to eventually migrate, and they certainly resent the cost associated with the "upgrade". Mac OS X is an attractive, cost effective and viable alternative. So no, I won't be switching to Windows or Ubuntu or something anytime soon. And if Steve's got so DRM free music for me to buy, I'll be first in line.

Feel the love

Douche, Complete Moron or Hero(?) All these words have been used to describe David Maynor, security researcher extraordinaire, who seems intent on continuing his self initiated security war against average mac users, despite repeatedly claiming to be an average mac user himself.

The Macalope has got a pretty comprehensive response to Maynor and an interesting discussion in the comments, with Maynor weighing in too.

I don't get why this guy keeps lobbing grenades in all directions and then feigning surprize when they get thrown back? Someone do him a favour and send a copy of his résumé across to Apple's PR department. We all know that that is really why he is mouthing off right now.

Does David Maynor really believe the stuff he writes?

It was a good thing that I'd had a couple of ciders during the Superbowl, because it turned out I really needed them after reading the bullcrap spouted by David Maynor about the Newsweek interview with Bill Gates.

You remember David Maynor, he's the guy that wanted to stick a lit cigarette into my eye. I'm not buying his latest story about being misquoted either. Who would ever believe that anyone can hate the hilarious John Hodgeman and the cutesy-pie Justin Long? Loser.

Right off the bat Maynor's on about how Vista is supposedly more secure than Tiger 10.4.8, and goes on to make a paper evaluation of the supposedly advanced new security features in Vista.

This may be a worthwhile exercise for a "security consultant", but it is something I don't really care about, particularly when on the same blog site Maynor discusses George Ou's Vista voice recognition hack, and jokes about using it to disrupt presentations at the upcoming RSA meeting.

So here's the rub, Maynor's supposedly more secure Vista is already compromised. In contrast, after a month of onslaught by Maynor's Moabite friends, there are no reports of a similar situation with OS X.

But wait, the best is yet to come: Maynor then goes on to make the point that he is not attacking the average Mac user, just the "zealots" creating a false sense of security. Now the last time I looked, there is only one version of Tiger used by both "zealots" and other users alike, so it seems to me that he is trying to stick a lit cigarette in every OS X users' eye.

And to top it off, he's doing it in a way that helps out the bad guys, not the software vendors or the users he claims he is looking out for.

The only people who gain when vendors are not given advance notice of security issues so they can patch them are those other "security researchers" busy building spam botnets and keyloggers and backdoors to steal credit card and other personal details. So I certainly don't buy Maynor's bogus "name and shame" argument.

But none of this changes the fact that OS X is invulnerable to attack. There is still no viruses (virii?) and other malware for OS X out in the wild, and that is what really counts.

Maybe Maynor should stop moaning like a ratbag little kid about how he got "pwned" when Lynn Fox called him on his bogus wi-fi hack and show that he can not only go about finding security problems, but can also fix them.

It is easy to cut down a bunch a trees, but it is a totally different prospect to grow an orchard. I know what side I'm on, does Maynor?

Spitting Mad

This is the kind of thing that makes me want to kill someone and their dog and pee in their empty dead skull!

Bill Gates, the geek-in-chief over at rip-off artists deluxe Microsoft was interviewed in Newsweek claiming that Apple had copied Microsoft's ideas for Vista and used them in OS X while Microsoft was still busy 'perfecting' the security features in Vista.

We all know that's just a pile of steaming brown stuff that helps to make Apple trees flower early. Gates goes so far as to challenge anyone to create an exploit to take over Vista. Yeah, like its going to take long for that to happen. Even those huge black crows who like hanging out on the south paddock fence have been loading up on anti-spyware for their Windows PC's lately.

Bill even said that security guys are breaking the Mac every single day. That nearly made me lose my stuffing. Everyone knows that the Mac is invulnerable to attack.
Anyway those Moabites proved nothing. They should know better than to mess around with the chosen users. Don't they ever learn? Don't they remember what happened the last time they tried something like this?