2008 Woodie Awards
Tech News
Issue date: 9/14/06 Section: Campus News
- Page 1 of 1
Later this year, the next major revision of Microsoft Windows, called "Vista," will be officially released to businesses. Vista, while one of the main areas of Microsoft's focus over the last few years, has been beset by myriad problems, most prominently taking five years longer than was originally hoped, as Vista's original release date was late 2003, and losing its most important new feature, the relational WinFS file system. The largest set of problems with Windows XP that were addressed were in the realm of security. As part of the attempt to improve security, Microsoft has done what could very possibly be the worst thing one can do for security: Windows Vista contains a "virgin" networking stack, completely rewritten from scratch.
To truly understand the definition of "security" in the modern computing era, you need to understand how a computer's networking system works. The operating system contains a number of levels of complexity in communicating over a network. These different levels pass information up and down until it reaches the desired level. For example, a web page might only need to reach the fifth level of the stack, but an email might need to reach the tenth before an email client can understand it. The reason the stack exists is so that any new technologies can simply be added to the stack, and no central standards body is needed to assign places in a stack. However, a networking stack is extraordinarily complex, and this is where the security problems begin to surface.
In order for any program or, in this case, operating system to be secure, it must be rigorously tested for problems over a number of years, and these problems must be fixed when found. If you think back to the years following Windows XP's release, there were a number of major worms that exploited holes in the operating system, causing billions of dollars in damage and infecting important services such as Philadelphia's 911 system. However, as time went on these massive problems were fixed, and XP became a much more secure environment. Microsoft, in its quest for greater security, has rewritten the networking stack from scratch. While this may seem like a good idea, skip back to the first sentence of this paragraph. A new stack has all sorts of problems. During the beta and release candidate phase, many problems were found that had already been fixed in XP, as well as new ones. Microsoft, in choosing to rewrite the networking stack, must now fend off attacks that repeat old ones as well as original ideas.
This situation creates a terrible computing environment for any user, and will likely create a new round of massive problems on the Internet. As always, users should protect themselves by keeping their computer fully up-to-date with all patches. For added security, users should avoid using mainstream software whenever possible, as these tend to present the most desirous targets to hackers and other digital criminals.
To truly understand the definition of "security" in the modern computing era, you need to understand how a computer's networking system works. The operating system contains a number of levels of complexity in communicating over a network. These different levels pass information up and down until it reaches the desired level. For example, a web page might only need to reach the fifth level of the stack, but an email might need to reach the tenth before an email client can understand it. The reason the stack exists is so that any new technologies can simply be added to the stack, and no central standards body is needed to assign places in a stack. However, a networking stack is extraordinarily complex, and this is where the security problems begin to surface.
In order for any program or, in this case, operating system to be secure, it must be rigorously tested for problems over a number of years, and these problems must be fixed when found. If you think back to the years following Windows XP's release, there were a number of major worms that exploited holes in the operating system, causing billions of dollars in damage and infecting important services such as Philadelphia's 911 system. However, as time went on these massive problems were fixed, and XP became a much more secure environment. Microsoft, in its quest for greater security, has rewritten the networking stack from scratch. While this may seem like a good idea, skip back to the first sentence of this paragraph. A new stack has all sorts of problems. During the beta and release candidate phase, many problems were found that had already been fixed in XP, as well as new ones. Microsoft, in choosing to rewrite the networking stack, must now fend off attacks that repeat old ones as well as original ideas.
This situation creates a terrible computing environment for any user, and will likely create a new round of massive problems on the Internet. As always, users should protect themselves by keeping their computer fully up-to-date with all patches. For added security, users should avoid using mainstream software whenever possible, as these tend to present the most desirous targets to hackers and other digital criminals.
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