Microsoft to Hackers: Crack This!
David Raikow, ZDNet
In an attempt to burnish its tarnished reputation for network security, Microsoft issued an open challenge
on Tuesday to the hacking community. But potential testers barely got a chance to attempt to break
Windows 2000's security system, as the test server Microsoft offered crashed and stayed down for most
of the past 24 hours.
Microsoft placed a web server running the latest beta of Windows 2000 and Internet Information Server (IIS) outside its
firewalls, and invited the public to go after target files and user accounts it placed there. The company's reason for doing so?
"We hope that this kind of open testing will allow us to ship our most secure OS yet," said a Microsoft spokesperson.
The hacking community was and is largely unimpressed, however. In its posted coverage, the Hacker News Network called the
challenge "an obvious ploy to get free publicity...It is hoped that this is not a primary testing method."
Members of the Linux-enthusiast site Slashdot for the most part concurred, accusing Microsoft of using anti-Microsoft sentiment
for free auditing.
Meanwhile, the Linux community created a counter-challenge of its own. Tuesday afternoon, LinuxPPC, the developers and
distributors of a PowerPC-native version of Linux, challenged hackers to crack one of its servers. Unlike Microsoft, which did
not offer any kind of incentive or award to hackers, LinuxPPC is giving the machine to the first person to break in.
Whoops!
If it was meant as a publicity stunt, the Microsoft security challenge may have backfired. As soon as the site went online,
Microsoft ran into technical difficulties with the test server. Early visitors reported problems with the home-page HTML and
Javascript, some serious enough to prevent them accessing the page at all. Posted status logs indicate that the server had to be
rebooted at least once because the system log was full, and some services were unavailable at reboot.
Most significantly, the server was offline for most of Tuesday due to what Microsoft described as "router problems". Though
intermittently available Wednesday morning, the site was down at press time, and appears to have been pulled from DNS
servers entirely; ping tests indicated the MS router was functional. Some Slashdot contributors reported seeing a notice that the
site had been withdrawn, but no such notice is currently posted on any publicly accessible MS server.
At this point I'm going to weigh into your debate about my buddy Billion $ill. As we can clearly see, the 90's version of P.T. Barnum and Elmer Gantry, is hoodwinking the unassuming public yet once again. The usual fingerpointing, "router problem", but not a buggy software. Here is a perpetual ripoff artist that has never invented a thing. HE didn't invent the OS he sold to IBM, he bought it! He didn't invent GUI interface or mouse, he stole it from Jobs, who got it from Xerox. Spreadsheets and word processors, HA!! Internet Browser, nope, that was another shameless hustle of Spyglass, who was a part of the Mosaic project at the Supercommuting Center Univeristy of Illinois (a US federal government land grant college. Damn evil government), funded by the National Science Foundation, that dreaded federal government agency of uselessness. Hell his business model is more akin to the Japanese of the '70's, so he can't even claim to developing a unique business model. He nothing more than a carpetbagging snakeoil salesman.
As to this overhyped clowns attempts at "curing Malaria" I might remind you that in the Southeast United States was ravaged with malaria all the way to the swamps around Washington D.C, early in this nation history. Who precisely irradicated malaria from the US? Panama Canal was a doomed project started by the French and abandon because of malaria and yellow fever. A US Army Colonel Doctor, wiped it out and completed the canal. United States Army Signal Corp did alot of experimentation and R&D in the 60's and 70's with a theory developed by a Bell Labs scientist by the name of Shannon. That technology is CDMA. So get off the kick that government is all evil. You are enjoying a media that has it's origins was for ensuring the delivery of nuclear weapons. That was why TCP/IP was developed. CDMA and OFDM are communication techniques for the sole purpose of killing the enemy, by ensuring secure and interference resistance battlefield communications.
That OK, BEWARE OF THE PENGUIN IN A RED HAT!!! Armeggedeon is upon thee billion $ill!!! Bow to the True OS, The SuperOS, Linux, you shameless believers of multiple blue screens and gluttons of precious resources!!!
A Microsoft spokesperson attributed some of the difficulties to thunderstorms in Seattle on Tuesday, but had no comment on the
site's status at press time.
Does the fingerpointing ever stop, now it's Mother Natures Fault!!!! The shameless excuse making is absolutely amazing. What you are telling me that when there is a thunderstorm we will have to shutdown computing until it passes?
Forget the FBI, I worry more about the private sectors invasion of my privacy and Microsoft goonsquads assassinating those that oppose them and fail to prostrating themselves 6 times a day (usually after a Blue Screen calling) towards Redmond banging there heads on wallet before them (or credit card as an exceptable substitute), chanting "Trillion $ill, your a god and savior of productivity!! PLEASE SELL US MORE BUGGY, OVERBLOATED SOFTWARE AT A HIGH COST. We are unworthy, we need to be parted with more of our money".
PSU #4 |
