How do you get credit if nobody will give me credit? How do I gain experience if nobody will give me a job? How can I keep my computer safe if the program designed to just that is inherently dangerous just got added to that list of Catch-22s.
Microsoft’s patches and vaccinations
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is not looking great today as the company has been forced to push out a patch to fix a massive hole in its Microsoft Malware Protection Engine. That engine drives its Security Essentials and Windows Defender in its enterprise equivalents and most importantly every single current version of Windows.
According to Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s security Blog, Tavis Ormandy, a security researcher at Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) discovered the problem that could result in a denial of service recently and brought it to the Microsoft’s attention. Microsoft immediately developed a patch, but in no small measure of irony users will now have to run the affected programs in order to fix them. Let’s hope the program goes more smoothly than a renewed campaign to remind people of the importance of vaccinating a child despite former Playmate of The Month, Jenny McCarthy’s insistence that you shouldn’t lest you give your child autism.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) was fairly vague in detailing what could happen if you don’t install the patch. Presumably not computer autism, but certainly a denial-of-service attack that could freeze an entire Windows system or at least the shutting down of your security tools.
Who is responsible and to what end?
To be fair, it’s not clear what an attacker could do with the fact that you have to restart your computer and disable your Microsoft’s Malware Protection Program, unless of course the attacker in question just wished to be a nuisance.
Or….getting you to turn off the security program is just the first step in a multi-pronged attack to more serious attacks?
The fact remains, Microsoft Security Essentials, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) Malicious Software Remover Tool, Windows Defender and Microsoft Forefront Client Security are not great security programs and users reliant on these should really look into third-party antimalware tools themselves. It begs the question whether or not one of those third-party security software developers wasn’t responsible for the attack in the first place doesn’t it?
