Subject: RE: [Asrg] News Article - Editorial on spam by Bill Gates

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 12:11:41 -0700

Points of information:

	The DDoS exploits against the DNS roots were launched from Linux
boxes.

	Worms existed on the Internet and DECNet long before Windows

Worms and viruses will always do better if they attack a common platform
than a rare one for the simple reason that to propagate a virus need only
pass the infection on to an average of more than one new host per host
infected.

None of the O/S platforms in use today scores well on the security front.
Microsoft is the only company to have made a public recognition of this
fact.

		Phill	

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Barry Shein [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 11:04 PM
> To: Yakov Shafranovich
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: [Asrg] News Article - Editorial on spam by Bill Gates
> 
> 
> 
> >Why I Hate Spam
> >And what we're doing about it.
> >
> >BY BILL GATES
> 
>       ...
> 
> >But a single company can't stem the tide of spam alone...
> 
> 
> Ironically, it may well be that a single company can stem the tide of
> spam alone and, remarkably enough, it's Mr Gates' company.
> 
> Apparently much of the spam is forwarded via computers which have been
> infected by viruses turning them into unwaitting mail slaves for
> spammers.
> 
> Reviewing the most common of these viruses, such as Jeem, sobig.a and
> Proxy-guzu, indicates that they all target Microsoft's winows
> operating system. Versions up to and including their latest XP and ME.
> 
> There's a reason for this: Microsoft's operating systems are
> vulnerable to viruses.
> 
> Other operating systems, or at least late-releases (e.g., Max OSX),
> are not susceptible to viruses.
> 
> The technology for immunizing OS's against viruses has been known for
> about 40 years (before viruses even existed!) It's been commonly used
> in other OS's for about 20 years. And it's been available on
> consumer/desktop PC-class machines for at least 10 years.
> 
> So why does Microsoft continue to provide opportunity for spammers
> unnecessarily?
> 
> And why does Mr Gates act like he does not know this?
> 
> 
> -- 
>         -Barry Shein
> 
> Software Tool & Die    | [email-masked]           | 
http://www.TheWorld.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202        | Login: 617-739-WRLD
The World              | Public Access Internet     | Since 1989     *oo*

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---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 18:55:25 -0400

> 	The DDoS exploits against the DNS roots were launched from Linux

I don't remember that "DDoS" causing a whole lot of trouble for the
net in general, a la spam.

That's not an accident, a ping flood directed at 13 specific machines
one night is awfully different in nature than billions and billions of
spams directed at hundreds of millions of machines daily for years.

 > 	Worms existed on the Internet and DECNet long before Windows

Worms are not viruses.

The first internet worm, I believe the one the term was created for,
was the Morris worm which would be October 1988.

According to:

       http://www.microsoft.com/windows/winhistoryintro.mspx

Windows 1.0 was released on November 10, 1983, about 5 years earlier.

I suppose you could quibble semantics on what's a worm and what's a
virus and so forth to fit your pre-conceived conclusions.

 > pass the infection on to an average of more than one new host per host

That sounds reasonable, except that's not the problem.

The problem is a memory and protection architecture in windows which
allows programs run by any non-privileged user to infect boot blocks
etc.

Most other OS's (of any note) don't allow this.

As far as I can tell MS can't "fix" this because too many applications
rely on these backdoors for performance.

Put another way, fixing it would break too many commercially viable
applications.

So we all suffer, even if we avoid MS products.

 > None of the O/S platforms in use today scores well on the security front.

Nonsense, several score quite well if just reasonably configured and
administered (and I don't mean heroics.)

The problem is there is nothing you can do with any current windows
system to make it secure from viruses, short of active avoidance (shut
it off and it won't ever get a virus, proceed from there to your risk
comfort level.)

 > Microsoft is the only company to have made a public recognition of this

Oh what utter nonsense. Have you no shame.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die    | [email-masked]           | http://www.TheWorld.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202        | Login: 617-739-WRLD
The World              | Public Access Internet     | Since 1989     *oo*

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 11:40:06 -0700

Barry,

 >> Worms existed on the Internet and DECNet long before Windows

BS> Worms are not viruses.

BS> The first internet worm, I believe the one the term was created for,
BS> was the Morris worm which would be October 1988.

Xerox PARC created the first worm.  They did some research on the topic,
I believe in the mid-70s.

BS> I suppose you could quibble semantics on what's a worm and what's a
BS> virus and so forth to fit your pre-conceived conclusions.

Actually, I think the definitions are nicely overlapping.  Worms are
about network communication.  Viruses are about taking over a computer.

One can argue that a hostile worm needs to have a viral component, to
get enough control for replicating, but I would rather simply view that
as a carrier/parasite (symbiotic?) relationship between a virus and a
worm...

 >> pass the infection on to an average of more than one new host per host

BS> That sounds reasonable, except that's not the problem.

Correct.

BS> The problem is a memory and protection architecture in windows which
BS> allows programs run by any non-privileged user to infect boot blocks
BS> etc.

right.

BS> Most other OS's (of any note) don't allow this.

some OS's have superior security architectures, but that does not
prevent them from being run badly.  it has often been true that actual
unix configuration and operations have sucked.  on the other hand, unix
is often far more amenable to fixing the problem than are some other os's.

BS> The problem is there is nothing you can do with any current windows
BS> system to make it secure from viruses, short of active avoidance (shut
BS> it off and it won't ever get a virus, proceed from there to your risk
BS> comfort level.)

Beyond configuration and operation, the other critical issue is software
quality, starting with the operating system.  If the design is good, but
the software coding is bad, the game is over.

Operating system software that requires constant security patches
probably was not written with very good quality assurance procedures.
This is not surprising, since most of the industry has a focus on
creating new features, rather than taking the considerable extra effort
to ensure software quality.  Quality takes time.  This means fewer
features or later delivery to market.

d/
--
 Dave Crocker <mailto:[email-masked]>
 Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>
 Sunnyvale, CA  USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>, <fax:+1.866.358.5301>

---

From: Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 21:39:54 -0400

To my perpetual chagrin, neither of my (evil-cabal) employers,
the Bull/ICL/Siemens/Olivetti/Nixdorf, nor IBM/HP/Sun covens,
managed to prevent the *nix market share from shrinking significantly.
Adding a kcats sdrawkcab unencumbered variant didn't significantly
alter the processor, or application (operating system) desktop
market shares.

So, while it is true that *nixes can be bought and misconfigured
with ignorance and contempt for consequent damages (theft of b/w,
cycles, and U/I induced carpel tunnel), the overwhelming majority
of machines that are plonked on residential Ethernets hail from
Redmond.

So, for that portion of the problem that Barry identified, the
acquire, expend, discard (it gets cuter the more I think about
it, corse grained distributed parallel computation with error
detection, process migration, restart, and that's just on the
send-side. I'm sure the receive-side is neat too) orgy in the
ip/cdn and xdsl swamps, Redmond is the prevailing, and preferred
provider of launch platforms.

I think its all Bill Gates' fault, but I would have been a
gazillionaire if Gary Kildall had decided to come into DRI
the day the three suits from Armonk came courting, which may
color my thinking. Some. Doing Unix standards may have colored
my hair too.

Uh, any *nix-only or Mac-only ISPs, feel free to drop me a line.

Cheers,
Eric

---

From: Walter Dnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 00:03:11 -0400

On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 06:55:25PM -0400, Barry Shein wrote

> administered (and I don't mean heroics.)

  I agree 100% with this, but it's really a motherhood statement.
Today's major problem is newbies.  They want to *USE* their computers,
not *ADMINISTER* them.  Actually, they *DON'T KNOW* how to administer
systems.  The question we should be asking is not how safe a
well-administered system is; rather, how safe is a system out-of-the-box
for an end-user not running any public servers?  In that category, Mac
wins hands-down.  After I install Redhat Linux, I run "netstat -tupan"
and use the output to tell me which services need to be shut down.
After I've finished that and set up a paranoid iptables firewall behind
an equally paranoid firewall ruleset on my Netgear router, my linux box
is right up there with a Mac in terms of compromise resistance.

> system to make it secure from viruses, short of active avoidance
> (shut it off and it won't ever get a virus, proceed from there to
> your risk comfort level.)

  Agreed.

-- 
Walter Dnes <[email-masked]>
Email users are divided into two classes;
1) Those who have effective spam-blocking
2) Those who wish they did