news.com.com— Security researcher suggests recent WMF bug was a backdoor intentionally planted by Microsoft, but noted experts disagree. Conspiracy theory?!
Jan 14, 2006View in Crawl 4
"experts" I see no experts in that article. And saying the exploit has been there since image processing was slow it false, the guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Steve Gibson, however does kno hat he's talking about. I think I'd believe him. And unless you've listened to the podcast, you can't really comment! ("you" is not targeted at anyone here)
Not to worry folks. I've listened the some of these podcasts that Steve and Leo have done. Next week they are going to pat themselves on the back for all the publicity they have gotten for announcing this backdoor to the world. But right after Steve is going to 'clarify' his position that perhaps the word 'backdoor' is a bit harsh and it could have been intentional and legitimate code that would have been used in a proper way for the time it was developed it, but should have been removed by now. Steve's comments are always so broad and general that you can drive a truck through his theories, but he's great at getting attention for his tin foil hat theories.
Imagine this.You come home one day and find an elephant in your house. It's just standing in your living room, staring at you.You hire two people to find out why you have an elephant in your living room.They both agree that the elephant got in via a special elephant door in the wall of the house.One says that the elephant door was put there on purpose.The other says the elephant door was an unintended consequence.The only person who can answer this is the architect of the house, and you just can't get him on the phone.The end result is. Believe whichever expert you want because without the architect to tell you the truth, both explanations are equally possible.You get the elephant out, nail the door closed, and hope the architect didn't put in any other "unintentional" features in your house.Not the best metaphor I've ever come up with, but what the hell. . .
ja450n,you are apparently a child because of your childish comments. Windows can be as safe as any other OS with the proper care and feeding. WHy is it so amazing that in any place I have ever worked, I have never seen a windows server hacked? Could it be because the sysadmins knew what they were doing and kept on top of things?
jimthetaffJan 14, 2006
"experts" I see no experts in that article. And saying the exploit has been there since image processing was slow it false, the guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Steve Gibson, however does kno hat he's talking about. I think I'd believe him. And unless you've listened to the podcast, you can't really comment! ("you" is not targeted at anyone here)
chuckfJan 14, 2006
Not to worry folks. I've listened the some of these podcasts that Steve and Leo have done. Next week they are going to pat themselves on the back for all the publicity they have gotten for announcing this backdoor to the world. But right after Steve is going to 'clarify' his position that perhaps the word 'backdoor' is a bit harsh and it could have been intentional and legitimate code that would have been used in a proper way for the time it was developed it, but should have been removed by now. Steve's comments are always so broad and general that you can drive a truck through his theories, but he's great at getting attention for his tin foil hat theories.
jayman30Jan 14, 2006
Apparently, the WMF vunerablity affects Wine becuase they implemented the ENTIRE Meta File API without realizing there could be a security problem.
woolmonkeyJan 14, 2006
Oh so its a software feature that no one knew about and was not documented. But it is not a backdoor, okay.
hyberionJan 14, 2006
Imagine this.You come home one day and find an elephant in your house. It's just standing in your living room, staring at you.You hire two people to find out why you have an elephant in your living room.They both agree that the elephant got in via a special elephant door in the wall of the house.One says that the elephant door was put there on purpose.The other says the elephant door was an unintended consequence.The only person who can answer this is the architect of the house, and you just can't get him on the phone.The end result is. Believe whichever expert you want because without the architect to tell you the truth, both explanations are equally possible.You get the elephant out, nail the door closed, and hope the architect didn't put in any other "unintentional" features in your house.Not the best metaphor I've ever come up with, but what the hell. . .
jackspackJan 14, 2006
ja450n,you are apparently a child because of your childish comments. Windows can be as safe as any other OS with the proper care and feeding. WHy is it so amazing that in any place I have ever worked, I have never seen a windows server hacked? Could it be because the sysadmins knew what they were doing and kept on top of things?