Microsoft Delays Stirling Security Suite 84
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's long-awaited integrated security suite, codenamed Stirling, has been delayed by months and will now not be available until the fourth quarter 2009. According to Microsoft, the delay is due to the further development of the firm's behaviour based technology, the Dynamic Signature Service, 'to help deliver more comprehensive endpoint protection for zero-day attacks,' and efforts to add interoperability with third-party solutions, as per customer requests. When completed, the suite will combine a number of tools, such as the ISA Server and multiple Forefront products."
In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't work yet.
There is so much legacy cruft in Windows I doubt it will ever be secure. MS has too many conflicting priorities.
Re:In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
Because hey, it's horrible that I have to buy anti-virus software, but it's even worse if MS gives me something to replace third-party for free!
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Where do you get "free" from? You are paying for it.
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I think you're both missing the point that it isn't free because of anti-trust law.I didn't realize I was going to have to spell it out.
No, I'm not missing any point at all. You're just making something up without any evidence your statement up with. This is an enterprise-level tool and they aren't going to make such a thing and give it away for free. This is no different than for any other enterprise tool that they sell.
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I think you're both missing the point that it isn't free because of anti-trust law. I didn't realize I was going to have to spell it out.
In my opinion this entire thread misses the point because plenty of operating systems manage to maintain security without any sort of anti-virus or anti-spyware scanner. Those things are forms of damage control and are not actually security at all. With Windows they are used as a substitute for a proper security system because they are much better than nothing. That is, real security is about prevention; damage control is about detection and removal.
So how about if Microsoft makes the OS itself inhere
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THANK YOU!
Geez, I was on one project where we were on windows that was locked down pretty badly....trying to do some dev work...and McShield was on scanning every fscking thing or file you'd touch...got ridic
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I'm an active Debian user on desktop, so I think I am pretty unbiased when I put these few things out:
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Actually The Problem Is Dancing Bears (Score:3, Insightful)
The actual problem is that Windows is a "dancing bear" ala "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum". The real problem is Windows is the bear and it shuffles around never really dancing well at all but people are amazed by its activities instead of questioning the entire endeavor in the first place. Asking the users to make sound decisions about permissions and other settings given way Windows works is like asking people at the circle to critique the dancing bear.
Stop blaming the user. Users of other electron
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The only possible way to account for the user's actions is to set up what amounts to a very strict DRM scheme where the entire system is controlled by one party (Microsoft, or perhaps some blesséd parter of Microsoft) and the licenses to let other users install this software are doled out with barriers to entry so high that typical users cannot cross them on their own. This strictly-controlled system is why video game consoles, or DVD players, etc., rarely get infected.
Other than that, for all of your
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The difference between dancing bunnies and installing software from freshmeat is that people
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This doesn't answer question about simple worms that could infect machine that is just on the internet, without any actions on the part of the user. Still, in your example everything that goes under user account should not completely hose the machine, just the user account.
The major difference between java script and activeX is that javascript runs in a sandboxed environment and activeX is integrated deep into the system, so in an ideal world compromised javascript might kill your browser session but compro
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So how about if Microsoft makes the OS itself inherently more secure? If they made something comparable to the Unix security system (even if its mechanisms are quite different) then you would not need all of these scanners to double-check every last action taken or file opened or e-mail viewed etc. That would neatly avoid any anti-trust issues that might be raised by the likes of McAfee or Symantec and would be a significant performance boost as well. Of course such cottage industries may complain for a different reason, in that a more secure Windows could put them out of business, but if they really are obsolete then this is what should happen.
Like forcing the users to run under limited accounts and then prompting them when they need elevated privileges http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Account_Control [wikipedia.org]. Or locking down the kernel http://www.toptechnews.com/news/Vista-Security-Still-Issue-for-McAfee-/story.xhtml?story_id=11300C1NIA8R [toptechnews.com]
Good ideas, might get some complaints though.
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Ahhhhhhhhhh.... Stroturf!
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Binaries are binaries, and stupid users running them from untrusted sources will screw up just about any OS so long as tools are able to do the sorts of things 'dd', 'rm', and 'sh' can.
His comment may have come off as slightly fanboyish, but thats probably because this is sla
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You must be new here.
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It was unlikely to have been released for free, period. The target audience for Stirling wasn't one which thrived on 'free' products.
And to clarify for you and those who either haven't quite caught onto the history of Microsoft or have forgotten it, the reason Microsoft isn't suppose to release products bundled with Windows (as opposed to a free product you can go online to download) is only peripherally tied to anti-trust law.
Specifically, Microsoft got caught blatantly abusing their monopoly of Windows to
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Actually - my operating system offers an anti-virus package with the installation media that is pretty damned reliable, gratis as well as libre. Starting with a decent security model, and reliably enforced security policies, and ending with an anti-virus software, which I never even use. When Microsoft can offer all of that, I may consider paying a couple hundred dollars for their operating system. Oh - wait - uhhh - why would I want to pay MS for what I already have at no cost? Ooops, I think I had a bl
Re:In other words (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, right, because they've always worked so diligently on that.
You have that backwards, bub. Third-party was charging to cover microsoft's glaring omissions.
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They have always worked diligently on making money, so if breaking anti-trust is going to be less profitable in a given situation, then it is no stretch to suggest that they are trying to avoid it in that case.
They did back down on the Vista security plans because of antitrust threats from 3rd parties. MS doesn't want to get sued, especially in cases where it thinks it might loose, so yes they spend a lot of time making changes so they don't get caught violating anti-trust law. Nobody said they were doin
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This I have seen.
This I have not seen.
On a most basic level, yes. On a more conceptual and ethical level, you cannot give as a gift something that was already owed.
Reading between the lines (Score:3, Insightful)
"efforts to add interoperability with third party solutions, as per customer requests"
Is this spelled "DRM"?
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Or maybe... (Score:3, Funny)
They found a virus on the CD and have to reprint.
Priorities! (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps they realized that a good code audit and general cleanup would eliminate the need for much of the bolt-on "Stirling".
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Perhaps they realized that a good code audit and general cleanup would eliminate the need for much of the bolt-on "Stirling".
I notice that many of the Windows vulerabilities are buffer overflows. Aren't there automated tools and other procedures that can be used to locate and fix such flaws? Couldn't these tools, plus some auditing, enable Microsoft to produce a Windows codebase that has no buffer overflows? I know it's basically impossible to prove that a piece of code has no bugs but isn't it possible to prove that it has no buffer overflows? If so, wouldn't that alone go a long way towards a more secure Windows?
I hope m
OneCare for Business? (Score:5, Insightful)
It looks like this is Microsoft's security suite for the business/enterprise environment, much like their OneCare is for the consumer market.
I'd be careful buying any security software from Microsoft, not only because of their "track record" when it comes to security, but because it's not their main focus. When you've got such big priorities as Windows, Office, xBox, ect, you can't expect them to produce and support a security suite very well.
They need to learn to leave the security products to those companies who specialize in it. They're the ones who do it day in and day out, and they're the ones who you can trust in an enterprise environment.
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it's not their main focus. When you've got such big priorities as Windows
This is nonsense! They make an OS so security is their business.
MS need to secure their software, and all these bottom feeds like Mcafee and Symantec need to die.
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Their track record for security products is the strewn ruins of product after product.
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It's not a question of resources. It's a matter of focus. Microsoft these days is very unfocused about they need to do. Their forays into areas other than operating systems and office productivity software have been less than successful. Even in the case of the Xbox, while it enjoys popularity as a game console, MS paid for that popularity with $7 billion in debt as the division has only been profitable in the last several quarte
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It looks like this is Microsoft's security suite for the business/enterprise environment, much like their OneCare is for the consumer market.
Yes, and we know how OneCare was SO successful...
An interesting question would be what Microsoft considers zero-day security flaws. Ones that are recognized by industry leaders, or ones that Microsoft magically declares zero-day the day after they rolled out the patch to fix it.
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It doesn't matter how well written Microsoft makes their product, if its popular it will be exploited and bypassed. Just like every other protection package out there regardless of who its from.
This is one of the few cases where security though obscurity is a good thing. Not obscurity in the sense that its hard to figure out whats going on, but in the sense that if there are 10 different relatively equally used packages out there, it makes it 10 times harder than attacking one package, assuming that each
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Dude... you forgot the '<a'... there was a '<a' first, it looked like this:
<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/technologynews/5105
*reminisces*
The Big Switch (Score:1, Interesting)
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OneCare was a paid subscription service for the consumer market. To be replaced by a free - lightweight - solution code-named Morro. [live.com]
It's likely your ISP already offers something similar to its residential customers. There just isn't any money to be made here.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Windows virus devastates millions of idiots (Score:5, Funny)
A computer worm that spreads through low security networks, memory sticks, and PCs without the latest security updates is posing a growing threat to users blitheringly stupid enough [today.com] to still think Windows is not ridiculously and unfixably insecure by design.
Despite many years' warnings that Microsoft regards security as a marketing problem and has only ever done the absolute minimum it can get away with, millions of users who click on any rubbish they see in the hope of pictures of female tennis stars having wardrobe malfunctions still fail to believe that taking Windows out on the Internet is like standing bent over in the street in downtown Gomorrah, naked, arse greased up and carrying a flashing neon sign saying "COME AND GET IT."
Microsoft cannot believe people have not applied the patch for the problem, just because they keep trying to use Windows Genuine Advantage to break legally-bought systems. "Don't they trust us?" asked marketing marketer Steve Ballmer.
Millions of smug Mac users and the four hundred smug Linux users pointed and laughed, having long given up trying to convince their Windows-using friends to see sense. "There's a reason the Unix system on Mac OS X is called Darwin," said appallingly smug Mac user Arty Phagge.
"It can't be stupid if everyone else runs it," said Windows user Joe Beleaguered, who had lost all his email, business files, MP3s and porn again. "Macs cost more than Windows PCs."
"Yes," said Phagge. "Yes, they do."
Ubuntu Linux developer Hiram Nerdboy frantically tried to get our attention about something or other, but we can't say we care.
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Delaying? (Score:4, Funny)
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And guess what - modify KDE a little, and this would be exactly what you get.
As an April Fools' joke, I left live CDs running Kubuntu 8.04.2 live sessions in school computers. I had to leave immediately after, but according to a friend of mine, all people noticed was that there was no flash player installed. Other than that, no one was really lost at all.
This was at a community college that is 100% Windows XP machines.
Replace some of the images in KDE with the MSWindows equivalents (like, for example, rep
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BIOS open and/or closures not locked down -> shoot admin.
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see Stirling in action (Score:2)
I can't cause I don't have Silverlight installed and am using Chrome [google.co.uk], so I most probably don't need it
Here we go again... (Score:3, Interesting)
Why do I get the feeling that using this is going to be like half killing yourself with a steady intake of chemotherapy drugs just because some day you might get cancer?
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I think you're completely right. When this XP Pro installation finally croaks, I'm moving to Linux.
I know exactly what you mean about Norton, too. Scrubbing it out of XP after it let me get infected was more of a pain than getting rid of the damned virus. Between a firewall and a weekly scan with Avast, I've never had another problem in two+ years.
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Just so you're aware, Norton hasn't REALLY changed their game lately, but they have begun to suck less. If you can hear a little more clearly lately when you go outside, that was it. If not, well, consider yourself lucky you're not close enough to hear it constantly.
Still drags a box down though...
Its what they get for the layoffs (Score:2, Interesting)