Microsoft: DRM Loophole Your Problem, Not Ours

from the educate-yourselves... dept

How nice. Following the news that someone is, indeed, exploiting the loophole in Microsoft's DRM offering to sneak trojan horses onto computers, Microsoft has basically said "it's not our problem." Their response is that there's really just no way to fix it, so people should educate themselves about the problem, and maybe use Microsoft's own antispyware solution to fix it. Maybe it's just a poor choice of words by the Microsoft guy in question, but this comes off looking really bad. It's clearly a security hole by Microsoft. There's no way a DRM product should be installing applications on your computer when it's just supposed to be looking for a license. Most people assume, when they click on a media file, that there's no executable included. Telling people to "educate" themselves is pretty obnoxious. To follow that up by pointing to a beta offering that was only bought to put a temporary fix on Microsoft security problems just seems to highlight Microsoft's cavalier response to security issues. Microsoft keeps saying that they're taking security more seriously, but telling people to educate themselves and pointing them to a different product (still in beta) to protect themselves from a problem that comes from Microsoft's poor design, makes it seem like they don't really care at all.
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  • identicon
    eskayp, 14 Jan 2005 @ 11:57am

    No Subject Given

    'Irresponsible', 'arrogant', 'predatory', or just 'sad'.
    Take your choice(s).
    But even sadder, the bulk of clueless PC users,
    don't know, don't want to know, and will damn
    anyone who tries to inform them.
    Even with the impressive growth of the open source
    and Linux communities, we diehard true believers
    are but a pimple on the beast's behind.
    Hope the annoyance becomes terminal.
    Then at least the rest of the general population
    will be free of the parasite.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    todd, 14 Jan 2005 @ 2:27pm

    Educate themselves?

    If users are going to have to educate themselves, why not educate themselves on how to use Linux or Mac instead of the swiss-cheese crap they put out.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 14 Jan 2005 @ 2:32pm

      Re: Educate themselves?

      todd, fortunately they are! there are more and more ibook's showing up in my local coffee haunt, and the word is 'you don't need help if you get a mac' .. people like that.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 17 Jan 2005 @ 11:15am

        Re: Educate themselves?

        I can't wait for enough people to get macs so that macs become the main focus of all the attacks. Then I'll be able to use windows in peace.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Mike, 9 Jun 2007 @ 7:34am

      Re: Educate themselves?

      And what about those of us that have a few grand sunk into machines for gaming? We have no choice but windows, as none of the games run on linux or mac? I am far from computer illiterate and I run XP because I none of my games run anywhere else. It seems these geek sites lump all windows users into this group of ignorant clueless morons that don't know anything about computers because we don't run linux... personally I don't see it an option at all. Until games are multi platform, windows is the only option. (oh and this is where people will tell me about the vast array of suckage that is linux gaming, sorry but those games are pretty much all crap)

      link to this | view in chronology ]


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