The serious problems of the new
Microsoft OS Windows Vista.
Windows Vista - Broken by
Design
Vista isn't yet available to
consumers but already both hackers and security firms are reporting
vulnerabilities in this "Most Secure Ever" version of Windows (E4, E5). Unfortunately
these vulnerabilities are nowhere near as serious as features that have been
deliberately designed in.
Most of the much-trumpeted new features
Vista was supposed to have were dropped so Microsoft could ship it during the
current decade, but three new things have remained:
*
A security system that prevents
most current software from running on Vista. New versions will be needed for
just about everything you run. Even much of Microsoft's own software won't
run. For instance, the free workstation database engine much small business
software depends on (MSDE) will never work on Vista (E3). Of course this
security system has already been penetrated and even some old attacks still
worked in tests by security firm Sophos.
*A confusing new graphic interface,
necessary to make Vista look sufficiently different from previous versions of
Windows.
*A draconian DRM (Digital Rights
Management) system designed to protect "premium content" published by major
studios and music distributors. This is apparently where most of their
development effort went to the detriment of other features.
This DRM system will severely increase
the cost of computer hardware to the consumer, limit hardware choices, force
purchase of much more powerful computers just to achieve the same performance
you are accustomed to with Windows XP, and make the system fragile and
unreliable. A Windows Vista computer is
completely unsuitable for any critical application because it can be degraded
and/or disabled by any number of events, deliberately by Microsoft, by malicious
software, or even by power fluctuations and similar events.
If a user is doing some image work,
say, and sticks in a "premium content" disk to play some music while s/he works,
the image work is immediately degraded in unpredictable ways to protect the
"premium content" - but that's the least of it. Say Microsoft finds a flaw in a popular video card which might allow
breaking DRM protections. Their DRM documentation promises content providers
they will immediately send out an "update" that causes all Vista computers with
that video card to drop to a "less functional" level until that problem is
fixed. Generally it will require every impacted user to immediately buy a new
video card to restore their computer to a fully functional state - an expensive
video card because that's the only kind that supports Vista.
But what if your computer has on-board
video as so many now do, or it's a motherboard problem? What if every low cost
Dell Dimension made between November 2007 and January 2009 is suddenly crippled?
And replacing the whole motherboard / video / memory system will trigger Vista
licensing issues to help complicate the situation. But it gets worse: a Vista computer polls various hardware and drivers 30
times a second to make sure nothing has changed that might indicate an attempt
to break DRM protection. Not only does this create great overhead within the
computer, but a blip at your local power provider can easily change something
Vista is watching - Bingo! your computer is degraded.
Perhaps the greatest risk is from
malicious software. Vista has already been shown vulnerable to a variety of
attacks. If a malicious program invades your machine (over 80% of small business
computers are currently infected), it can make your computer useless either
deliberately or more probably accidentally. Recovery will be next to impossible
without simply wiping the hard disk (total data loss) and reinstalling Vista,
and even then maybe not. You could say this is
all just the ranting of an unbalanced anti-Microsoft zealot, but unfortunately
it is not. Those with patience can read all the details and much more from the
recently published paper by Peter Gutmann, Department of Computer Science,
University of Auckland, A Cost
Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection.
