CastleCops® - Microsoft's Security Straw Man

By Vincent Ryan
April 22, 2003

Is there a "war room" somewhere where scores of Kevin Mitnick wannabes are pounding away at Microsoft products, trying to find weaknesses? If not, too bad.

Thanks to Microsoft, we're all safe now.

The company has finally made some concrete moves on the security front to protect some of its software. In case you missed it, at the RSA Conference last week, Microsoft discussed a new version of Windows that promises to bolster antivirus protection.

The improvement will come in the form of something called the Windows Filter Manager Architecture, a set of APIs that will handle some basic operational tasks of antivirus applications. They include how an application sets up to scan a hard drive, for example. They will allow things like running two different antivirus applications at the same time. At the same conference, Microsoft also is discussing new security features in Word 2003 and Exchange 2003.

Now, I am all for security improvements in Windows and other Microsoft products, and we all know that a common set of APIs for antivirus applications will be helpful. But is this what is going on behind the doors of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing initiative? To me, this is like giving someone who's in danger of being attacked by a lion a butter knife and saying, "See, now you're safe."

Source and more:� osOpinion


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