Thats right. The solution to the problem is to remove the service. Now if Ford had only removed the wheels from the Explorers they would never have rolled over from defective tires.

I'm so sick of this logic of firewalling everything and blaming anyone but the company that has produced the insecure software. Yes, the firewalls work and are the prudent solution. It should not, however, be necessary. For some reason the software industry is allowed to get away with ridiculous intellectual property legislation that amounts to little more than a corporate tax on individuals and businesses, and then disclaim themselves of any resonsibility if something goes wrong.

Imagine if Ford tried to blame the drivers for bad tires on the Explorer. Oh wait, they did. But they weren't allowed to get away with it. Why is Microsoft (and all the other software manufactures for that matter) given that freedom? If we want to say that electronic theft is no different than shoplifting then it seems to me there ought to be corresponding lemon laws.

I read today that Microsoft was boasting about 40 million people downloading the patch for this hole over the last two weeks. Generous math here, 15 minutes to patch at $6.50 an hour = $65 million dollars. And that's just a rediculously low estimate of the cost to prevent the hack. Never mind the companies with 1000s of workstations that cannot role out a patch that quickly that get/got hacked. Why is there no liability here?

Though I admittedly hate Microsoft, my point here is not so much that it is their fault, but rather that we have developed a culture that will send a 12 year old kid to juvi and fine his parents $750 to $150,000 for a Brittany Spears song, but software companies are not forced to make any restitution for releasing software that has not been thoroughly tested and costs businesses and individuals millions.

It it just me or is this logic completely disjointed?

[ reply ]

Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/articles/6728/21480#21480