[Microsoft] MS security patch EULA gives Billg admin privileges on your box

The USA Register ^ | 06/30/2002 | Thomas C Greene

[JameRetief]

MS security patch EULA gives Billg admin privileges on your box

By Thomas C Greene in Washington

Posted: 06/30/2002 at 01:05 EST

If you caught our recent coverage of the Windows Media Player trio of security holes you may have followed a link to the TechNet download site for a patch, or you might have activated Windows Update. If you did the former (though, oddly, not if you did the latter), you would have been confronted with an End User License Agreement (EULA) stating, most ominously, that:

"You agree that in order to protect the integrity of content and software protected by digital rights management ('Secure Content'), Microsoft may provide security related updates to the OS Components that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer. These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer. If we provide such a security update, we will use reasonable efforts to post notices on a web site explaining the update."

"Reasonable efforts to post notices" somewhere on the Web. I think it's clear from the wording that MS has absolutely no intention of bringing this behavior to our attention.

Instead, Microsoft has just assumed the right to attack your computer and surreptitiously install code of its choosing. You will not be warned; you will not be offered an opportunity examine the download or refuse it. MS will simply connect remotely and install what it will, or install it secretly when you contact them.

This means MS will have administrator privileges on your personal computer. What they feed you may be infected with viruses; it may break your applications, corrupt data files, destroy weeks or months or even years of work, but you'll have no recourse if it does. By downloading this WMP critical security patch, which you must do to operate WMP safely, you'll agree to give Billg deed and title to your personal property and to leave Microsoft immune from legal retaliation if they damage your machine.

The pusillanimity of wrapping what amounts to a digital land-grant into a needed, critical security patch is matched only by the arrogance of assuming that Windows is now such a fundamental linchpin of a human life worth living that no retaliation in the courts or at the retail counters is conceivable. (And that's not to mention 'informal' retaliation by outraged IP warriors, which we fully expect to see.)

We've heard the Billg rubbish about Trustworthy Computing until we're sick to death of the trivial incantation. Ironically, Microsoft has just taken steps to make the Internet immensely more untrustworthy than it already is. When we know that arbitrary code will be secretely installed on our connected boxes by software vendors who are not accountable for the damage they may do, any issue of trust is obliterated.

May I suggest my (personally) favorite solution to that problem? ®

[TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!]

[snippy_about_it]

bump for later read. Thanks Ta!

[Mr. K]

LOL- "Windows be slow losing dinosaur?" um... who has 80-90% of the market?

[dheretic]

That you make an issue of my age shows me that you are mentally incapable of engaging me as an equal. You must have a sorry existance having to make petty attempts to disprove or undermine people's positions simply based on their age.

[dheretic]

Who controls more territory on Earth, insects of humans?

[TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!]

Computer graphics is the future- of marketing, all art college degrees. Apple has that. It is a shame that 80% of the market is junk and light years behind apple.

[Mr. K]

who controls more money -insects or humans..? Was that supposed to ba an analogy?

[Mr. K]

LOL_ ok.... ummm Whay are Mac fans so 'fanatical' about macs...?? you guys are like libertarians and the drug war, or democrats and their love of taxes...

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

That you make an issue of my age shows me that you are mentally incapable of engaging me as an equal.

The fact that you take umbrage at my reply and are so sensitive about your age shows me that you are not my equal mentally.

My reference to your age was not meant as an insult. It is a fact that you are 19. You are the one who stated it. Therefore, I thought it would be unlikely that you would have seen a Fred Astaire movie from the 1930's and recognized the phrase about 'tomato' vs. 'tomahto'.

I thought I was being nice by searching for the song, downloading it, editing out the appropriate portion, cleaning it up digitally then uploading it onto my server to make it available to you to listen to.

Your reaction only proves that you do indeed have a lot of growing up to do sonny boy.

And, since you have decided to make this an age based pissing contest, I'll bet you can't give me the names of the two singers featured in the clip I posted.

So, let's just leave it at this. I'll show you how a mature adult reacts to an insult by apologizing. I meant you no disprespect by drawing attention to our 24 year age difference. And if you choose to be an adult, you can stop being a jerk and apologize for overreacting and casting aspersions on my mental capacities.

[dheretic]

Since you did not mean it as an insult or something of that nature I apologize.