Did the NSA fix Vista? — Interesting. My take is that the NSA was more concerned about its being hacked then it doing any hacking.
THE USA GOVERNMENT’S cryptologic organisation, the National Security Agency, has admitted that it is behind some of the security changes to Microsoft’s operating system Vista.
According to the Washington Post, the agency which was once so secret that it was jokingly referred to as ‘No such Agency’ has admitted making ‘unspecified contributions’ to Vista.
Tony Sager, the NSA’s chief of vulnerability analysis and operations group, told the Post that it was the agency’s intention to help everyone these days.
found by Chad Greiner
Isn’t this a job for the OpenSource community? With all the energy and creativity we have, why are we relying on Microsoft for our security?
Here is my priority list:
1) email
Isn’t this a job for the OpenSource community?
With all the energy and creativity out there, why are we relying on Microsoft for our security?
Here is my priority list:
1) email
I want protection both from snoops and spoofs. It seems like a double-key signature system would be easy to do.
2) surfing
I want ALL my surfing encrypted — not just transactions. And I want the URLs encrypted, too. Again, how hard would this be to do?
3) Viruses, spyware, etc.
For me, personally, this is overrated. But I suffer from others neglect.
I use Norton for AV and Zone Alarm for my firewall and I’ve had no problems since they’ve been installed (BTW: I leave my computer on-line 24/7.)
However, I’ve had SEVERAL other people let some worm/virus get access to their address book and misuse my email address. What a pain!
Couldn’t the OpenSource community do something about this? Seems like they could install some sort of sniffer for servers to flag suspicious email and web pages before they get to people’s unsecured computers.
22,
good points..
I would LOVe to see EMAIL totally rewritten so ‘No Source” can hide there location…
whats funny, is I reinstalled win2000 on a computer, and was setting up the DIALUP…There site was MSN..
NEVER NEVER NEVER hit a site you are NOT sure of on Startup of IE…
This was IE4, before I could update ANYTHING…7 virus and 17 bots infested the machine. From the MSN main page.
MSN dont AV/AB the adverts, they are grabbed randomly from someplace ELSE…
Wonder WHOM invented the idea of EMBEDDING scripts into graphics???
Whom invented the idea of placing HOLEs in their browser to let trackers, and adverts ONTO your machine??
MS did it..
#4, #15, #17 – I couldn’t agree more…
#23
This problem with email seems like a piece of cake to solve. I submitted a suggestion to the Thunderbird wiki but nobody seemed interested or even concerned about security.
A double-key encryption scheme (like PGP) would be a breeze to implement.
Your first email exchange would probably have to be plain-text but after you exchange keys, all communication would be signed and encrypted end-to-end.
Besides encryption, digital signatures would help alot. It would put an end to those phishing emails supposedly from your bank.
The other thing needed is to encrypt your in-box and stored email so that the IT guys or coworkers can’t snoop your mail off-hours.
Again, this would be a no brainer to solve. (Either TruCrypt or PGP could do that.)
The trick is to have LOTS of people using email encryption so that all email clients will follow. I think this could happen if Thunderbird implemented it. But, as I said, the guys there seemed to have no vision for it.
19. “What they’re discussing is running mock attacks and then defending against them. Personally, I think it’s a good idea. If the NSA’s hackers can’t get in, then nobody can.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_McKinnon
“The computer networks he is accused of hacking include networks owned by NASA, the US Army, US Navy, Department of Defense and the US Air Force plus one belonging to The Pentagon.”
This guy was in a London flat using a dialup modem and a copy of PCAnywhere. Dont you feel safer now?
The scariest words you’ll ever hear:
I’m from the government, we’re here to help.
25,
take a step backwards…
Mail only in 1 format…NOT 10…
TXT or BIN…ONLY..
Text format for msgs.
BIN for binary data..
If you open and RUN it, its your fault.
I dont need email grabbing data from SOME site, I dont want, or tracking me for opening it with ActiveX or java.
Its BS that my email can be used to grab stuff off the net…
ALSo I would want the FROM address not able to be spooked.
26,
and you REALLY think the NSA has the best hackers??
So, WHAT, I can get 1000 times MORE people that are 1/2 as good and we can burn the world.