Interesting quote from Senior Microsoft VP

I'm not sure if this is "old news" for all of you, but I sure found it
interesting:

--------------
Brian Valentine says he's not proud.

The senior vice president in charge of Microsoft's Windows development team
has reason not to be.
(...)
In August, Microsoft warned in one of eight security bulletins issued that
month, that many of its customers have experienced "an increased amount of
hacking," in their various Windows systems. The Redmond, Wash., company has
yet to identify the root of the problem, only saying that it has noticed
some major similarities between the string of hack attacks.

"As of August 2002, the PSS [Product Support Services] Security Team has not
been able to determine the technique that is being used to gain access to
the computer," the company wrote in its security bulletin posted on August
30.

In short, Microsoft is stumped.
(...)
"I'm not proud," Valentine said, as he spoke to a crowd of developers here
at the company's Windows .Net Server developer conference. "We really
haven't done everything we could to protect our customers ... Our products
just aren't engineered for security."
--------------

The actual Infoworld article can be found here:
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/09/05/020905hnmssecure.xml


I did a further scan, and haven't found any indication that Valentine was
fired, or issued a retraction, or anything like that.  So, Windows is being
hacked, Microsoft can't figure out how, and the man in charge of Windows
development says the software isn't built for security.  That is, Windows is
unsecurable.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?


Note the final words of the article:

"Every operating system out there is about equal in the number of
vulnerabilities reported," he said. "We all suck."


"Other operating systems" being Unix and Linux.  The article didn't say
squat about OS/400.  Cuz OS/400 doesn't suck.  Somebody from IBM ought to
really think about writing a letter to Infoworld.


Joe