As more and more data flows across the internet in the form of photographs and small text messages like twitter and SMS it becomes much easier for the bad guys to hide information among all this which makes the security services job all but impossible. They are mainly relegated to sifting data after the event to make a nice report for the enquiry. Of course they also build cases out of nothing for someone arrested on suspicion because they view specific websites or have copies of the Anarchists Cookbook on their PCs.
I often smile at the hypocrisy of our government. On one hand they arrest their own citizens for having a video of making a car bomb and some fertiliser in their garden whilst they criticise China for stopping people accessing that same video and encourage our technical people to design systems to bypass their censorship. All, of course, while the last bastion of freedom to fall, it fell this year, installs a kill switch for the internet.
One mans dissident is another mans freedom fighter. Nelson Mandela, the IRA, the Dalai Lama and many others will tell you that the pen is not mightier than the sword. It takes action and dedication.
So for dissidents the world over. Another tool in your toolkit, this one uses twitter and Flickr to allow you to pass messages, and I’d much rather use steganography than encryption in the UK. Keys can be a liability in an oppressive country.
Microsoft looks forward to end of XP while everyone else isn’t looking at all
Microsoft can look forward to a significant number of users who are still on XP SP2 upgrading their OS in the very near future now that they have discontinued support for XP SP2 yesterday with support for SP3 expiring early in 2011. Not many people are using XP SP3 as few seen a reason to spend the time, money and effort upgrading for the few changes it made and it won’t be worth corporates doing this now when they will already have upgrade plans for Windows 7 in their portfolios (or at least they should). If they have not started upgrading already then they will be vulnerable pretty quickly. Bear in mind that many corporates have their IT systems supported by third parties in an outsourcing agreement and you can see that there will be a big rush to upgrade 10s of thousands of current systems which will probably mean upgrading hardware as well. A big spend for no real benefits to the business except giving MicroSoft and your hardware supplier some pennies. All in all a big task but one that should not be a big surprise as MicroSoft made the dates available a long time ago and has already given in to customer threats regarding an extension. Still many corporates are unprepared which puts them at risk and vulnerable to attack. Could MicroSoft be put under pressure again to extend the support date? Unlikely at this point and it is also too late for corporates to renew their threats now Windows 7 is here and it seems to be a viable replacement for XP.
Once the next vulnerabilites for XP SP2 appear and we find MicroSoft making them public as leverage to encourage users to migrate. This will enable the script kiddies and hackers to start on the new worms, trojans and viruses for a very large user base of key systems that our business infrastructure relies on. Our infrastructure must be serious threatened yet we don’t read a word about it anywhere. It could bring the recovery, for what it is, to a screeching halt.
It will be interesting over the next few months as the migration starts and Windows 7 is really tested. If a major attack takes place and systems are brought to a halt it will be interesting watching all the finger pointing especially when issues like this could see key directors in court facing jail for failing to look after their businesses.
On the plus side it could bring the government to a grinding halt as well. In fact it is more likely to do so as their budgets get cut and major IT infrastructure projects are shelved. These type of programme must look like low hanging fruit to accountants and everyone knows hackers like taking government systems down. It’s extra kudos.
Myself? I’m sticking to XP SP2 for a bit longer I’m afraid.