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Microsoft lashes out at Googler for making Windows vulnerability public
Paul Keith:
The disclosure is only the more serious one in my opinion in the sense that it's the more obvious one. (the one that will fundamentally irk those in the know)
The weapon analogy doesn't fit in the context of the linked politics because it's a two way street. That's why for me it's easier to use politics as an example.
If I were to emulate the vitriole and style of all the previous analogies used by some posters, it would be like 9/11 turning into the Iraq War out of changing the severity of the words into Weapons of Mass Destructions.
It's a big jump from this situation but often times, it's easier to see the pattern from a big issue rather than little issues like this that end up contributing later on to a bigger one. In there too, it's not that the outcriers do not have a point especially the knowledgeable outcriers.
...but before that shift or rather during that shift in press conference terms, the whole issue got hijacked and it's not because people were too stupid to not point out how Osama has been replaced with Saddam. The truth is still in there.
But the focus, the importance, the one society needs to hear more or hear less...it's been shifted and once it has shifted because of the right terms, it's over and the only difference is magnitude and topics.
Eóin:
Honestly I think all this talk of politics and 'image in the public's eye' is frankly irrelevant. The employ here acted extremely irresponsibly, that much is a fact and therefore 'siding' with Google is a nonsense stance to take.
As for MS not putting the right PR spin on it all, well I see MS calling out the guy for the carelessness of his actions, remember this is all that was actually said
This issue was reported to us on June 5th, 2010 by a Google security researcher and then made public less than four days later, on June 9th, 2010. Public disclosure of the details of this vulnerability and how to exploit it, without giving us time to resolve the issue for our potentially affected customers, makes broad attacks more likely and puts customers at risk-http://blogs.technet.com/b/msrc/archive/2010/06/10/windows-help-vulnerability-disclosure.aspx
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and damn right I say, that quote sets the records straight. Frankly I can't even follow the politics slant that's being dragged into this discussion.
f0dder:
Well said, Eóin.
wraith808:
+1 Eóin. In the end, the end-users are not techies, and don't know how to even start to do steps for a workaround. No matter what vulnerabilities are found, the end users are the consumers and the risk takers in the end for most of this. And disclosure like this makes the end user more vulnerable, no matter how you spin disclosure. It's sort of like the whole whistleblower thread- disclosure vs responsibility. And in this case, I definitely think responsibility should have won out.
Paul Keith:
Honestly I think all this talk of politics and 'image in the public's eye' is frankly irrelevant. The employ here acted extremely irresponsibly, that much is a fact and therefore 'siding' with Google is a nonsense stance to take.
As for MS not putting the right PR spin on it all, well I see MS calling out the guy for the carelessness of his actions, remember this is all that was actually said
This issue was reported to us on June 5th, 2010 by a Google security researcher and then made public less than four days later, on June 9th, 2010. Public disclosure of the details of this vulnerability and how to exploit it, without giving us time to resolve the issue for our potentially affected customers, makes broad attacks more likely and puts customers at risk-http://blogs.technet.com/b/msrc/archive/2010/06/10/windows-help-vulnerability-disclosure.aspx
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and damn right I say, that quote sets the records straight. Frankly I can't even follow the politics slant that's being dragged into this discussion.
-Eóin (June 14, 2010, 09:21 AM)
--- End quote ---
But the thing is, you already made this clear in your previous posts of how much you perceive end users and that's why it's easy to ignore the issue because it's easy to side with what you've already concluded and how much the article affects you initially.
I don't mean to make you sound closed-minded but people don't find politics in politics relevant either as contradictory as this may seem.
The majority of those political bashers of the Iraq War didn't find the "image in the public eye" politics issue that relevant either but in that same context even if they can narrow down and make fun of the change of wording into Weapons of Mass Destruction, they themselves failed to communicate their concern because many of them too could not separate the cultural impact beyond the surface level from the rational points that they possess.
The greatest thing about politics is it's ability to confuse what politics is. For example, the constant analogy of a gun or a whistle blower is akin to the initial "knowledgeable" protest of how the American government should approach their "retaliation of the terrorists".
And then later on when the problem builds up or becomes serious enough, then we get back to the stupidity of the masses for getting tricked or how the end users are not techies therefore we techies have a right to have our say but the majority of them are irrelevant because they don't even know how to provide a workaround.
Like I said, this issue has already been hijacked and at this point, this topic is old news by Internet terms but I just want to use this past examples to at least emphasize the point on why politics is just as much a relevant issue in a frank straight shooter manner.
You techies (I can't include myself because I don't have this knowledge. I just understood the urgency because of lurking at forums like this) You techies are not immune to politics. I don't mean to lump you all into one or claim you ever stated you were immune but because of the focus of your knowledge, it's easier to claim your outcries as relevant but as history showed, you guys were neither able to stop FUD or EEE. You were just able to understand it more and popularize perhaps the acronyms.
But regardless of your knowledge, you were no different in the clog of culture. Sometimes you even show that hint of your helplessness by resorting to how Windows taught/promoted end-users to be dumb and yet as a group, you couldn't penetrate through end-users beyond a guide because you too pushed them away as irrelevant when things were easier to set aside.
The idea that some if not many of you think the politics is irrelevant is not new. Again, I want to emphasize that I don't know better than techies or that I'm writing this to convince anyone that my stance is the correct one.
I write this because sometimes the pattern is covered in cultural difference. Sometimes you even provide the key word:
Frankly I can't even follow the politics slant that's being dragged into this discussion.
--- End quote ---
In the end, it's not like I've stated anything new. If I did, I'd have been able to do a much better job at relating my concern. What I just wanted to emphasize about this reply is that techies does not immediately equal higher resistance to being swept by PR. You can even remove politics in that. I originally just used that as an extreme analogy. If there's a word I'd rather focus it's cultural gap.
Cultural gap at least implies two or more sides are affected by each other and it's not an issue of just one side affecting another side. It is only analogous to the public eye image in the sense that it's out there online. However techies are still no different from the public in this case because unless you're directly involved in the incident, in the end your reactions are really no different from some end user reacting only you both may have possibly different perspectives on the issue because of your difference in knowledge but even if you end up with the same perspective, that's not really the point unless you can re-focus on what it means for Microsoft to be sincere about improving their security image beyond just those that would satisfy either or more party.
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