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Why Microsoft is a national security threat (www.theregister.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 24 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Windows is not the problematic Microsoft product. Not even close. If you understood how much of the US infrastructure and controls are consolidated under Microsoft cloud services, you'd never sleep again. Cloud was fine back when it was a product catering small and medium companies but when large corporations started migrating their critical infrastructures to cloud services to offload responsibilities, we really went off into the weeds.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    Not only cloud infrastructure, tons of industrial automation devices are more or less open on the Internet. Best case that's just a few minutes downtime in a factory, worst case someone fries the grid and destroys water treatment plants.

    And even the actual applications being written for the government aren't that great. The lowest bidder gets the contract, and security is really easy to cheap out on, if you're doing just enough to not be legally liable - which isn't hard.

    The older I get and the more insights in the inner workings of the technical infrastructure I get, the more I'm surprised we're not actively collapsing right now. It's scary how abysmal security is and it's scary how unprepared society is. Just as a hint: the European power grid spans the entire EU, Balkans, Turkey, Ukraine. There's no plan how to restart the grid, if it shuts down entirely. None. Complete terra incognita.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    No need to be quite so cloak and dagger mate, it fairly obviously to any one who pauses to think.

    People have been calling out the problems of corporate oligarchy for more than a decade. This is merely part of that .

    It’s systemic risk, not merely technical

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    He's not being cloak and dagger. He's an old guy (double spacer spotted) who works in the military or private sector under NDA and can't talk about it.

    Or he's LARPing. But the double spaces make me believe him.

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