On Sun, 30 Aug 2009 01:09:55 BST, lsi said: > The biological metaphor does suggest that Microsoft would take some > kind of evasive action, and I think their only option is to license > unix, just as Apple did (although Apple did it for different > reasons). Doing this will solve many problems, they can keep their > proprietary interface and their reputation, and possibly even their > licensing and marketing models, while under the hood, unix saves the > day. Unlikely to work - there's just Too Damned Many legacy binaries that have all sorts of dependencies on undocumented quirks of the Windows APIs. So you end up needing to use a Wine-like shim to provide the API the binaries need - and if the shim is good enough for the backward-combatable binaries, it's *also* good enough for the malware to attack. If IE9 has a bug and some Javascript scribbles something into the 'Documents' folder, that Javascript really doesn't care if it's a Documents folder on a real Windows box, or one that's in a directory being managed by a shim on a Unix/Linux box. All it cares about is that it *behaves* like a Documents folder. Hint: If a Windows user's home directory is on a remote file share, it really doesn't care if it's a Genuine Windows(TM) or a Samba share, does it? Heck, it doesn't even know/care if its domain controller is Windows or Samba. All it cares is that the file share and the DC *act* like Windows. And unfortunately, that's true for both legitimate binaries and malware.
Attachment:
pgppjRolWgET2.pgp
Description: PGP signature
_______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/