The heart of Stuxnet [telecom]

If a road vehicle had the same ongoing quantity of potentially disastrous flaws as is inherent in *all* versions of Microsoft Windows, I would contend that it would be immediately banned from the public roads.

This sort of thing could be used to compromise virtually any utility - power, telecommunications, water etc. - that are silly enough to use these inherently unsafe platforms.

For all the inefficiencies and expense of the older telecoms equipment with their individual operating systems, they at least were not vulnerable to widespread attacks now available because of the "convenience" of using a common platform.

In the commercial or business or military leadership communities -- not just in the IT parts of those organizations, but in their senior leadership and administrative circles (corporate presidents, CEOs, CFOs, Generals, Admirals) -- is it explicitly considered to be professionally unacceptable and unethical to use Windows software in _any_ mission-critical aspects of their organizations?

Should it be?

IMHO, Windows platforms should not be used for mission-critical systems.

It also should not be used in unattended applications. More than once, I have seen the Windoes Blue Screen of Death on unattended information kiosks. A few years ago, I saw it on the electronic sign of a casino.

Richard

Maybe if the tech-heads specifically pointed out that these things were inherently insecure, and using them would open up their organisations to all sort of vulnerabilities, then perhaps they may not be used?

I would imagine that there are multiple issues here, firstly the information being made clear by those who know, secondly whether it is either disregarded (or covered up) on its way to the top, and thirdly if those at the top care enough to take notice.

I've seen this and other various Windows errors on the flight boards at airline terminals. Makes you wonder if they use the same systems for more critical applications?

They use Windows because that's the platform most developers are trained to use, there are a plethora of development tools available, with stuff like .net available prototyping and development is quick and there's broad platform support already cooked in. In other words, the development and maintenance cost is considerably less than would be the case for a more appropriate embedded OS like QNX or VxWorks.

Contract bids only care about initial up-front costs. Same for internal development projects. Subsequent issues are someone else's problem.

john-

On Fri, 07 Jan 2011 10:41:25 -0800, jmeissen wrote: ........

Sounds like the summary of the Gulf oil spill report, don't it?