seapagan Posted January 14, 2006 Share Posted January 14, 2006 Personally, I tend to discount anything Gibson says by about 99%. He is well known for 'mountains out of molehills', is an incurable attention-whore, and has several times 'discovered' so called major problems in windows. His crusade to try to get microsoft to remove raw sockets from XP is legendary, though his promised 'internet armageddon' has so far failed to materialise. Bottom line, he is first and last a journalist who happens to have computing skills. In the online world it seems people either bless the ground that his shadow falls on, or curse his name and family to the n'th generation. Never really seen anyone with a neutral opinion of him. Many of his tools are, as stated, very simplistic, and often downright dangerous (spinrite has probably destroyed more systems when used by novices than it has saved). His port scanner is very simplistic (though if you believe the hype it's the only thing that is saving the world from 12 year old kids with a port scanner). In fact, there are people out there who believe they are bullet-proof after visiting his site, and in fact they are still vulnerable.He is however a reasonably good asm programmer, I have learned a bit from disecting his tools.Bah, I could go on all day about this, so I'll just say - seach out his name on google and you'll get an idea of his real agenda bottom line - I dont believe there is an intentional backdoor in windows, just shoddy programming.Regarding backdoors in encryption, the current popular encryption methods are well documented and open source, and have been proven over time to contain no backdoors. Remember the original author of PGP was sent to jail by the US govt for his encryption code and principles (his system was stronger than the gvt approved publicly avaliable cyphers)my 2pSP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wizardofwindows Posted January 14, 2006 Share Posted January 14, 2006 i agree and have it on good source that clippy the office mascot is secretly sending data back to microsoft bob thru encryted code written in klingon. goggle for more info. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atomizer Posted January 14, 2006 Share Posted January 14, 2006 @timeless - no, you're wrong. it's not clippy, it's that **** little dog in the search assistant - check your facts next time @seapagan - my sentiments exactly! good reading here:http://www.grcsucks.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
suryad Posted January 14, 2006 Share Posted January 14, 2006 @suryadfar fetched? no, i don't think so. i disagree with your Linux statement however - the source code is there for everyone to see. not to say it hasn't been done in FOSS before (because it has according to what i've read), but code like that doesn't last long. someone is going to catch it.Yeah didnt think about Linux being FOSS Cant believe I missed that! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synapse Posted January 14, 2006 Share Posted January 14, 2006 (edited) hah i hate that stupid search assistant.*EDIT* for breaking the size of the forums. fixed now Edited January 14, 2006 by Bi0haZarD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Snrub Posted January 14, 2006 Share Posted January 14, 2006 Looks like Steve Gibson's ploy worked - lots of attention for him and lots of hits for his site.To the security community he is considered a joke, and his website reads like a gaudy flyer for a low-class burger joint, stuffed with pseudo-technical jargon, fantastical tin-foil hat claims and portents of doom (still yet to materialize).The US government does not have worldwide jurisdiction and Microsoft would not be so short-sighted as to deliberately put in a "backdoor" which could be exploited by just anyone - "reasonable conclusion" is not the description I would use.Not a very good "backdoor" either as it requires user interaction.Steve's use of CAPITAL LETTERS in his text in a bid to reinforce his POINT is also very IRRITATING.He has zero credibility in my book, unless I'm after a good laugh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LLXX Posted January 15, 2006 Share Posted January 15, 2006 It's a feature not a bug, just like Word macros and the like.Microsoft probably intended to allow embedded code in WMF files.I have a rather strong dislike of Gibson. He overexaggerates severely and seems to know very little.His crusade to try to get microsoft to remove raw sockets from XP is legendary, though his promised 'internet armageddon' has so far failed to materialise.I had a good laugh about that... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atomizer Posted January 15, 2006 Share Posted January 15, 2006 (edited) i can't access his website.i hope it's being DOS'd this one still works though http://www.grcsucks.com/ Edited January 15, 2006 by atomizer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kartel Posted January 16, 2006 Share Posted January 16, 2006 The de-com and PNP tools are very handy for xp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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