Could Microsoft pirate your PC?
p2p news / p2pnet: Could Bill and the Boyz grab your computer without your permission? – asks Email Battles, going on: “Obviously. But would they? While we would like to think Redmond will always do the right thing, there’s a certain blogger in China who might not share that opinion. When China told Microsoft to pull the plug on the poor wretch’s blog, the company shut him down.”
The observations come in an Email Battles story centering on the recent critical Microsoft WMF security debacle, and which in turn picks up on another from Ars Technica.
The “poor wretch” in question , an MSN user, made the mistake of discussing the recent Beijing newspaper strike online. Following complaints from Communist China, Bill and the Boyz scuppered him.
Meanwhile, “In the midst of a debate at Ars Technica over Microsoft’s personal-best performance in handling the WMF exploit, a few quiet voices popped up,” observes Email Battles, referring to a post “from Zakharov” which asked:
“Is it me or was that patch distributed with some kind of hidden higher priority? I normally leave windows auto-update set to notify me when patches are downloaded for manual installation but the WMF patch took matters into its own hands and installed itself with a reboot.”
And, “According to Microsoft’s documentation for Automatic Update, that shouldn’t happen to an Administrative user: ‘If you are an administrator for your computer, you can delay the restart; otherwise, Windows warns you and then restarts your computer for you. Make sure you save your work and remind other users to save their work, especially before scheduled installation times’.”
An Email Battles tech concurred with Zakharov, says the story, noticing, “one of our XP laptops that was set to simply download updates had restarted… And had the patch.” And astrashe, another Ars Technica member, agreed, saying, “I noticed the same thing. I got a message saying the patch had been installed, and that my machine had rebooted.”
“You may well ask, ‘What’s the problem? You got protected, didn’t you’?” – says Email Battles, answering, “Quite true. However, it’s one thing for your neighbor to knock on your door, then wait for an invitation to enter. It is quite another for your neighbor to barge in and start moving furniture while you’re entertaining guest at your pool party. And it’s especially troublesome when your neighbor walks in uninvited, using the keys you trusted him to use only when authorized.
“We were frankly astounded that Microsoft might be so bold. Back at Ars Technica, mmondok reported: ‘It’s funny that you guys should mention the reboot as I think it may have also happened to two of my PCs as well. I never log out or turn off my computer, but both were logged out and I had the “your PC has been updated” blob show up when I logged back into the machines. I just figured it was a strange coincidence. I can’t verify that it was the updates that did it, but it sure sounds like it’.”
The patch, “definitely installed itself on my work PC even though I did not allow it to install when I shut down on Friday,” says a 2pnet reader. “Monday morning when I started up, I got the notice saying that my PC had been updated and had required a restart, none of which I had control over.”
Back to the question in our intro, “Can Microsoft take over your computer without your permission? Obviously. But would they?”
Obviously.
Also See:
Email Battles – Does Windows Patch Without Permission?, January 9, 2006
security debacle – ‘Critical’ Microsoft WMF flaw fix , January 6, 2006
scuppered him – Microsoft yanks China blog, January 6, 2005
January 11th, 2006 at 5:28 am
“Can Microsoft take over your computer without your permission? Obviously. But would they?”
They’re a bigbiz, if they thought they could screw someone for money by doing it, of course they would.