From John Lillywhite
The appeal found within the MSBlaster worm, which begs Bill Gates to stop making money and fix his software, is a pertinent one (16 August, p 6). At the time when the internet was burgeoning, Microsoft made great play of how easy it was to interact with it using Microsoft software. As an IT professional, I had grave doubts about the wisdom of making the net, in effect, an extension of one’s hard disc.
Over time we have had problem after problem, the MSBlaster worm being merely the latest, because the security of the original Microsoft design is badly flawed. What we are now having to do, retrospectively, is bring in a clear distinction between one’s machine and the rest of the net by use of firewalls and so on. But this is very difficult because the boundary is blurred in the fundamental software. Microsoft does indeed have some questions to answer in this debacle.
Southampton, UK
