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Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

theregister.com

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Re: Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

#191

Post by paulmd »

Veelox wrote: post #126
nobodyandproud wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Partly this is due to the concentration of wealth, inaccessible to taxing. Naturally government pay would lag behind even the more mediocre H1Bs.

The US government spent $6.1 TRILLION dollars in 2023. I don't think raising taxes is the solution to the government offering a more competitive wage.

Is this actual spending, or are you rolling pass-through savings programs into this? Cause the caveat there is people always seem to want to count the outflow but not the associated inflow…

Re: Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

#192

Post by bithead »

mschuster91 wrote: post #73
vlovich123 wrote: post #23

I'm not a fan of Microsoft, but this is some amazing blame shifting. The root cause of the problem is the government single-sourcing a vendor and being incapable of negotiating with said vendor. The US government is 10% of Microsoft's annual revenue just on security services (if I read the article correctly) but is failing to negotiate. The right answer here is if the situation is that bad, make a very public long-te…

> The right answer here is if the situation is that bad, make a very public long-term commitment to shift to something else & up-level your IT department to be able to execute multi-year projects competently. The problem is that there isn't much in terms of alternatives, especially not if you prefer to have one software / vendor / tech stack. - In groupware, there used to be Lotus Notes, but that went down the drain…

>Thunderbird can do everything Outlook can (i.e. provide an email client, calendar and address book), but there is no official(ly supported) Thunderbird server software suite so there's always a potential for subtle bugs between whatever one chooses for directory, email and calendar backends.

Thunderbird is a lot more reliable than outlook - I use both daily. But yeah there's no 'thunderbird software suite'. I don't think that's really an issue though. Outlook breaks regularly, and our desktop support group had to deploy an 'outlook reset' app because the vendor is unresponsive. Being that unresponsive lessens the attractiveness of a 'software suite'.

>Or hell, even compatibility with old versions of the same app isn't a given in LibreOffice.

If I find MS word can't open a file, Libreoffice always does. I've never had a problem opening a libreoffice writer or MS Word file. I'm no 'power user' though.

The reason businesses and organizations stick to microsoft is because it's what they're used to, not because the apps themselves are better.

As for microsoft as a vendor - they are as obtuse a vendor as I've ever dealt with. Nearly always 100% unresponsive - even with projects involving hundreds of thousands of yearly dollars in licensing fees. I think being unresponsive is some kind of corporate culture thing with them. They're like the McDonalds of IT vendors. You get what's on the menu and that's it. If it doesn't work, well too bad because they know the perceived cost of switching is believed to be too high.

Re: Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

#193

Post by xtracto »

michael_vo wrote: post #69

I've been told by current military folks that they are forced to use outdated windows (the ones without security updates) on official military computers on base. So this is where they access emails, surf the web, and all of that. They had to use IE instead of the evergreen edge browser. It's well known among the people who serve that it's a joke.

Reminds me of Gary McKinnon, who "hacked" US military computers by using default passwords.... what difference does.it make to use newer OSes if ITops sucks?

Re: Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

#194

Post by giantg2 »

hn_version_0023 wrote: post #134
giantg2 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"& up-level your IT department to be able to execute multi-year projects competently." Cheaper just to pay up.

IME, paying up is HOW you level up.

The pay isn't great, but there are other structural issues when dealing with the federal government.

Re: Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

#195

Post by washadjeffmad »

xyst wrote: post #57
washadjeffmad wrote: post #31

The era of global botnets, worms, and ransomware can be credited to Microsoft, as well. Lax concern and slow turnaround for CVEs, poor update performance that led to much of the world turning off automatic updates, and updates being blocked on non-activated installs, if they weren't just easily broken gave root (literally) to fleets of vulnerable internet connected Windows systems being leveraged against the world at…

Not sure why this is downvoted. “NotPetya” and StuxNet were sophisticated worms/viruses which leveraged flaws in Microsoft products to ultimately bring down infra (ie, Iran nuclear program) or bring down countries (ie, Ukraine suffered attacks to energy sector)

Reddit refugees. The downvote has become the new "disagree/disapprove" button, post-exodus.

Re: Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

#196

Post by vkou »

theturtletalks wrote: post #146
vkou wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think 'can't pass an audit' means in the context of the DoD?

At best, incompetence. At worst, corruption.

If so, you don't seem to understand why the DoD is failing to pass one, but are very well versed in the outrage you're supposed to feel when it does.

Re: Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

#197

Post by ripjaygn »

paulmd wrote: post #190
ripjaygn wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets ignore the personal back and forth, and get back to the argument. It is harder to fire govt employees than to fire private employees. Disagree? At-will employment law doesn't apply to government entities. A very consequential law is different for private vs govt employees. > The managers you think can’t direct civil servants directly aren’t magically more capable of selecting and overseeing contracts, either. Ne…

> Lets ignore the personal back and forth, and get back to the argument. I mean, were you not attempting to make an argument when you said that government employees were “essentially unfirable”? Your argument just sucked/was factually incorrect and you want to steer away from the “interpersonal” aspect of someone pointing that out . It’s gauche to point this out on HN but you aren’t engaging in good faith here - wnd…

I had two options, either continue the personal back and forth by debating that you folks don't understand the meaning of the word 'essentially', or take the high ground and debate the topic.

Sad that both you and the other poster lost the argument so hard that you have to resort to ad hominems and make it about me instead of the topic. Thats very telling. And also look up the meaning of the word essentially.

Re: Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

#198

Post by ripjaygn »

ahahahahah wrote: post #179
ripjaygn wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets ignore the personal back and forth, and get back to the argument. It is harder to fire govt employees than to fire private employees. Disagree? At-will employment law doesn't apply to government entities. A very consequential law is different for private vs govt employees. > The managers you think can’t direct civil servants directly aren’t magically more capable of selecting and overseeing contracts, either. Ne…

That's like the farthest I've seen goalposts move within a span of two comments. You went from "essentially unfirable" to simply "harder to fire" and continues to act like you're so right. Like it's almost pointless to discuss something with someone who pretends those are even close to the same.

That's three comments where folks are attacking me instead of addressing the topic because they know they lost the argument. Sad to see that happen. And also look up the meaning of the word essentially.

Re: Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

#199

Post by ripjaygn »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #177
ripjaygn wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Naturally government pay would lag behind even the more mediocre H1Bs. Those "mediocre H1Bs" work their ass off compared to non-H1Bs because they get laid off/fired and deported on short notice with barely enough or sometimes no time to sell their belongings if they don't perform [1]. Meanwhile it's next to impossible to fire a govt employee for bad performance. Maybe the solution is to fill the govt with mediocre…

> Those "mediocre H1Bs" work their ass off compared to non-H1Bs because they get laid off/fired and deported on short notice with barely enough or sometimes no time to sell their belongings if they don't perform [1] H1Bs wouldn’t be so easy to fire if the skillset were rare or difficult to fill. Instead, companies are gaming the H1B lottery to create much lower-paid indentured servants while a sliver of the business…

> H1Bs wouldn’t be so easy to fire if the skillset were rare or difficult to fill.

By the same token a good chunk of government employees would be paid higher if their skillset were rare or difficult to fill, and they worked hard. The good ones that work hard switch to the private sector, even if the pay isn't much higher, so that they can get stuff done and not be surrounded by folks just existing while collecting a paycheck.

Re: Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

#200

Post by krainboltgreene »

whatshisface wrote: post #142
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, NASA? The government is able to employ tons of smart people that could be making way more money elsewhere. They might not get the absolute best security people in the world, but they could get good enough - as good as they're getting from MS for a fraction of the price. Additionally, government salaries aren't terrible when you factor in the pension. Most people want the money now. But if you want financial secur…

Almost all the work done at NASA is done by contractors that work in better conditions than allowed for by the federal payscale.

I mean this is categorically not true, but definitely makes for a pithy comeback.
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