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Microsoft in damage-control mode, says it will prioritize security over AI (arstechnica.com)

submitted 4 months ago by Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Microsoft is pivoting its company culture to make security a top priority, President Brad Smith testified to Congress on Thursday, promising that security will be "more important even than the company’s work on artificial intelligence."

Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO, "has taken on the responsibility personally to serve as the senior executive with overall accountability for Microsoft’s security," Smith told Congress.

His testimony comes after Microsoft admitted that it could have taken steps to prevent two aggressive nation-state cyberattacks from China and Russia.

According to Microsoft whistleblower Andrew Harris, Microsoft spent years ignoring a vulnerability while he proposed fixes to the "security nightmare." Instead, Microsoft feared it might lose its government contract by warning about the bug and allegedly downplayed the problem, choosing profits over security, ProPublica reported.

This apparent negligence led to one of the largest cyberattacks in US history, and officials' sensitive data was compromised due to Microsoft's security failures. The China-linked hackers stole 60,000 US State Department emails, Reuters reported. And several federal agencies were hit, giving attackers access to sensitive government information, including data from the National Nuclear Security Administration and the National Institutes of Health, ProPublica reported. Even Microsoft itself was breached, with a Russian group accessing senior staff emails this year, including their "correspondence with government officials," Reuters reported.

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[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 21 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Seriously, why are governments using Microsoft software?

Don't give me the nonsense line of "they need support". There is support for Linux too, and Linux, sorry, works, is reliable and most importantly: a hell of a lot safer than windows. This is example #346269 where Microsoft not only fails to keep windows even remotely safe, but actively sabotaged their customers (in this case the US government) for their own profit.

And again, "wwheeeyyyrreee sooowwyyyy, pleeeaaasseeee forgif us?" Look! Look! Even our CEO will now be interested in secuwity!

Seriously I'm so tired of having to read this over and over and he government will just contoi to pump millions over millions into that piece of crap company.

Switch to Linux already and have computers that you can trust have no known issues that are not being resolved to cover for a few rich assholes!

[–] kandoh@reddthat.com 17 points 4 months ago (1 children)

When I worked with defense contractors in Canada, Microsoft would sue the government whenever it didn't get awarded a contract it applied for.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

A lot of the 'big establishment' companies will imediately sue when they lose a contract.

A few years back, the JEDI acquisition triggered Oracle and IBM:

I imagine it must suck to be involved in a big government procurement, because you are pretty much guaranteed to have to get pulled into legal proceedings by one or more of the losers.

[–] MojoMcJojo@lemmy.world 9 points 4 months ago

A much much larger proportion of users are computer illiterate, especially federal employees. On top of that, the vast majority of basic software applications used are the Microsoft suite of Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. How do you

Retrain an aging workforce to use a new OS.
Retrain to use new software suite for email, docs, etc.
Or rebuild existing software to run on Linux
...there's more but I'm short on time...

The ENTIRE US govt runs on Microsoft. That's a very big pie to rebake. Where do you even begin. I do agree with you, it just feels unsurmountable.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 8 points 4 months ago

Political leadership isn't technically knowledgeable. It is focused on building large social networks of agreeable people. And Linux is an application by and for techies, not CEOs or social clubs. Consequently, when you've got six old white Harvard Alums in a room discussing how to run the country, one of them is going to be a Microsoft C-level and none of them are going to mention an alternative OS (except maybe Apple, in so far as they want their phone to magically integrate with a hostile OS rival).

Switch to Linux already and have computers that you can trust

A lot of these Microsoft features are about internal surveillance of staff and accumulating behavior patterns for future automation of service. This is not intended to be about building trust in the OS from the perspective of system security. Its more about finding patterns in human behavior that can be leveraged to reduce the size and pay-scale of your work force.

To that end, Microsoft is a highly valued partner while the Linux developers are an outright threat.