Google ditches Windows on security concerns

[Ruby the Liberal]

Source: FT.com

Google is phasing out the internal use of Microsoft’s ubiquitous Windows operating system because of security concerns, according to several Google employees.

The directive to move to other operating systems began in earnest in January, after Google’s Chinese operations were hacked, and could effectively end the use of Windows at Google, which employs more than 10,000 workers internationally.

“We’re not doing any more Windows. It is a security effort,” said one Google employee.

“Many people have been moved away from PCs, mostly towards Mac OS, following the China hacking attacks,” said another.

New hires are now given the option of using Apple’s Mac computers or PCs running the Linux operating system. “Linux is open source and we feel good about it,” said one employee. “Microsoft we don’t feel so good about.”

Read more: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/d2f3f04e-6ccf-11df-91c8-00144feab49a.html

---

Blaming M$ security for the Chinese hacking incident? This should be fun to watch.

And the tech wars march on!

[SpiralHawk]

1. Mighty is the suckage

eom

[Skink]

2. we count votes with windows.

[Downwinder]

10. Not so sure of that. Count elections with windows, OK. n/t

[Recursion]

21. Diebold's machines run Windows 2000

And the data engine is -- I kid you not -- mdb. Like, the sort of architecture you would expect from a high school student.

[L. Coyote]

34. Yes, accessing the Access file is all you need do to alter vote counts. Ask Siegelman!

And, there is no way to restore.

[ramapo]

3. I ditched it years ago

Still have one Windows system but life became so much easier once I moved to OS X

[Grassy Knoll]

4. 2 words; Snow Leopard....

[boppers]

5. Go to any senior computer security conference.

Look at their laptops.

Security professionals, or business professionals who need strong security, simply cannot *afford* the risks that come with M$ security. It's just plain a dumb idea, architecturally, to run very much as root/Administrator, and Windows allows (and encourages) it to an absurd extent. That's not to say that windows doesn't have its place, it still makes for a great honeypot.

[sabbat hunter]

7. in the meantime

at a security conference, where tehy had a mac machine, a Windows (vista) and a linux box, the mac was hacked first.

[boppers]

12. ...because of a known browser bug, when visiting a malicious website.

There's one reason so many people use Firefox now, apple's been slow on keeping up with the open source WebKit community. :) :(

Oh, and one (one!) other attempt had been made on *any* of the machines, the day before, so that's not exactly much of a sample size (two).

[Recursion]

20. Only two remote holes in the default install since 1994...

[boppers]

23. OpenSSH blowfish mascot?

I'm not sure I've seen the soul-patch before, so, what is it?

edit:typos galore

[Recursion]

25. Well, also OpenBSD's mascot

And that's OpenBSD's catchphrase. They give him something different every point release; in this case it was a soul patch. 4.7 just came out and I still need to try it.

[boppers]

28. What happened to the daemon?

Just curious.

[Recursion]

33. They got Puffy around 2.0 IIRC

Pretty early on.

[Demeter]

6. who steals my computer steals trash.

[Renew Deal]

8. How is Googles mail being hacked connected to Windows?

Are the mail servers running on Windows?

I wonder if the employees know what they're talking about. There aren't many great options for replacing Windows in large corporate environments.

[Ruby the Liberal]

14. Not gmail, the desktop OS.

[boppers]

15. It was an email attachment containing a windows back door rootkit.

So, it was directly connected to Windows, any other platform and the back door wouldn't have worked... here's how it went down:

1. Selected folks were targeted with mundane email with an attachment.
2. Those selected look at the attachment, which *is* normal content, but also installs a backdoor.

So far, no biggie? Right?

Well, it turns out that when you target higher-level engineers with this kind of code, you're targeting machines that have many keys to the kingdom *on their hard drives*. That's why this was such a big deal, rather than some secretary getting some mundane virus.

FWIW, their server clusters generally run a highly tweaked variant of linux, and the general google philosophy is to keep everything in the cloud, making the desktop OS much less important... so, they don't need Office, they have their application cloud. They don't need Outlook, they have webmail. They certainly don't need Sharepoint to make and distribute content, they have entire flocks of servers for that. They wrote their own db engines and are pretty active in various F/OSS database communities, so they don't need MS SQL. They have their own authorization and directory systems (I'd guess LDAP, like AD, simply because it predates windows trying to do it), so they don't need AD.

Basically, they have no technical reason to have *any* Windows machines, other than for usability testing and browser compatibility testing.... what problems do you run into when replacing Windows in large corporate environments? The usual ones I've run into has been all about training users, or educating IT folks on how to port their existing systems over to other ones, and google has no shortage of talent for that.

edit:typo

[DavidDvorkin]

9. I think this has much more to do with Google's plans for its own OS

than with any problems with Windows.

This is a battle in a larger war, and at this point, Google is focused on influencing public perceptions.

[Ruby the Liberal]

13. Ding Ding Ding! We have a winner.

ChromeOS and/or Android are being positioned in a big way with this.

I for one couldn't be happier. Time for the sharks at M$ to rethink their business model.

[boppers]

16. I think costs are part of it, too.

Being hacked is *very* expensive in terms of public perception, labor, and cleanup, and changing their OS standards is certainly a proactive step to take to reduce costs...

Keep in mind that this is a company that's so cheap they don't even have cases on their servers, and buy crappy RAM in bulk to save pennies on the dollar.

[mrdmk]

18. Which company is, "...so cheap they don't even have cases on their servers..." ? n/t

[Recursion]

19. Google. Though it's both a cost and a cooling issue.

I used to rent a rack near one of their racks in a datacenter. Hundreds off commodity 1U servers without cases.

[boppers]

22. Their general "case": pack 1,160 "servers" in a shipping container.

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/04/01/google-unveils-its-container-data-center/

[hamerfan]

11. I thought Apple and Google

were not the bestest of friends these days:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=920494

[onehandle]

17. Wow! A lot of companies have been going from Windows to OS X and/or Linux, but this is huge.

Now will Microsoft fire Bill Gates' college roommate?

[area51]

24. Windows keeps you warm.

[boppers]

29. ROFL

Warmest I've felt in years.

[alfredo]

26. Windows mobile is having problems too, mostly from malicious games.

Maybe they should learn from Apple. They have tight controls on the code used for software on their devices.

http://www.gamepron.com/news/2010/05/31/mobile-game-trojan-calls-the-south-pole/

[thereismore]

27. Excellent! A smart company. nt

[Las Vegas Mixx]

30. Warning: unsafe, do not use (image)

[FLPanhandle]

31. MS decision to embed a graphical browser as an integral part of their operating system was stupid

A browser should be just another application like Linux and Macs. At least if there is a security flaw in the browser application, it's not catastrophic.

[Taverner]

32. UBUNTU!!!