MS gives up: delete Windows

I kid you not. Microsoft wants you to delete Windows. Forget Symantec.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/05/ms_security_mea_culpa/

You're taking him out of context. This isn't Microsoft saying "Well, we're finally admitting our security sucks."

Especially with rootkits, you cannot be guaranteed the security of the system after the rootkit has been removed. Even on UNIX systems, it is SOP to slick the disk and reinstall.

Microsoft is actually doing a good thing here - by telling people that anti-spyware and anti-virus is not the be-all-and-end-all of malware removal, some admins might actually develop a streamlined process for rebuilding systems.

QS has a point. It is very rare that a company accepts their weaknesses. You cannot expect an operating system to be completely free of loopholes. And it is seen that no matter how advanced anti-virus tools industry becomes, the malicious people always are one notch above them. And that's natural too.

I agree with both of you. As QS has pointed out, it has long since been standard to format and reinstall to recover from rootkits. By design, they have the capability of reinfecting even overlay installs.

And as Tejas, has mentioned, the malicious people will always be a half-step ahead of the OS developers.

The thousands of malicious people are trying to find any loophole.

OS developers have to find every loophole. The odds are against them.

Sorry to necro a thread, but I found it in google searching for "slick the disk".

We use a program called "deep freeze" at my college - so that on every restart the computer goes back to the way that it was when it was flashed.

Every setting, document, change at all is removed on bootup.

Which is a good thing except when it isn't.

I had the "pleasure" of using college computers for a while last semester that had that type of system in place. On the plus side, the desktops were all identical and you knew what you had to work with.

The down-side, of course, is that it requires an admin to keep tabs on what updates and configurations need to be done and such-- every time I had to use those computers, I had to reconfigure the Real Player to the computer.

On a side-note, that Microsoft guy gets cool points from me for quoting Aliens.