Microsoft

MICROSOFT

My experience has been that Microsoft is not good at creating software and even worse at maintaining it. This opinion has been formed over many years, the articles below are just some recent confirmations of this opinion.

In light of this, I suggest avoiding all software from Microsoft such as their web browser (Edge), their email clients (Outlook in particular) , their Office suite (try Libre Office instead), their Search Engine and their email server (Exchange).

How a Microsoft blunder opened millions of PCs to potent malware attacks by Dan Goodin for Ars Technica. October 14, 2022. This is a very damning article and a worthwhile read because it is well researched and not just opinion. In brief: Microsoft had a bug in Windows Update such that it failed to protect Windows from known malicious driver software. Then, for two years, the company ignored everyone who suggested something was wrong. Even caught with their pants down, they can not come clean. Clearly Microsoft should not be trusted.

FYI: Microsoft Office 365 Message Encryption relies on insecure block cipher by Thomas Claburn October 14, 2022. Quoting: "Microsoft Office 365 Message Encryption claims to offer a way 'to send and receive encrypted email messages between people inside and outside your organization.' And according to WithSecure, it's not fit for purpose: the encryption method employed, known as Electronic Codebook (ECB), is insecure ... And Microsoft isn't fixing it.".

Here is the original article from WithSecure: Microsoft Office 365 Message Encryption Insecure Mode of Operation October 14, 2022.
On the Security Now podcast, episode 893, Steve Gibson put this in context, saying
"... the pattern of Microsoft deliberately choosing not to fix a latent, well understood, and potentially serious security vulnerability repeated itself."
and
"As we've seen over and over, Microsoft's industry dominance is so complete that the details of what they do no longer matter. This won't cause them to lose a single customer, and they know it. So, why bother fixing it? Just call it 'encrypted' and figure that it’s 'encrypted enough'."
and
"This begs the question of how this could have ever happened in the first place? How do you put someone in charge of adding encryption to Office 365's eMail system who, by any objective measure, must have been utterly incompetent to do so? Again, the evidence suggests that even that just doesn't matter any longer. Microsoft's dominance means that it's too big to care."

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See also the topics on Microsoft Office and Windows and Search Engines.