5 ms·

Looking back on all both Daves said, there is an extraordinary amount of attention paid to getting things done and out the door, and almost no mention of planni

Looking back on all both Daves said, there is an extraordinary amount of attention paid to getting things done and out the door, and almost no mention of planning ahead, and actual security strategy. Its all commercial pressure to get the sausage out of the meat grinder, and keep the failures down to an acceptable level. No wonder things never get better, and never take a turn in the right direction, industry wide. I used to think we'd eventually get to capability based security, but now I see we'll always be stuck with application permission flags, the almost worthless bastard cousin, instead. I weep for the future.

fassssst 3y ago
I mean a lot of this stuff was built before the internet.
- pdw 3y ago
  More accurately, before Microsoft cared about the Internet.
  - Aloha 3y ago
    No, not just that, but before the idea that most systems would be internet connected. NT's design was started in 1989 and 3.1 was released in 1993 - development started a full 7 years before the idea of a connected world was commonplace, and a full 12 years before wide deployment of broadband. Whatever comes along that is a clean break with NT, and Unix - will have these assumptions built in.
    - mikewarot 3y ago
      POSIX is incompatible with security. Any such new system can not support it to have any hope of being secure. Do you think folks can live with that? It's like trying to introduce outlets and circuit breakers to folks used to just hot wiring directly to the grid. The idea of the OS directly enforcing the will of the user(through power boxes that return handles/capabilities, instead of dialogs that return names) takes a little adjustment.
    - dboreham 3y ago
      Not how I remembered this era. When I got my first NT beta CD in 1992 the place I worked already had public IP connectivity and NT already had working TCP/IP. We were pulling new beta releases down from the MS ftp server (rhino.microsoft.com) by early 1993. It was Windows 3.1 that was developed without consideration of internet networking.
subharmonicon 3y ago
Most execs at most companies really are driven by very short-term planning and thinking, as it benefits their career to do so. They just need enough good quarters/years to justify their promotion from VP to SVP or SVP to CEO. Nobody gets blamed and punished three years after they move on to a new role for the shortsighted choices they made in their previous role. Having said that, Cutler is not one of those execs, but was certainly subject to pressure from above to get systems out the door and keep the revenue stream coming in. As he mentions early in the interview, he’s really bothered by shipping bugs, really disappointed with the quality of software engineers in the industry, and really bothered by program/project managers treating every bug like a rare corner case. I concur with him on all three. Most of the bugs I file are “corner cases”, and yet I hit those issues every day and my bugs have multiple dups in the database and/or my bug gets duped back to an early report. Having spent a few decades in this industry, all of it in Big Tech, I have yet to come across a company that doesn’t fold to the same sort of pressure, even if the engineers and first-level managers are pushing to get bugs fixed before shipping, and pushing for more frequent bug fix updates.
- esafak 3y ago
  Steve Jobs pushed individual contributors to perfect products before shipping them. Bill Gates had no taste to justify any sort of perfectionism, or compunction against shipping buggy products (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW7Rqwwth84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW7Rqwwth84). It was all dollars and cents, as far as I can tell.
  - subharmonicon 3y ago
    As an Apple user since the launch of the original Mac, I guarantee there have never been any perfect Apple products. Every Mac OS until OS X crashed continuously on even moderate use. Thankfully Steve did manage to build better systems at NeXT and brought that technology back when Apple acquired NeXT and was able to substantially improve Apple’s Mac product as a result. It’s still far from “perfect products”, though, even during the time period that Steve was still alive and at Apple. To your point, I do agree that things have gone downhill quality-wise since his death, but I attribute this as much to being completely schedule driven as I do to the personalities involved in managing the projects.
Philpax 3y ago
> I used to think we'd eventually get to capability based security, but now I see we'll always be stuck with application permission flags, the almost worthless bastard cousin, instead. My hope is that WASI will introduce capability based security to the mainstream on non-mobile computers [0] - it might just take some time for them to get it right. (And hopefully no half-baked status-quo-reinforcing regressive single-runtime-backed alternatives win in the meantime.) [0]: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/blob/main/docs/WASI-capabilities.md https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/blob/main/docs/...
- mikewarot 3y ago
  Strong agree. My main concern is that someone will "fix" WASI by grafting on a POSIX extension and kill its security.
  - hayley-patton 3y ago
    WASIX?
    - Philpax 3y ago
      That was the unfortunate entity I was implying in my post, yes :(
xyst 3y ago
The market rewards companies that get there first. Market and regulators hand out slaps on the wrist for lapses in security. Actually punished if you are second to market
glhaynes 3y ago
At the time, Windows NT was lauded for having better security than its competitors. I remember “Department of Defense C2 level security” being invoked often. It was a major selling point, though one that didn’t feel relevant for most users (in fact, lots of people felt like “why would I need this?”; it made it seem like an OS that wasn’t for “normal users”). Early ’90s conceptions of security—both what makes it and how relevant it is/for whom—don’t match our expectations or what we consider state of the art today.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  Windows XP still likely meets that standard as long as it's air-gapped and placed in a facility that has at least the equivalent level of access control, and never removed.
  - pests 3y ago
    ... and never used. That was the punchline?
    - MichaelZuo 3y ago
      I don't see why? You can safely use it as long as you don't ever connect it to anything that isn't also at the same or higher level of certification.
- Veserv 3y ago
  Yeah, that was all marketing nonsense meant to confuse laypeople. TCSEC Level C2 was intentionally designed to be a “baby’s first security certification” level meant to allow existing known insecure products to get a (low) rating so that commercial vendors could get familiar with the concept [1]. It, at no point, was ever meant to indicate any meaningful level of security was achieved, just that you filed the paperwork. In fact, Level B1, the level above C2, was meant to be the “training wheels” level. Microsoft has still never achieved a security certification in the successor standard, the Common Criteria, that has reached the “training wheels” level. Microsoft security is a joke now and was a joke then, nothing has changed. [1] https://www.stevelipner.org/links/resources/The%20Birth%20and%20Death%20of%20the%20Orange%20Book.pdf https://www.stevelipner.org/links/resources/The%20Birth%20an...
gosub100 3y ago
Their EULA absolves them from all consequences! why would they care what happens to your computer after they get their chunk? That could arguably be the biggest economic contribution software has "given" us, these binding agreements that "we'll take your money, but we don't promise you anything, Sucker!"

fassssst 3y ago

I mean a lot of this stuff was built before the internet.

pdw 3y ago
More accurately, before Microsoft cared about the Internet.
- Aloha 3y ago
  No, not just that, but before the idea that most systems would be internet connected. NT's design was started in 1989 and 3.1 was released in 1993 - development started a full 7 years before the idea of a connected world was commonplace, and a full 12 years before wide deployment of broadband. Whatever comes along that is a clean break with NT, and Unix - will have these assumptions built in.
  - mikewarot 3y ago
    POSIX is incompatible with security. Any such new system can not support it to have any hope of being secure. Do you think folks can live with that? It's like trying to introduce outlets and circuit breakers to folks used to just hot wiring directly to the grid. The idea of the OS directly enforcing the will of the user(through power boxes that return handles/capabilities, instead of dialogs that return names) takes a little adjustment.
  - dboreham 3y ago
    Not how I remembered this era. When I got my first NT beta CD in 1992 the place I worked already had public IP connectivity and NT already had working TCP/IP. We were pulling new beta releases down from the MS ftp server (rhino.microsoft.com) by early 1993. It was Windows 3.1 that was developed without consideration of internet networking.

subharmonicon 3y ago

Most execs at most companies really are driven by very short-term planning and thinking, as it benefits their career to do so. They just need enough good quarters/years to justify their promotion from VP to SVP or SVP to CEO. Nobody gets blamed and punished three years after they move on to a new role for the shortsighted choices they made in their previous role. Having said that, Cutler is not one of those execs, but was certainly subject to pressure from above to get systems out the door and keep the revenue stream coming in. As he mentions early in the interview, he’s really bothered by shipping bugs, really disappointed with the quality of software engineers in the industry, and really bothered by program/project managers treating every bug like a rare corner case. I concur with him on all three. Most of the bugs I file are “corner cases”, and yet I hit those issues every day and my bugs have multiple dups in the database and/or my bug gets duped back to an early report. Having spent a few decades in this industry, all of it in Big Tech, I have yet to come across a company that doesn’t fold to the same sort of pressure, even if the engineers and first-level managers are pushing to get bugs fixed before shipping, and pushing for more frequent bug fix updates.

esafak 3y ago
Steve Jobs pushed individual contributors to perfect products before shipping them. Bill Gates had no taste to justify any sort of perfectionism, or compunction against shipping buggy products (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW7Rqwwth84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW7Rqwwth84). It was all dollars and cents, as far as I can tell.
- subharmonicon 3y ago
  As an Apple user since the launch of the original Mac, I guarantee there have never been any perfect Apple products. Every Mac OS until OS X crashed continuously on even moderate use. Thankfully Steve did manage to build better systems at NeXT and brought that technology back when Apple acquired NeXT and was able to substantially improve Apple’s Mac product as a result. It’s still far from “perfect products”, though, even during the time period that Steve was still alive and at Apple. To your point, I do agree that things have gone downhill quality-wise since his death, but I attribute this as much to being completely schedule driven as I do to the personalities involved in managing the projects.

Philpax 3y ago

> I used to think we'd eventually get to capability based security, but now I see we'll always be stuck with application permission flags, the almost worthless bastard cousin, instead. My hope is that WASI will introduce capability based security to the mainstream on non-mobile computers [0] - it might just take some time for them to get it right. (And hopefully no half-baked status-quo-reinforcing regressive single-runtime-backed alternatives win in the meantime.) [0]: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/blob/main/docs/WASI-capabilities.md https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/blob/main/docs/...

mikewarot 3y ago
Strong agree. My main concern is that someone will "fix" WASI by grafting on a POSIX extension and kill its security.
- hayley-patton 3y ago
  WASIX?
  - Philpax 3y ago
    That was the unfortunate entity I was implying in my post, yes :(

xyst 3y ago

The market rewards companies that get there first. Market and regulators hand out slaps on the wrist for lapses in security. Actually punished if you are second to market

glhaynes 3y ago

At the time, Windows NT was lauded for having better security than its competitors. I remember “Department of Defense C2 level security” being invoked often. It was a major selling point, though one that didn’t feel relevant for most users (in fact, lots of people felt like “why would I need this?”; it made it seem like an OS that wasn’t for “normal users”). Early ’90s conceptions of security—both what makes it and how relevant it is/for whom—don’t match our expectations or what we consider state of the art today.

MichaelZuo 3y ago
Windows XP still likely meets that standard as long as it's air-gapped and placed in a facility that has at least the equivalent level of access control, and never removed.
- pests 3y ago
  ... and never used. That was the punchline?
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    I don't see why? You can safely use it as long as you don't ever connect it to anything that isn't also at the same or higher level of certification.
Veserv 3y ago
Yeah, that was all marketing nonsense meant to confuse laypeople. TCSEC Level C2 was intentionally designed to be a “baby’s first security certification” level meant to allow existing known insecure products to get a (low) rating so that commercial vendors could get familiar with the concept [1]. It, at no point, was ever meant to indicate any meaningful level of security was achieved, just that you filed the paperwork. In fact, Level B1, the level above C2, was meant to be the “training wheels” level. Microsoft has still never achieved a security certification in the successor standard, the Common Criteria, that has reached the “training wheels” level. Microsoft security is a joke now and was a joke then, nothing has changed. [1] https://www.stevelipner.org/links/resources/The%20Birth%20and%20Death%20of%20the%20Orange%20Book.pdf https://www.stevelipner.org/links/resources/The%20Birth%20an...

gosub100 3y ago

Their EULA absolves them from all consequences! why would they care what happens to your computer after they get their chunk? That could arguably be the biggest economic contribution software has "given" us, these binding agreements that "we'll take your money, but we don't promise you anything, Sucker!"