4 ms·
Microsoft has done some shady things, but at no time in Microsoft's history would they have installed this.
by eggnet 12y ago
Microsoft has done some shady things, but at no time in Microsoft's history would they have installed this.
- na85 12y agoSeems more like a Sony/Samsung move than a Microsoft one.
- Tloewald 12y agoYou should look into some of the stuff MS did in the glory years, such as deliberately breaking rival software from Lotus, Borland, and Apple.
- eggnet 12y agoI'm not sure how that's relevant to this. It's bad, as I allowed in my statement, but I'm not seeing other parallels.
- dredmorbius 12y agoNSAKEY ... Though I believe virtually all preloads were OEM actions, not Microsoft's directly.
- yuhong 12y agoNSAKEY don't count either.
- dredmorbius 12y agoI've never been fully convinced by arguments on either side of that discussion. Always struck me as suspicious though. Hell of a name, you've got to admit. Bruce Schneier's discussion at the time: http://web.archive.org/web/20011005071623/http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-9909.html#NSAKeyinMicrosoftCryptoAPI http://web.archive.org/web/20011005071623/http://www.counter... One of his speculations: it is actually an NSA key. If the NSA is going to use Microsoft products for classified traffic, they're going to install their own cryptography. They're not going to want to show it to anyone, not even Microsoft. They are going to want to sign their own modules. So the backup key could also be an NSA internal key, so that they could install strong cryptography on Microsoft products for their own internal use. Though given alternative methods of bypassing any Microsoft security, not really necessary.