Worm Hits Windows-Based ATMs

Experts Worried After Worm Hits Windows-Based ATMs

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=WVZSPHWVA1JD0CRBAEOCFEY?type=technologyNews&storyID=3958657&pageNumber=0

Automatic teller machines at two banks running Microsoft's popular Windows software were infected by a computer virus in August, the maker of the machines said on Monday.

Diebold switched from using IBM's OS/2 on its ATMs because banks were requesting Windows, said Steve Grzymkowski, senior product marketing manager at Diebold.

Schneier and Pescatore said they were worried about the security of other Windows-based Diebold appliances -- voting machines, which run Windows CE.

But a Diebold spokeswoman said the company's voting machines are not used on a network, so "that is currently not an issue."



Creator of Tetris works at Microsoft

http://bink.nu/DesktopModules/ArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=646

Chances are, Alexey Pajitnov is responsible for stealing away several (perhaps hundreds, maybe even thousands) of hours from your life. Pajitnov invented Tetris, arguably the most addictive videogame ever created.

Alexey Pajitnov wanted to produce more computer games, but he felt that the Soviet Union did not have a large enough consumer base to support such a market. He moved to the United States in 1991 after visiting in 1990. Pajitnov ended up working for Microsoft's gaming division.

It's vulnerable... More viruses etc. for Microsoft products than anything else. (Apple has the least, but since switching over to a Linux understructure those numbers may be changing). It's not so much that one OS is better than another, although there are certianlly varying opinions about that. It's that there are more Microsoft OS users than anything else, and thus, more virus writers. If they wanted to be really secure, they should go with something more obscure or maybe even a small embedded system. You wouldn't think that a simple voting program would require anything too complicated.

On the other side of this, I don't think the technilogical issues are as big a deal as the human factor. Lack of a paper trail being the most disturbing part of the whole Diebold thing. From what I've been reading, security around these machines is pretty lax and without said paper trail it'd be almost impossible to prove tampering.

"We got in the end what we didn't see in our bottom line: The upper hand waiting to strike us down."

Fortunately, I don't use ATMs. I ask REAL PEOPLE BEHIND COUNTERS to do the work, though they probably get paid much less than the ATMs and now the hackers exploiting the ATMs, thanks to Microsoft's rush to masturbate its bottom line (while not seeing the upper hand, which is otherwise known as "fate", "karma", or "slap in the face because you're a dumbkopf"...)