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German Documentary on Relations Between Microsoft and Public Administration Now Available in English

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday May 29 2018, @09:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the malicious-software dept.

canopic jug writes:

A French Free Software organization, April, has announced that a German Documentary from the ARD, "The Microsoft Cyber Attack" has been released in English thanks to Deutsche Welle (DW). It is an informative and objective film about the inappropriate relations between a certain infamous corporation and the various public administrations. The documentary first aired on February 19th, 2018 by the German public broadcaster (ARD).

In May 2017, hundreds of thousands of computers running Microsoft Windows operating systems were disabled by the WannaCry cyber attack. How could a single malware program simultaneously cripple companies, hospitals and even government intelligence services all around the globe? Microsoft Windows software programs proved to be their common Achilles heel. Companies and private individuals use software from Microsoft. Government and public administrations from Helsinki to Lisbon run it, too. That makes all of them vulnerable to attacks from hackers and spies. Microsoft Window's dominance also undermines European procurement legislation, impedes technological progress and costs Europe a bundle. Journalist Harald Schumann and his team of Investigate Europe researchers have spoken with insiders and administrators from all across the continent. The German government's former IT director, Martin Schallbruch, tells us how countries are becoming increasingly dependent on Microsoft. A legal expert from the Netherlands describes how the European Commission and governments are breaking European laws regulating public tenders. Hamburg's data protection commissioner, Johannes Caspar, warns that Microsoft Windows systems expose individuals' private data to the prying eyes of US intelligence services. Internal documents show that Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) suspects this, too. The European Parliament and the German parliament have responded by repeatedly demanding that government IT systems be converted to open source software. Their source codes can be accessed freely and copied at will, which would enable European security services to use, alter and monitor them. Italy's army is going open source, as have police in France, Lithuania, and in the cities of Rome and Barcelona. Why do most governments resist the alternatives, or fall back into Microsoft's clutches, as Munich city authorities did. The EU's Commissioner for the Digital Single Market, Andrus Ansip, and other key players have the answers.

The video itself, « The Microsoft Cyber Attack », is available at Youtube and is about 43 minutes long.

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  • (Score: 5, Touché) by Gaaark on Tuesday May 29 2018, @01:49PM (4 children)

    by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday May 29 2018, @01:49PM (#685593) Journal

    and yet the internet runs on linux servers, but the ones that are hacked the most are the remaining windows servers.

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
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  • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Wednesday May 30 2018, @09:08AM (3 children)

    by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 30 2018, @09:08AM (#686181)

    > and yet the internet runs on linux servers, but the ones that are hacked the most are the remaining windows servers.

    Source? Oh, forget it I found one: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-hacked-more-often-than-windows/ [zdnet.com]

    Sorry it says you're wrong.

    But that is almost irrelevant - the biggest server attack surface, and the most common target, on the internet today appears to be WordPress (also open source, but I don't think that is relevant).

    WordPress and PHP (which it is written in) are frequently derided for being inherently insecure, IMO they aren't (well, PHP possibly), they are simply attacked more often by virtue of their popularity. Windows desktop is the same.