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posted by LaminatorX on Monday August 18 2014, @09:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the not-your-father's-Oldsmobile dept.

For the last few years, Microsoft has tried to separate the modern version of Internet Explorer from its legacy: a relatively slow, insecure browser saddled with proprietary features. Now Mark Hachman reports at PC World that as recently as a few weeks ago, members of the Internet Explorer development team debated renaming the browser, presumably in an effort to eliminate any distaste from the software's earliest days. According to one member of the Explorer Develop Group during an AMA on Reddit: "It's been suggested internally; I remember a particularly long email thread where numerous people were passionately debating it. Plenty of ideas get kicked around about how we can separate ourselves from negative perceptions that no longer reflect our product today," wrote Jonathon Sampson. "The discussion I recall seeing was a very recent one (just a few weeks ago). Who knows what the future holds :)"

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by geb on Tuesday August 19 2014, @12:23PM

    by geb (529) on Tuesday August 19 2014, @12:23PM (#83024)

    It's difficult to say.

    The examples from the underhanded C contest were the work of individuals given a few months and a strictly defined single task to work on. They came up with backdoors that were well hidden, but not perfectly immune to discovery, and most of them would have been found if they were in active use. The winning entries tend to be ones where the author could say "Oh, whoops. Honest mistake." if they were blamed.

    I don't think you can take that experience and directly scale it up to the level of the linux kernel. More places to hide, but more people looking. Far more talent going into both backdooring and securing, at genius level on both sides. Very high stakes. If even a single flaw is found, an NSA contributor can't fall back on claiming to be a hobbyist making a n00b error.

    Heartbleed stands out as a better example for comparison. It might have been a genuine error. It might have just been plausibly deniable. We can't know.

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