Sorry, but this is the first I have heard of it:
From http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/33199.html
Consumer lawsuit claims damages for MS security failures
By John Lettice
Posted: 03/10/2003 at 12:14 GMT
A lawsuit filed against Microsoft in Los Angeles this week is
attempting to hold the company responsible for the damage wrought
by the systemic failures of security in its software, and for its
conspicuous failure to fix them adequately. The suit follows hard
on the heels of the publication of a paper on Microsoft security
which, among other things, suggested that the company should be
held legally responsible for such damages.
The Los Angeles case is being brought by one woman who says she
was the victim of identity theft, but it is designed to form the
basis of a class action. It argues that the vast majority of
successful attacks occur because of major vulnerabilities in
Microsoft's software and - crucially - claims that the
disclaimers in Microsoft's licence agreements constitute an
unfair business practice under Californian law, because consumers
have little choice but to use Microsoft software.
Licence agreements have traditionally operated as a catch-all
'get out of jail' for all software companies, so the argument of
this suit can be seen as quite narrow, success depending on
establishing the existence of a Microsoft monopoly, rather than
on exposing licence agreements as the outrage (you can tell we're
disappointed, can't you?) they are. Microsoft's recent practice
of stopping you fixing the software you've got if you refuse the
new, even more horrid agreement could well provide some support
for this suit's argument.
Aside from being able to argue that the licence agreement means
it doesn't have to do anything about its software being broken
(which from a marketing perspective is probably not an ideal
first line of defence), Microsoft is currently attempting to
shift the blame ground away to the "criminals" out there.
Pitching the new-look line on security recently, Steve Ballmer
denounced all hackers as criminals, and signalled a move away
from the 'patch and patch again' approach to 'securing the
perimeter.'
The patch regime certainly doesn't work, as it's just plain
ridiculous to expect all consumers to keep their patches up to
date, even if they have the bandwidth (for the record, a Register
test of a bringing a virgin Win2k installation up to date as far
as last Tuesday, over dial-up, took in excess of three hours,
without us bothering about WMP and DirectX updates). Large
numbers of unpatched machines out there generate 'cascade
failures' which bring a cost (in terms, for example, of bandwidth
and crippled email systems) even to patched systems, so you still
get hit no matter how good you are.
Securing the perimeter, though, is under the circumstances a
dubious alternative for Microsoft to be proposing. If you
currently think you have a pretty secure perimeter, we expect you
still feverishly patch your Microsoft clients, and there's good
reason why you do this. What Microsoft is really saying, we
think, is that security should be addressed further out in the
network. This is certainly sensible, but doesn't have an
immediate effect on where we are today, and how we got there. It
does hold out the prospect of the blame being shifted from the
vendor of the client software to the vendors of the firewalls, to
the ISPs and so on, but we're sure this can't be why Microsoft
now thinks it's the way to go.
Given that Microsoft's security pitch is shifting, and it's at
least arguable that the company concedes that what it's been
doing doesn't work, defending it in court could be particularly
tricky, if the company can't stop it getting as far as that
argument.
But this is still a half a loaf kind of a lawsuit. It is
consumerist, certainly, but doesn't look likely to test the
broader issues of product liability and 'fit for purpose' on the
products of the software industry. In order to do this it would
be necessary to overthrow licence agreements on more general
grounds than are being applied here, but we reckon there's a case
, at least under European consumer legislation. Software
companies in general have managed to avoid test cases over
licence agreements - we think there's a good reason for that.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
From http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/33199.html
Consumer lawsuit claims damages for MS security failures
By John Lettice
Posted: 03/10/2003 at 12:14 GMT
A lawsuit filed against Microsoft in Los Angeles this week is
attempting to hold the company responsible for the damage wrought
by the systemic failures of security in its software, and for its
conspicuous failure to fix them adequately. The suit follows hard
on the heels of the publication of a paper on Microsoft security
which, among other things, suggested that the company should be
held legally responsible for such damages.
The Los Angeles case is being brought by one woman who says she
was the victim of identity theft, but it is designed to form the
basis of a class action. It argues that the vast majority of
successful attacks occur because of major vulnerabilities in
Microsoft's software and - crucially - claims that the
disclaimers in Microsoft's licence agreements constitute an
unfair business practice under Californian law, because consumers
have little choice but to use Microsoft software.
Licence agreements have traditionally operated as a catch-all
'get out of jail' for all software companies, so the argument of
this suit can be seen as quite narrow, success depending on
establishing the existence of a Microsoft monopoly, rather than
on exposing licence agreements as the outrage (you can tell we're
disappointed, can't you?) they are. Microsoft's recent practice
of stopping you fixing the software you've got if you refuse the
new, even more horrid agreement could well provide some support
for this suit's argument.
Aside from being able to argue that the licence agreement means
it doesn't have to do anything about its software being broken
(which from a marketing perspective is probably not an ideal
first line of defence), Microsoft is currently attempting to
shift the blame ground away to the "criminals" out there.
Pitching the new-look line on security recently, Steve Ballmer
denounced all hackers as criminals, and signalled a move away
from the 'patch and patch again' approach to 'securing the
perimeter.'
The patch regime certainly doesn't work, as it's just plain
ridiculous to expect all consumers to keep their patches up to
date, even if they have the bandwidth (for the record, a Register
test of a bringing a virgin Win2k installation up to date as far
as last Tuesday, over dial-up, took in excess of three hours,
without us bothering about WMP and DirectX updates). Large
numbers of unpatched machines out there generate 'cascade
failures' which bring a cost (in terms, for example, of bandwidth
and crippled email systems) even to patched systems, so you still
get hit no matter how good you are.
Securing the perimeter, though, is under the circumstances a
dubious alternative for Microsoft to be proposing. If you
currently think you have a pretty secure perimeter, we expect you
still feverishly patch your Microsoft clients, and there's good
reason why you do this. What Microsoft is really saying, we
think, is that security should be addressed further out in the
network. This is certainly sensible, but doesn't have an
immediate effect on where we are today, and how we got there. It
does hold out the prospect of the blame being shifted from the
vendor of the client software to the vendors of the firewalls, to
the ISPs and so on, but we're sure this can't be why Microsoft
now thinks it's the way to go.
Given that Microsoft's security pitch is shifting, and it's at
least arguable that the company concedes that what it's been
doing doesn't work, defending it in court could be particularly
tricky, if the company can't stop it getting as far as that
argument.
But this is still a half a loaf kind of a lawsuit. It is
consumerist, certainly, but doesn't look likely to test the
broader issues of product liability and 'fit for purpose' on the
products of the software industry. In order to do this it would
be necessary to overthrow licence agreements on more general
grounds than are being applied here, but we reckon there's a case
, at least under European consumer legislation. Software
companies in general have managed to avoid test cases over
licence agreements - we think there's a good reason for that.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]