Microsoft is reported to be looking at the idea of sending home editions of their OS set to automatically update unless the customer turns the functionality off. My initial thinking on this is that it could be a great boon to the security and stability of the Internet.
First let’s look at the negatives.
1) Bad patches. I think this will fix most of that by forcing Microsoft to write better patches and more importantly test more thoroughly. More on this later.
2) Microsoft has a tendency to declare things critical when they want you to install them whether they are truly critical or not. A good example of this is changing the licensing in Win 2000 SP3 and Windows Media Player 9 that give Microsoft the right to look at your PC and certain files. While I admit this is a problem I also think that if you are going to use Microsoft’s software you will have to come to accept this or move to a less totalitarian system. How many people are out there who are still running Win 2k SP2 because they didn’t agree with the change in licensing?
I am of the belief that auto-patches may outweigh the negatives. I base this on the following assumptions.
1) Most home users will chose not to run the updates on their system. I’m sure part of this is due to a lack of security education. If the patches are automatic then the end user will just accept that it happens and be happy when they don’t have to spend half a day researching why their PC is shutting down and how to fix the problem as was the case for a few home users I have talked to after the MS Blaster worm. Even better it will protect the rest of the Internet community from these home users. Clued in users that prefer to wait and see how the patch works on other people’s systems can always turn the auto-patching feature off and continue doing manual patches.
2) This will force Microsoft to write better quality patches. Currently if Microsoft writes a patch that causes a system with a particular configuration to suddenly misbehave they know that they will get feedback from those customers and they can pull the patch or re-write the patch before huge numbers of customers are affected. On the other hand if you assume that the first night a patch is put up for download only 15 million people get the patch due to people having their systems turned off and any number of other things that could delay patching. Let’s further assume that only 1% of customers have a problem this is going to lead to 150,000 unhappy customers in the morning. This is a far cry worse that any worst case scenario that Microsoft has to be concerned with now. For this reason I believe if Microsoft wants to continue to keep their customers they will be more likely to test further to assure stability.
3) I predict that at least initially until Microsoft can prove the reliability of their patches they will have a period where patches are released to Windows Update and manual download but will not be rolled to the auto update process. I base this on the way that Microsoft initially rolled out Windows Update. Initially there was a delay of a few days between a new patch being rolled out and the appearance of the patch on Windows Update. This gives Microsoft some of the early adopters advantage that is lost in an auto update system. This will help to reduce the damage a bad patch can cause as referred to in number two above.
My reason for feeling auto-updates done in a reasonable and fair manner is most strongly based on number one. The average home user knows nothing or near nothing about computer security and they like it that way. Home users want to believe that they can just plug their computer into a cable modem, DSL router or phone line and everything will be OK. While auto patching will not solve all of these problems it will at least remove some of the danger that these users pose to themselves and the rest of the Internet community. I think at this point in time that is the best we can hope to accomplish. As much as I would like the idea of the average grandmother being as concerned about the safety of her computer on the Internet as she is her purse I know that is not going to happen. At least not yet. Auto patching is the next best thing.
If Microsoft developed a decent personal firewall to build into the OS and also enable it by default I think we might see a further reduction in the number of security issues on the net. For example several of the new mass mailing viruses have included their own mail engines. If even half of the people who got the virus were prompted with a dialog saying something to the effect of “An unknown program ‘Program Name’ would like to access the internet. Is this OK?†and said ‘No’ then this would drop the proliferation by that amount as well. For the people who are not programmed to just say yes to everything (another problem I will write about some other time) might even look further to try to find out why this program they had never heard of was trying to access the Internet. This all of course assumes that Microsoft makes a decent software firewall. As I think most people who have looked at the history of personal firewalls will agree most of the first generation products were not all that great. Microsoft had their 1.0 version in windows XP. Maybe version 2.0 will be something to get excited about. Once again for this to be of any help to the average home user who could care less about security this must be turned on by default.
As I think this document probably shows I have a fairly low expectation that people will chose to protect themselves. This is especially true if they need to know more than how to plug the color-coded cables in and how to turn the machine on. So turning on protective measure may be the only way to protect the average home user from himself.
Everything else in computing has become easier why not make security easier?
08/21/2003
Daniel Owen