Microsoft is pivoting its company culture to make security a top priority, President Brad Smith testified to Congress on Thursday, promising that security will be “more important even than the company’s work on artificial intelligence.”

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, “has taken on the responsibility personally to serve as the senior executive with overall accountability for Microsoft’s security,” Smith told Congress.

His testimony comes after Microsoft admitted that it could have taken steps to prevent two aggressive nation-state cyberattacks from China and Russia.

According to Microsoft whistleblower Andrew Harris, Microsoft spent years ignoring a vulnerability while he proposed fixes to the “security nightmare.” Instead, Microsoft feared it might lose its government contract by warning about the bug and allegedly downplayed the problem, choosing profits over security, ProPublica reported.

This apparent negligence led to one of the largest cyberattacks in US history, and officials’ sensitive data was compromised due to Microsoft’s security failures. The China-linked hackers stole 60,000 US State Department emails, Reuters reported. And several federal agencies were hit, giving attackers access to sensitive government information, including data from the National Nuclear Security Administration and the National Institutes of Health, ProPublica reported. Even Microsoft itself was breached, with a Russian group accessing senior staff emails this year, including their “correspondence with government officials,” Reuters reported.

  • bdot@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    no they won’t. these pricks literally fired their entire AI Ethics team… that tells you everything you need to know about where their priorities are.

    the only thing they are gonna do about this is figure out a way to make people not angry, but continue to fo as much shady shit as they can.

    • Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip
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      5 months ago

      you can have a propietary os thats secure, but the problem is once you get to the point where youre selling data and allow anything to be installed of course, its no longer secure.

      • tabular@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        You can’t verify it’s secure if it’s proprietary, so it’s never secure? Having control over other people’s computing creates bad incentives to gain at your user’s expense, so it’s day 1 you should lose trust.

  • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    Seriously, why are governments using Microsoft software?

    Don’t give me the nonsense line of “they need support”. There is support for Linux too, and Linux, sorry, works, is reliable and most importantly: a hell of a lot safer than windows. This is example #346269 where Microsoft not only fails to keep windows even remotely safe, but actively sabotaged their customers (in this case the US government) for their own profit.

    And again, “wwheeeyyyrreee sooowwyyyy, pleeeaaasseeee forgif us?” Look! Look! Even our CEO will now be interested in secuwity!

    Seriously I’m so tired of having to read this over and over and he government will just contoi to pump millions over millions into that piece of crap company.

    Switch to Linux already and have computers that you can trust have no known issues that are not being resolved to cover for a few rich assholes!

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Political leadership isn’t technically knowledgeable. It is focused on building large social networks of agreeable people. And Linux is an application by and for techies, not CEOs or social clubs. Consequently, when you’ve got six old white Harvard Alums in a room discussing how to run the country, one of them is going to be a Microsoft C-level and none of them are going to mention an alternative OS (except maybe Apple, in so far as they want their phone to magically integrate with a hostile OS rival).

      Switch to Linux already and have computers that you can trust

      A lot of these Microsoft features are about internal surveillance of staff and accumulating behavior patterns for future automation of service. This is not intended to be about building trust in the OS from the perspective of system security. Its more about finding patterns in human behavior that can be leveraged to reduce the size and pay-scale of your work force.

      To that end, Microsoft is a highly valued partner while the Linux developers are an outright threat.

  • Vincente@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I hope MS can fulfill its promise and not abandon it like they did with Surface RT, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7, Lumia, Kinect, Xbox, MSN Messenger, Cortana, Tango Studio, “Windows 10 is MS’s last OS”, etc.

  • aphonefriend@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 months ago

    Look at this smug assholes face. He knows damn well they won’t be doing anything of the sort unless it increases their profit margins. And he also knows damn well the government won’t do anything to seriously hinder their margins.

    Bread and circuses. This is just another show. You want change? Stop using Microsoft. Period.

    • Maeve@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      That’s all week and good for the minority of jobs that didn’t cling to it like a codependent partner.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      …what? What kind of office do you work in that understands linux??? Most offices I’ve worked in don’t even understand the copier.

  • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    Again, just install Linux.

    Dump your windows, install Linux, be done with this nonsense.

  • Taleya@aussie.zone
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    5 months ago

    the funniest part of the fall of MS for me has been the cunts getting so excited about fucking off the home users they forgot one vital thing: C-suite and beancounters run at a home user level. And most infrastructure techs will happily flick to a linux distro come server build time.

    Their current direction has also pretty much killed their use in anything related to media distribution, it’s virtually a detailed list of TPN violations

    • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Their current direction has also pretty much killed their use in anything related to media distribution, it’s virtually a detailed list of TPN violations

      Eh, that’s actually kind of a selling point.

  • Tylerdurdon@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    “Microsoft is pivoting its company culture to make security a top priority…”

    The fact that this had to be stated is a testament to garbage leadership. Notice it’s not even the top priority, just a top priority. These guys will still get bonuses of course.

    • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The security will definitely also take a very profitable shape. I.e. further locking the OS away from the user, more black box software, etc.

  • xenomor@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    My suggestion, based on more than three decades of observing and interacting with this company: don’t believe a fucking thing they say, ever.