Patches to IE are for paying customers only

Nearly all malware programs (virus/trojan/spyware/etc) on Windows take advantage of some security hole in the system. Microsoft then eventually releases a patch that closes said hole, and people then go out and download the patch and fix their systems.
While slightly frustrating, this is what happens and everyone gets used to it.

But there is a slight issue in that Microsoft traditionally doesn't want people that have illegal copies of Windows or Office to be able to get their patches. On the surface, this seems totally fair since Microsoft has a license for that software that says you have to pay for it in order to use it, and therefore if you haven't paid for it, you don't really get all of the nice stuff like patches.

Where that gets to be a tricky issue is back again to all of this malware. If Microsoft doesn't allow illegal copies to be patched, then those machines will continue to get all malware, and likewise continue to spread all malware.
If they let the machines get patched, it would reduce the avenues available for the spread and therefore reduce the number of people getting the malware, reducing net traffic - and in the case of the botnets of zombies - reduce spam.

I can totally understand and sympathize with both sides of this argument.

Microsoft has now said that IE will not get upgraded/patched for those that don't have legit copies of Windows.

This is perhaps one reason to use FireFox instead of IE (FireFox has gone well over the 1 million download mark now for their 1.0PR release - they also did it faster than they had tried to). Or perhaps it is a reason to switch to Mac (not that Macs are any different in their patches and their licensing, but they are currently not the target of malware the way Windows is).

Posted by Eric at September 23, 2004 02:11 PM | TrackBack