Microsoft still produces the operating systems of choice to Germany's Defense Ministry, despite a report in a leading magazine saying security concerns would lead it to seek an alternative.
Published:
20 March 2001 y., Tuesday
A Defense Ministry official flatly denied a report in Der Spiegel that German officials were banning Microsoft operating systems because they were concerned about a possible backdoor built into them by the U.S. National Security Agency. The possibility of such a backdoor existing was first brought to international attention in a 1999 Wired News story. That article reported that leading American cryptographer Andrew Fernandes had found an "NSA key" in Microsoft software that he believed could give the NSA such a backdoor.
"This assumption is wrong," the spokesman said. "I can confirm that the Defense Ministry signed a general licensing contract with Microsoft half a year ago saying we will use software products of Microsoft, and we intend to continue to use such systems."
He did not deny, however, that serious security concerns remained.
Andy Mueller-Maguhn, a leader of Berlin's Chaos Computer Club and also Europe's representative on the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), said he believed the German government was probably in damage-control mode. In other words: He thinks the report in Der Spiegel is probably accurate.
Šaltinis:
wired.com
Copying, publishing, announcing any information from the News.lt portal without written permission of News.lt editorial office is prohibited.
The most popular articles
Software company announced new structure_ of it_s business.
more »
IBM will bulk up its line of Opteron-based products later this year with the roll-out of a new workstation
more »
After years as working implementations, the Voice XML 2.0 (VXML) and Speech Recognition Grammar Specifications (SRGS) won the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) seal of approval Tuesday
more »
Nortel Networks Selected by Telekom Baltija to Deploy CDMA2000 1X 450 in Latvia; Network Planned to Offer Voice, High-Speed Data Services
more »
The European Parliament approved a controversial piracy law that would allow local police to raid the homes and offices of suspected intellectual-property pirates
more »
search.lt presents newest links
more »
"Unicaster" – for advertising, announcements, presenting nightly life in Vilnius...
more »
Such editions as encyclopaedias, dictionaries, albums and geographical maps were issued on the CDs at first. Nowadays majority of the libraries, archives and museums is concerned of their funds’ security thus they are accumulating the copies of the books in the electronic libraries.
more »
The most-read webloggers aren't necessarily the ones with the most original ideas, say researchers at Hewlett-Packard Labs
more »
Removing the media player from Windows may help level the playing field for competitors
more »
Company also readies Flex framework
more »