Have been using it since the release, not a single problem.

HBday MSE.

Happy Birthday, MSE. Thank you for keeping me safe. I can't believe it has been a year already. It certainly does, Karl.

Happy B-day MSE, thanks for the protection.

Why are we celebrating the fact that MS can not develop a secure OS?
That it has to create this massive security patch called MSE?

Don't get me wrong MSE is a giant step forward, and I know MS are not responsible for viruses etc - but it is the vulnerablility of their OS that encourages the market.

Nigsy said:

Why are we celebrating the fact that MS can not develop a secure OS?
That it has to create this massive security patch called MSE?

Don't get me wrong MSE is a giant step forward, and I know MS are not responsible for viruses etc - but it is the vulnerablility of their OS that encourages the market.

Hi there
even in old Mainframe days -- any on these Forums remember MVS /370 etc-- they needed security packages although more protection from Internal rather than external users as the Internet as we know it now had barely started and local LAN's were totally in their infancy.

While even the early MVS/370 IBM mainframe OS was by (even todays) PC's standard incredibly robust and secure it still needed extra security packages to guarantee protection -- the main 2 competitors were RACF (an IBM developed package) and ACF2.

IBM mainframe OS's were lucky in the sense that the CPU could operate either in "Normal" state or "Privileged" state depending on a bit being set in a special hardware key called the PSW (Program Status Word).

Unless you were in Privileged state then it was almost impossible to do anything that would wreck the system. You had to get into the Privileged state which require the use of a special instruction known as a Supervisor Call (SVC XX to any old IBM assembly language programmers out there).

The SVC call had all sorts of checks and balances in it to see if the person calling it was authorized to do so etc etc and logs were often taken of these types of calls.

Not 100% foolproof but the old IBM MVS system was as near uncrackable as you could get -- even better today with what remains of the "Big Old Iron".

So we should really be GLAD that MS itself is getting interested in Windows security - particularly as there isn't much help from within the INTEL architecture such as providing Privileged and Standard modes of execution.

Cheers
jimbo