Microsoft Security

Zack Urlocker
Sunday, July 28, 2002

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Putting On The Fritz

Microsoft recently announced a new integrated security effort known as Palladium, named after the statue of Pallas Athena, believed to protect the ancient city of Troy with digital rights management and a hundred year monopoly. The idea of Palladium is to embed security directly into the PC by having hardware vendors sell security chips below cost and have Microsoft provide the high-margin software. Although Palladium won't be formally announced until 2004 and likely won't ship until some time after that, we've managed to get a preview of the top new security functions.

10. convertPasswordToPigLatin

9. sendToMicrosoft

8. checkForPorn

7. sendToBill

6. crashUponDetection

5. crashAnyways

4. scrambleHardDrive

3. checkWithMelinda

2. sellStock

1. crashNasdaq 
 

The following APIs have been removed as no longer being necessary

• • crashNetscape (obsolete)
  • crashLotus (obsolete)
  • deletePhilippe (obsolete)
  • crashAOL (implemented by TimeWarner)
  • enableVirus (now included in Windows Kernel)
  • disableVirus (not working)

About the author

Zack Urlocker is a pseudonym for a Silicon Valley software executive who sometimes feels insecure.