Rainblog

We live in the future. More specifically, we live in William Gibson’s cyberpunk future.

Microsoft has acknowledged the existence of a bug affecting ‘all versions of Windows’, that allows attackers to trigger execution of malicious software via a shortcut link. It’s a serious bug, and one that’s apparently ripe for exploitation.

The flaw is already being exploited, and experts predict more attacks will follow. What’s interesting, however, is that the first observed attacks using the exploit have an unusual goal. Instead of trying to turn the hijacked home or office PCs into spam relays, pestering their unlucky owners with ads, or trying to steal passwords and credit card numbers - the standard repertoire - the attack targeted systems used as controllers for industrial machinery. Moreover, according to information put out by Siemens, the goal of the malware wasn’t to disrupt the connected systems (a recurrent nightmare scenario in a world where heavy machinery and essential utilities are increasingly controlled by computers running mass-market OS’s), but to “steal secrets from manufacturing plants and other industrial facilities”.

Computer hackers using sophisticated malware to conduct corporate espionage? This is the stuff of cyberpunk fiction. The future’s so bright, we gotta wear mirrorshades.

This is not actually Microsoft’s new slogan, although it might as well be. Their much-hyped Kin phone has been scrapped, having utterly failed to impress whatever ill-defined target market it was aimed at. Before the Kin, there was Courier, while a joint venture with HP also came to an abrupt end when HP canceled plans to produce a Windows 7 tablet. The dust had scarcely settled on that announcement when HP turned around and bought what was left of Palm. If there’s a more devastating indictment of your technology than having a partner say “Thanks, but I think we stand a better chance going with Palm”, I can’t think of it. It’s the business equivalent of having your date get up in the middle of dinner and go home with the homeless person you passed on your way to the restaurant.

It’s not all bad news. Microsoft Surface hasn’t been canceled yet, as far as I know. The Zune is still around, although it has been about as successful at breaking Apple’s near-monopolistic dominance of the MP3 player market as the Maginot Line was at putting an end to war as we know it.  I’ve only ever met one person who owned one, but rumor has it that people did buy Zunes. And the Xbox has done pretty well, although Microsoft was probably helped by the fact that the other major player in the console field, Sony, has apparently succumbed to a similar corporate brain-virus and has spent the last few years flailing directionlessly.

Microsoft’s biggest success story in recent years may be Windows 7, which is actually a pretty decent operating system in its own right - and not simply by comparison with the amorphous mess that was Vista. But Microsoft is supposed to know how to do personal computer operating systems. If they can’t get that right (and during the Vista debacle, I wondered), there’s really no hope for them.

Would Microsoft do better to stop acting like the gang that couldn’t innovate straight, and just stick with what they know how to do? Possibly, but someone at Redmond obviously thinks that this won’t be enough to sustain them in the long term, hence all the failed forays into new technology. At the end of the day, however, the constant cancellations make it look as if someone in management lacks the the courage to bet the farm on a revolutionary new product. Even if Microsoft’s technologists do come up with something extraordinary (and some people say Courier might have come close), it does the company no good if the bean-counters at head office just get cold feet and pull the rug out from underneath it.

Microsoft is by no means down and out. They have vast resources and a small army of brilliant people working for them. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to come up with something compelling. But they better do it soon, because the current sequence of missteps and blind alleys must make people wonder if Redmond still knows how to do anything new.