As I see it, MSN has immense problems to solve, even bigger than
Internet has, in terms of security.
Internet is a diverse collection of systems, mostly consisting of
multi-user (mature) systems. The diversity, and the rather good
security mechanisms existing within each host, will add up to a
situation that bad, but not a total catastrophy.
MSN on the other hand, is totally homogenous right now. Everyone
is running a PCwith Win95, most probably together with cc:mail
and Word 6.0 and Excel whatever. Within each machine, there is
no tradition of security mechanisms, since it is a single-user
machine. An occasional password will not change this situation
the least, in my view.
I believe that the real problem for MSN wont necessarily be the
direct attacks experienced on Internet, forcefully breaking a
daemon into pieces. The easier attack will most likely be to
tailor evil pieces of data that is trojaned into the system.
This will result in a gradually rising paranoia of the MSN users
that a marketing hype wont be able to control.
Oh, well, yes. I do see the "imminent death of MSN" around the
corner. :-)
/Christian
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