Today most hacked PCs run Microsoft's Windows operating system, and the company has invested millions in trying to fight the problem.
That's because the operating system was designed for backward compatibility with Windows 95 and 98 first (and 3.1 before it) which had no concept of permissions or privileges. It was (until Windows 7) thus inherently insecure and even Vista (and Win7) can be told to be insecure to deal with all those "legacy issues."
In short, these machines are infested (not infected, infested) because their operating system has historically been full of security holes (this has improved, especially in Windows 7, to be fair.)
So what does Microsoft propose?
So who would foot the bill? "Maybe markets will make it work," Charney said. But an Internet usage tax might be the way to go. "You could say it's a public safety issue and do it with general taxation," he said.
That's nice.
Sell an insecure operating system and then get someone else to pay a tax because they bought an arguably-defective product you sold?
How about this instead Microsoft?
For each computer infested, the publisher of the operating system sold to that user is assessed a fine of US $100,000 by the Department of Justice.
I bet that would get you to improve security quite a bit - or bankrupt your ass.
PS: Total number of viruses and other malware found on my rather-high-profile Freebsd servers in the last ten years? ZERO. Put that in your pipe and smoke it sir.
