Dear Talkback,

So if hackers are the terrorists, what does this make Microsoft? This is
the company that has been marketing Windows 9x as a great, safe and
secure online platform.  Secure enough to do home banking and e-commerce,
and secure enough to extend corporate security perimeters to over the
internet using PPTP.  Then Back Orifice is released and Microsoft's
response is to say that Win9x is not designed with any notion of
security.  If you want security you need to buy Windows NT.

I think the analogy is not that hackers are terrorists but that hackers
are the whistleblowers.  They are giving a wakeup call to Windows 9x
users.  Back Orifice has forced Microsoft to admit that there is no
security architecture to Windows 9x.  The smallest coding flaw such as
the latest Outlook file attachment buffer overflow bug can lead to a
machine being completely and utterly compromised.

Sure, some of the reporting of the issue has been sensationalized, but it
has to be.  Microsoft has lulled its users into a point and click trance.
Back Orifice is a wakeup call to those users.  Articles like yours just
tell people to put their head back in the sand and to not care.
Everything is just ok. Those hackers are just scary, bad people out to
upset your cheery computerized apple cart.  Maybe if we just label them
something bad they will go away.

-Weld Pond