Are We Smarter Than Microsoft?

[abigail 16]

My local newspaper had a short article:
"5-year-old beats Xbox security"
A 5-year-old San Diego boy has outwitted the sharpest minds at Microsoft--he's found a backdoor to the xBox. He logged into his father's xBox Live account. When the password login screen appeared, he simply hit the space button a few times and hit enter. His father noticed him playing games he supposedly couldn't access. They reported the issue to Microsoft, which fixed the bug and listed the boy on its website as a "security researcher".

Probably most of us are doing our security the way Larry taught us, and I hope we are smarter than Microsoft.

[HartleySan 826]

Interesting story.

I wonder why MS had that shortcut for bypassing the login screen built into their system.

[abigail 16]

Well, That is something I didn't think of. It could be deliberate.

[HartleySan 826]

It was probably either intentional (after all, who would accidentally or deliberately put in a password of all spaces?), or it was a temp password they had added to their system that was eventually forgotten about and they forgot to remove it before pushing it to production.

 

Having worked on some big dev teams myself, I'm always dismayed by how much stuff gets forgotten about and thrown by the wayside just because there are so many moving parts involved. I see it as nothing more than corporate inefficiency and laziness, but then again, that's how a majority of this world's major software ventures are undertaken.

[Larry 422]

Yeah...you really got to be careful about any "temporary measures" that you put into a system, as they have a way of becoming permanent. 

[abigail 16]

Yes, I agree with both of you (because you also agree with each other?). And I know how stressed people get hear a deadline. No one is perfect and mistakes are made.