Hackers use DRM to infect machines. I suggest anyone who make the argument that tight integration is a good thing, take a good long read at the article. This follows a long tradition at Microsoft of rapid and sudden bundling of features with little concern of the security consequences. We had a discussion two years ago about how this little hole could be exploited and this was exactly what we predicted what would happen. Frankly I was suprised it took this long for people to capitalize on this huge hole. Where is the security team at Microsoft? How can such badly designed features make it out the door?
Frankly security has never been a concern at Microsoft, even after the much vaunted security turnaround dictated by Gates. When MS integrated IE into the operating system into the operating system, they set the ground for thousands of viruses and BILLIONS of dollars in damages to companies. What I find amazing is that no one is holding MS liable for these damages. Of course the EULA prevents you from suing MS for this sort of thing. In an effort to stay ahead, Microsoft bundles competing products into the operating system. While this was fine during days when you were just bundling a windowing system into the operating systems; given todays's networking environment, it's a recipe for disaster.
By bolting new products onto the core product, you can certainly strangle the competition however with each new product you add to the OS, another security hole is added. Given that the security model of Windows 2000/98 lacks granularity and control you can expect a new species of virus for each bundled product.
So what to expect for MS virues in future. Here's my short list.
1. Media/Audio/Video Virii.
2. Messenger Virii.
3. Antispyware Virii - (only if Giant gets integrated into the OS)
