Information Warfare: Microsoft, the NSA and China

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January13, 2007: Microsoft Corporation admitted that it had worked with the NSA (National Security Agency) to improve the security of its new operating system; Vista. Within the next four years, Vista should be operating on over 600 million computers. That makes the state of security on Vista a matter of national importance to the United States. The U.S. government uses Microsoft operating systems on almost all of its computers, as do most government employees at home. Troops going overseas often take a laptop computer with them, and that computer usually runs on a Microsoft operating system. While the NSA provided its testing and evaluation services for free, it actually got a lot in return. For example, NSA engineers got access to Vista source code, and the "inner secrets" of Vista. It's also suspected, but no one will discuss it, that NSA was able to get some secret features added, that would give the United States an edge in any future Cyber War. For that reason, countries like China are trying to switch all Chinese users to non-Microsoft operating systems.


 

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