Microsoft and Windows 2000 After a Week

In the past week, Microsoft has come under heavy fire from multiple fronts regarding issues with Windows 2000. Reports of a massive number of bugs in the final code came just days before the official launch, and many experts are doubting the rapid success of the new operating system based on the fact that as of now, there are only 30 programs officially declared Windows 2000 certified.

Although Microsoft denies the first of these two problems, they reassured users by reporting that there are many programs on the right track, and they hope to have 100 certified by the end of the year. While it does not mean programs are not compatible with Windows 2000, being certified does mean that the programs take full advantage of the new features in the operating system. Hence, if a program is not certified, the upgrade to Windows 2000 seems costly.

Then in just seven days, Microsoft has issued five separate security bulletins addressing issues in Windows 2000. The first of these patches was for the Systems Management Server, followed by patches for both Site Server 3.0 and the Windows Media Services 4.0 and 4.1.

The most recent of these vulnerabilities affects users of Internet Explorer and Outlook. The flaw again lies in ActiveX installations, much like previous flaws in Internet Explorer, and allows a malicious user to trigger an ActiveX installation of code of their choosing. No patch has been issued for this vulnerability as of yet.

WordPad is also to blame for one flaw. This flaw, much like the ActiveX issue, involves users of Internet Explorer and Outlook. According to the discoverer of the bug, a malicious user can trick WordPad into executed malicious code via an HTML file accessed through the browser. Microsoft has not yet issued a patch for this problem.

All of this in one week, and riding on the coat tails of Microsoft's misfortune is the first confirmed reports of a Windows-based DDOS daemon. These daemons are responsible for the recent rash of outages from major sites such as Microsoft, ZDNet, CNN, and Yahoo!.

Only time will tell what the future will bring for Microsoft. With a lot of food on its plate, including new developments in the Sun lawsuit, and a judgement pending in the anti-trust case, the future of Microsoft seems to rest in the hands of the judicial system at this moment.