RSS in Longhorn Raises Security Fears
Analysts warn that Microsoft’s plan to bake content syndication deep into the belly of Longhorn will open new attack vectors for spammers, phishers and malware writers. Basically the idea is that an RSS item could have embedded scripting, which would easily allow a virus to spread quickly due to the RSS feed. Pretty interesting debate going on and Longhorn is still many months away.
The plan is for Longhorn to provide a common feed list of subscriptions and a common feed store of data in Longhorn, which will be available to applications through Windows APIs. The Redmond, Wash., company’s vision also includes RSS discovery and easy-to-subscribe options in the upcoming Internet Explorer 7 browser refresh.
With Longhorn, Microsoft will make RSS more understandable to the average, non-technical end user, but once the technology reaches critical mass it will surely become a lucrative target for malicious hackers.
Comments are closed.