Ballmer: Microsoft 'Humbled' By Security Woes

"We are in many ways humbled by the developments of the last few weeks," said Ballmer, in a speech at the Churchill Club, a Silicon Valley business networking group. "Windows (operating system) is the most popular platform in the world, so every security incident with it is just magnified and magnified and magnified across so many more systems than with any other platform."

The Blaster, or LovSan, worm, exploited a flaw in nearly all versions of Microsoft's Windows operating system. The worm infected hundreds of thousands of computers around the world. Just last week, Microsoft disclosed new flaws, almost identical to that exploited by the Blaster worm, in Windows.

Despite the January 2002 launch of Microsoft's "Trustworthy Computing" initiative, the company must still do more to fight security threats, Ballmer said.

Besides trying to write more secure code, Microsoft is investing in "shield technology" to block viruses from even reaching personal computers, Ballmer said. For example, users of Windows XP have an Internet connection firewall that can be activated.

"We know that the bad guys are going to keep writing viruses; we know that," Ballmer said. "Our goal has to be to block them before they can ever get onto those PCs."

Microsoft also has tools that sift through a program's underlying code to help identify potential vulnerabilities and is trying to make installing software fixes easier, he said.

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