Security Watch | Matt Hines » Microsoft Surface - just another place to lose your info?

May 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft Surface - just another place to lose your info?

TAGS: Security

Microsoft Surface gives me chills.

Okay, I won't mention the fact that the demo for Microsoft Surface reminds me of an old Apple commercial for a truly interactive personal assistant (remember the Knowledge Navigator from 1987? Jon Udell even blogged about it a few years back). Don't ask me why, but it does. It's probably the whole using-the-tabletop-as-a-interactive-surface metaphor that causes the association.

Anyway, I like the idea, and making things easy is great, really. But what's underneath running the show? Vista? A crippled version of XP (sorry, feature-challenged XP).

Because if it's Vista then these kiosks are going to need some heavy horsepower to get off the ground. Regardless of what OS it uses, what set up red flags for me was the last demo. The one where people are splitting the bill at a public venue.

Calculating the bill for multiple people is one thing, using my phone or credit card to make a payment and potentially storing that information on a public device is quite another. Hopefully, when Surface ships it will be hardened and nailed down (Did I really say that out loud? Man, I gotta stop doing that, I almost split a rib).

I can imagine some bored college kids hacking this thing at their favorite restaurant while they steadily get more inebriated.

Alright maybe I'm just paranoid today, but I've been at too many places recently where I had to sign NDA's to get into a facility, but the potential risk to data from so many different unmonitored and unguarded vectors made me just slap my forehead over and over again...

And please people, stop sending me links to this thing like it's the next best thing to sliced bread. I appreciate the heads up, but today it's a little out of control.

Posted by Victor R. Garza on May 30, 2007 05:25 PM

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