On Roger Ebert

There will be a ton of words written about the death of Roger Ebert today. His being a man of words and having inspired many to write, this is fitting and proper. I could write an entire book on his influence on me, from my disagreements with certain of his reviews or on his views on video games as art all the way to his impact in the past decade on online discussions and culture. Instead I think I’ll simply use his own words, stating a lesson I’m still learning every day:

 

“To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”

– Roger Ebert, Life Itself: A Memoir

Strange Days

[WARNING: This blog post contains minor spoilers regarding the D&D Next module The Mines of Madness. It describes the first portions of a playtest of the module before its release.  Do not proceed if you do not wish some minor spoilers]

A few weeks ago I got to go to Wizards of the Coast (WotC) for a very specific reason. To get eaten by a 15 foot wide poop worm in an outhouse.

Wait, wait.  I’m getting ahead of myself.

Scott Kurtz called me a few weeks ago to follow up an an email that Greg, Producer of Dungeons and Dragons at WotC had sent me. Would I like to participate in a recorded play through of the D&D Next (think next edition rule set) module Mines of Madness, written by Scott and Chris Perkins. It would be me, Scott, my friends Kris Straub and Molly Lewis, with Greg being our DM and Chris as a…well I can’t say any more about that at the moment.

I got my red box illicitly at the age of 12.  I was raised southern baptist and my family was firmly in the realm that Dungeons and Dragons taught children to love Satan, support marriage equality, think women deserve equal pay for equal work, and basically believe that the default position of humans should be to treat them well while not trying to threaten them with eternal damnation. The first part was the only fallacy.

This is all Tom Hanks fault.

As an aside there’s no saving throw against a 15 foot wide poop worm if you poke your head down the outhouse hole.

ANYWAY.

My friend Antonio bought the set, dice, and associated modules for us. I rolled wizard class generally, and D&D was a part of my life for a long long time.

When Scott called me, I had not played a formal game in ten years. That wasn’t due to any lack of love or “outgrowing” the game (I had played Neverwinter on PC and Delves of course) it was just that so many other games and real life had taken up my time.

But now I was being invited to play an unreleased module at Wizards of the Coast with my friends and record it for the Internet.

I picked up the phone and called 12 year old me.

“Dude.” I said.

“DUDE!” 12 year old me replied.

“Dude.” I agreed.

“DUDE!” 12 year old me argued.

“I gotta do this right?  I mean I would be an idiot not to do this right?” I asked.

12 year old me farted into the phone in agreement.

When I got there the D&D folks were happy to meet *me*. We all got a nice little setup with dice and a moleskin notebook.

getcontent

I DIED BEFORE WE EVEN GOT INTO THE MINE! (Poopworm)

EDIT: Yes I know I’m drawing big here.  I tend to draw twice, a close-up of the immediate room then a smaller version aligning to the individual squares. Good lord nerds.

If this sounds amazing (and even writing it is making me freak out at the things I sometimes get to do in my life) then you should listen to the fact that we recorded the whole thing.  We played for 4 or 5 hours, and they will be releasing the podcasts throughout the month of April.

I can’t thank my friends Scott and Kris and Molly and Greg enough for the opportunity.

The subsequent episodes will post 4/5, 4/12, 4/19 and the 5th and final one, 4/26. (note, subject to change based on editing or other things etc etc)

The Mines of Madness module is available TODAY to all D&D Next Playtesters, you can signup here: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/DnDNext.aspx

New Short Story; Buddy’s Eye

Tonight I released a 30 page short story to Amazon Kindle called Buddy’s Eye. It’s the first story set in a much larger universe and I am very proud of it. It’s priced at $2.99 and you can get it here.

You can sample it through Kindle but I also wanted to make it available for the same price here if you want. Just click on the donate button to the upper right and I will be happy to send you a .PDF or .MOBI of the story.

Here’s a preview of the first bit of the story:

 

 

 

“Is he ready?”

[WE HAVE TOLD HIM AS MUCH AS IS POSSIBLE. WE HAVE TAUGHT HIM AS MUCH AS IS POSSIBLE.]

“Is he ready?”

[HE IS READY. HE WILL SOON HAVE A COMPANION. WE HOPE FOR HIM. HE IS A FRESH NEW LIFE. HIS MIND IS FILLED WITH WHAT YOU CALL LOVE. HE IS UNLIKE ANYTHING IN OUR EXPERIENCE.]

“You found him. It was your idea to use him.”

[WE FOUND HIM LIKE WE FOUND YOU. WE USE HIM LIKE WE USE YOU. YOU BOTH HAVE BEEN GIVEN GIFTS. THERE SIMPLY IS NO MORE TIME. WE HAVE DONE WHAT WE HAVE DONE.]

“So that we all may live.”

[SO THAT WE ALL MAY LIVE.]

-A conversation on the planet Mars.

***

Buddy smelled like popcorn, Klevik’s mother always said. Klevik had never had true popcorn, nor was he certain his mother had either. Klevik would bury his head in Buddy’s fur and breathe deeply, trying to understand his scent. To him, Buddy smelled like dry air filters. He smelled heat and life and love in Buddy’s fur, but it smelled mostly like air filters. His mother insisted it was a popcorn smell.

She had a silly song she would hum or sing to Buddy whenever he was around. She tried to sing it again to him with her last breath, as Klevik sat next to her in the hospital. He was in a stupor of fatigue and grief. His mother had spent her last few days detailing for him as best she could what she knew of the location and defense rings encircling the asteroid base his father had made as a home for them. It was called Buddy’s Eye.

Buddy was a golden retriever.

***

Decades later, the entire solar system was tearing itself apart in civil war while Klevik parked a heavily armed corvette a hundred kilometers away from Buddy’s Eye. He’d been gone for twenty five years. Now he was back home. Almost.

The corvette was officially named Long Hammer. Not a bad name as names go, but Klevik had already decided on a new name: Iiyama. It would be a while before he would be able to paint and rechristen the stolen Sol Defense Force attack ship, but they were unlikely to miss it with their current travails losing a war to the chrome lepers. Besides, he had already changed all the internal computerized ident broadcasts with a manufactured ship registry and the new name. That mattered more than someone getting close enough to see the paint job.

Iiyama. It was a name his father would have chosen, with his love of old Earth Japan. He was obsessed with names, Klevik’s father, and believed they spoke to the soul of individual things.

The center command chair almost swallowed Klevik as the holoprojection of the asteroid loomed in front of him. Under normal circumstances the bridge of a ship this size would have a four person crew with another five at other parts of the ship, but he’d managed to automate enough systems that he was able to steal the ship himself. Besides, he didn’t want any partners in this particular venture. Stealing an SDF corvette made for a type of business partner well outside Klevik’s comfort zone.

Although an older ship, the Iiyama was actually fresh off the Ganymede shipyard refit line. Given her previous name, she was ironically christened. Squat, only slightly longer horizontally than vertically, with her weapons mostly suited towards interdiction of supply ships and the typical small pirate vessels that used to plague the Belt when Klevik was younger. Visually she was more anvil than hammer. It was one of the reasons he chose the ship: it very much resembled the ones that broke up his father’s pirate fleet twenty five years ago.

Klevik was a Belter. He wasn’t modified either genetically or mechanically. He was quite literally a dying breed. A Belter at forty years old was like one of the Earth clan newborn at one hundred and twenty. No, his wasn’t a political or religious choice, like it was for a few fringe cases. He was simply too old for genetic modification out here in the Belt, and no one Beltside had chrome at a price he could afford. Never mind that the benefits would still be needed to have started from birth to be the most effective.

Klevik didn’t care about the war outside the Belt. He did have a very vested interest in his own survival, and that’s what brought him back here to his home, to where he grew up. Not to mention nearing forty and starting to acutely feel his age, he wondered about his father’s research project so long ago. Potential secrets in the rock.

The asteroid sat still in the projection before him. Decades before, his father had stopped its natural rotation. The mining and modifications caused a sheen of dust to form in a small circular cloud around the two kilometer wide rock. It looked like a light brown iris around the black pupil of the asteroid’s dark side.

It looked like one of Buddy’s eyes.

***

Klevik was six years old when his father surprised him with a golden retriever puppy for Christmas. The initial work had just been completed on what would become their home, their safe place. Within the solid rock of the asteroid, a ring rotated to create gravity. The asteroid’s own slow spin, ineffective at creating a strong gravity field, had been stilled by rocket motors a year before. They remained in place to fire occasionally and assist in the ring rotation.

The new graviton manipulators—developed on Earth and replicated independently in the Enclaves—were too expensive for the Belt. As mounting tensions meant the first priority was the military, the remote slow turning asteroids of the Belt were left by the wayside for the application of such technology. So his father had improvised. The ring had been spun up to near Earth gravity over the past week while the family sat in the spartan and cold metal framework. They’d fashioned a living area for themselves with a few mattresses and a threadbare couch. The room was cramped but comfortable enough.

“This is just for a while,” his father said, “these are what will become emergency shelters if we ever need them.” Eventually they built out proper living areas.

The Christmas tree that day was a hologram but a convincing one, complete with fake pine scent. Klevik had never smelled natural pine, but he knew it meant Christmas. His mother had grown up with the simulated sights and smells of holidays and had instilled them in her son too. Were it any old style celebration on Earth he would have been right at home with the traditions. Projected tinsel hung on the metal walls; they had the nice old couch to sit on. There were presents wrapped in festive colors, and some of them were real, not projections. When one box under the tree kept shifting and had a conspicuous sound and smell, Klevik opened it first. A Puppy.

His father in the end was furious at the name. “Buddy? Buddy? Naming a companion is one of the most important choices we have,” His father fumed to Klevik’s mother while the boy held the squirming golden in his hands. He knew he’d somehow let his father down.

“You wanted this thing originally for your purposes,” his mother said, both annoyed and amused, “You should have chosen the name if you wanted something majestic.”

“What I wanted was something that speaks to his purpose.” His father replied, already relenting. “Buddy…it’s not a name that strikes terror in people’s hearts, or inspires hope or–” he trailed off.

For his part, Klevik had simply chosen the first name that popped into his head upon seeing the beautiful dog.

“But maybe, ‘Buddy’ is the dog’s purpose,” his mother said.

“You’re sure this is the name you want?” His father asked Klevik.

Klevik nodded.

“So be it. But you have to clean up after it.” His father said.

“Seems to me you both should clean up after him, since he’s for both of you. Besides, it’s easier now that the gravity is on,” Klevik’s mother said softly, “You’ve had the poor thing in stasis for a week.” She looked at the puppy and smiled. “He is a handsome dog.”

And so Buddy came into Klevik’s life. Bright eyes, a toothful grin, and reddish blond hair: that was Buddy the golden retriever. The cost to bring him to the asteroid was astronomical. The pleasure he brought Klevik’s family more than made up for it. Despite his initial reaction to the name, his father grew to like it as it suited the dog’s playful nature.

It was a good life. In many ways Klevik’s father was a visionary. He foresaw the lax protections in the Belt, the loose black market economy that allowed the mining industry to function, and where he could both legitimize and exploit his position. But Klevik’s father, unlike Klevik’s mother, was not born in the Belt. He was born on Mars. Klevik’s father had fled that planet, after having everything his parents had worked for ripped out from under him by the new government during the Mars Colony Revolt. He was not going to ever let himself be put in a position of uncertainty again.

A year after that Christmas, Klevik’s father tossed a ball against a bulkhead and Buddy snatched it in midair to bring it to him. As the dog stood up to face Klevik’s father, sitting in his new favorite chair in his study, he grasped Buddy by the face and studied the dog’s eyes intently. Buddy’s tail wagged in great sweeps as Klevik’s father smiled and said “Buddy’s Eye.”

“What?” Klevik’s mother asked.

“His eyes look like our home when we approach from the far side dock, that light brown dust circle. I’ve been thinking of a name for a while now. This is our home as well as a base of operations. It’s where we’re safe. I’ve been trying to find something mysterious or majestic to name it but what I think of always sounds so pretentious,” he laughed. “But I’ve got it: We will call our home Buddy’s Eye.”

“What about striking terror into the hearts of people? Or some academic name inspiring hope?” she chided.

“Now I’m thinking a little misdirection might be in order,” he winked at her.

***

 

If you liked this preview of the story, please buy it on Kindle or use the donate button above to get the rest!

New Short Story; Buddy’s Eye

Tonight I released a 30 page short story to Amazon Kindle called Buddy’s Eye. It’s the first story set in a much larger universe and I am very proud of it. It’s priced at $2.99 and you can get it here.

You can sample it through Kindle but I also wanted to make it available for the same price here if you want. Just click on the donate button to the upper right and I will be happy to send you a .PDF or .MOBI of the story.

Here’s a preview of the first bit of the story:

 

 

 

“Is he ready?”

[WE HAVE TOLD HIM AS MUCH AS IS POSSIBLE. WE HAVE TAUGHT HIM AS MUCH AS IS POSSIBLE.]

“Is he ready?”

[HE IS READY. HE WILL SOON HAVE A COMPANION. WE HOPE FOR HIM. HE IS A FRESH NEW LIFE. HIS MIND IS FILLED WITH WHAT YOU CALL LOVE. HE IS UNLIKE ANYTHING IN OUR EXPERIENCE.]

“You found him. It was your idea to use him.”

[WE FOUND HIM LIKE WE FOUND YOU. WE USE HIM LIKE WE USE YOU. YOU BOTH HAVE BEEN GIVEN GIFTS. THERE SIMPLY IS NO MORE TIME. WE HAVE DONE WHAT WE HAVE DONE.]

“So that we all may live.”

[SO THAT WE ALL MAY LIVE.]

-A conversation on the planet Mars.

***

Buddy smelled like popcorn, Klevik’s mother always said. Klevik had never had true popcorn, nor was he certain his mother had either. Klevik would bury his head in Buddy’s fur and breathe deeply, trying to understand his scent. To him, Buddy smelled like dry air filters. He smelled heat and life and love in Buddy’s fur, but it smelled mostly like air filters. His mother insisted it was a popcorn smell.

She had a silly song she would hum or sing to Buddy whenever he was around. She tried to sing it again to him with her last breath, as Klevik sat next to her in the hospital. He was in a stupor of fatigue and grief. His mother had spent her last few days detailing for him as best she could what she knew of the location and defense rings encircling the asteroid base his father had made as a home for them. It was called Buddy’s Eye.

Buddy was a golden retriever.

***

Decades later, the entire solar system was tearing itself apart in civil war while Klevik parked a heavily armed corvette a hundred kilometers away from Buddy’s Eye. He’d been gone for twenty five years. Now he was back home. Almost.

The corvette was officially named Long Hammer. Not a bad name as names go, but Klevik had already decided on a new name: Iiyama. It would be a while before he would be able to paint and rechristen the stolen Sol Defense Force attack ship, but they were unlikely to miss it with their current travails losing a war to the chrome lepers. Besides, he had already changed all the internal computerized ident broadcasts with a manufactured ship registry and the new name. That mattered more than someone getting close enough to see the paint job.

Iiyama. It was a name his father would have chosen, with his love of old Earth Japan. He was obsessed with names, Klevik’s father, and believed they spoke to the soul of individual things.

The center command chair almost swallowed Klevik as the holoprojection of the asteroid loomed in front of him. Under normal circumstances the bridge of a ship this size would have a four person crew with another five at other parts of the ship, but he’d managed to automate enough systems that he was able to steal the ship himself. Besides, he didn’t want any partners in this particular venture. Stealing an SDF corvette made for a type of business partner well outside Klevik’s comfort zone.

Although an older ship, the Iiyama was actually fresh off the Ganymede shipyard refit line. Given her previous name, she was ironically christened. Squat, only slightly longer horizontally than vertically, with her weapons mostly suited towards interdiction of supply ships and the typical small pirate vessels that used to plague the Belt when Klevik was younger. Visually she was more anvil than hammer. It was one of the reasons he chose the ship: it very much resembled the ones that broke up his father’s pirate fleet twenty five years ago.

Klevik was a Belter. He wasn’t modified either genetically or mechanically. He was quite literally a dying breed. A Belter at forty years old was like one of the Earth clan newborn at one hundred and twenty. No, his wasn’t a political or religious choice, like it was for a few fringe cases. He was simply too old for genetic modification out here in the Belt, and no one Beltside had chrome at a price he could afford. Never mind that the benefits would still be needed to have started from birth to be the most effective.

Klevik didn’t care about the war outside the Belt. He did have a very vested interest in his own survival, and that’s what brought him back here to his home, to where he grew up. Not to mention nearing forty and starting to acutely feel his age, he wondered about his father’s research project so long ago. Potential secrets in the rock.

The asteroid sat still in the projection before him. Decades before, his father had stopped its natural rotation. The mining and modifications caused a sheen of dust to form in a small circular cloud around the two kilometer wide rock. It looked like a light brown iris around the black pupil of the asteroid’s dark side.

It looked like one of Buddy’s eyes.

***

Klevik was six years old when his father surprised him with a golden retriever puppy for Christmas. The initial work had just been completed on what would become their home, their safe place. Within the solid rock of the asteroid, a ring rotated to create gravity. The asteroid’s own slow spin, ineffective at creating a strong gravity field, had been stilled by rocket motors a year before. They remained in place to fire occasionally and assist in the ring rotation.

The new graviton manipulators—developed on Earth and replicated independently in the Enclaves—were too expensive for the Belt. As mounting tensions meant the first priority was the military, the remote slow turning asteroids of the Belt were left by the wayside for the application of such technology. So his father had improvised. The ring had been spun up to near Earth gravity over the past week while the family sat in the spartan and cold metal framework. They’d fashioned a living area for themselves with a few mattresses and a threadbare couch. The room was cramped but comfortable enough.

“This is just for a while,” his father said, “these are what will become emergency shelters if we ever need them.” Eventually they built out proper living areas.

The Christmas tree that day was a hologram but a convincing one, complete with fake pine scent. Klevik had never smelled natural pine, but he knew it meant Christmas. His mother had grown up with the simulated sights and smells of holidays and had instilled them in her son too. Were it any old style celebration on Earth he would have been right at home with the traditions. Projected tinsel hung on the metal walls; they had the nice old couch to sit on. There were presents wrapped in festive colors, and some of them were real, not projections. When one box under the tree kept shifting and had a conspicuous sound and smell, Klevik opened it first. A Puppy.

His father in the end was furious at the name. “Buddy? Buddy? Naming a companion is one of the most important choices we have,” His father fumed to Klevik’s mother while the boy held the squirming golden in his hands. He knew he’d somehow let his father down.

“You wanted this thing originally for your purposes,” his mother said, both annoyed and amused, “You should have chosen the name if you wanted something majestic.”

“What I wanted was something that speaks to his purpose.” His father replied, already relenting. “Buddy…it’s not a name that strikes terror in people’s hearts, or inspires hope or–” he trailed off.

For his part, Klevik had simply chosen the first name that popped into his head upon seeing the beautiful dog.

“But maybe, ‘Buddy’ is the dog’s purpose,” his mother said.

“You’re sure this is the name you want?” His father asked Klevik.

Klevik nodded.

“So be it. But you have to clean up after it.” His father said.

“Seems to me you both should clean up after him, since he’s for both of you. Besides, it’s easier now that the gravity is on,” Klevik’s mother said softly, “You’ve had the poor thing in stasis for a week.” She looked at the puppy and smiled. “He is a handsome dog.”

And so Buddy came into Klevik’s life. Bright eyes, a toothful grin, and reddish blond hair: that was Buddy the golden retriever. The cost to bring him to the asteroid was astronomical. The pleasure he brought Klevik’s family more than made up for it. Despite his initial reaction to the name, his father grew to like it as it suited the dog’s playful nature.

It was a good life. In many ways Klevik’s father was a visionary. He foresaw the lax protections in the Belt, the loose black market economy that allowed the mining industry to function, and where he could both legitimize and exploit his position. But Klevik’s father, unlike Klevik’s mother, was not born in the Belt. He was born on Mars. Klevik’s father had fled that planet, after having everything his parents had worked for ripped out from under him by the new government during the Mars Colony Revolt. He was not going to ever let himself be put in a position of uncertainty again.

A year after that Christmas, Klevik’s father tossed a ball against a bulkhead and Buddy snatched it in midair to bring it to him. As the dog stood up to face Klevik’s father, sitting in his new favorite chair in his study, he grasped Buddy by the face and studied the dog’s eyes intently. Buddy’s tail wagged in great sweeps as Klevik’s father smiled and said “Buddy’s Eye.”

“What?” Klevik’s mother asked.

“His eyes look like our home when we approach from the far side dock, that light brown dust circle. I’ve been thinking of a name for a while now. This is our home as well as a base of operations. It’s where we’re safe. I’ve been trying to find something mysterious or majestic to name it but what I think of always sounds so pretentious,” he laughed. “But I’ve got it: We will call our home Buddy’s Eye.”

“What about striking terror into the hearts of people? Or some academic name inspiring hope?” she chided.

“Now I’m thinking a little misdirection might be in order,” he winked at her.

***

 

If you liked this preview of the story, please buy it on Kindle or use the donate button above to get the rest!

The Curious Tale of MS03-007

This is a story about how I knew within a window of 48 hours when the invasion of Iraq (2003) was going to happen.

It was early March, 2003.  I didn’t know exactly who the guys in suits were, but I knew they weren’t Microsoft.  Only one person I knew wore a suit daily to work at Microsoft, that was Raymond Chen. And he wore a much better class of suit than the guys who suddenly appeared late one evening on floor 6 of Building 40 on the Microsoft campus.

I had joined the Microsoft Security Response Center in November of 2002.  The Slammer attack was my first introduction to *the entire Internet* going offline as a result of a Microsoft security issue.

We were only just recovering from that event.  While all the appropriate and smart people had been mobilized to deal with Slammer, we were not happy with how ad hoc the response was.  So during the month of February and March we developed the Microsoft Internet Security Emergency Response process, MISER. Bill Gates hated the name. It was soon changed to Software Security Incident Response Process, SSIRP.

All I knew was that I had just been given one of the largest offices in the building, where I had installed a bar and held press calls on the security updates for all of MSRC and the ones I had program managed through the Windows team. Back then security updates happened every Wed. morning at 10am Pacific time, instead of every second Tuesday of the month like today. 

As release manager at the time, I would fire up “Yo, Pumpkin Head” on my computer and crank the speakers up as the updates propagated across the cluster of Microsoft.com and Windows Update.  We’d gather in the hallway and chatter as we made sure the updates and security bulletins reached their checkpoints while listening to the music. The entire process took almost exactly long as the song, around four minutes. When that music flooded the hallway, you knew updates were being launched. After that four minutes, I took press calls from CNN, MSNBC, ZDNET, NYT, etc for the rest of the day.

Point being, I was finally settling into the role vs. being in emergency mode for weeks over Slammer.

Then the guys in the suits showed up.

Our process was pretty established.  Microsoft issued security bulletins with updates to fix the problem. We didn’t issue warnings or advisories, we were dead set on issuing the transparent communication of the issue only when there was an update to correct it. At the time we viewed warnings or advisories as the equivalent of leaving a box of guns on the street corner and issuing a notice to citizens that there was a murderer in the area, go get your guns.  As many bad guys would get them, if not more, than attentive good guys. We learned better later, but this was the state in 2003.

I had just settled into the job as I mentioned.  I even had theme music. Then the guys in the suits showed up.

I wasn’t even involved at first.  I walked past our reserved emergency conf. room and in it were George, Ian my boss, Dr. Lipner, and the dudes in suits. I just walked on.  The most prized skill in information security is knowing when you do not want to be burdened with knowing what you do not already know.

It wasn’t until later that Ian showed up in my office to talk about it.

“You know what’s going on?” Ian knew I usually had my ear to the ground.  On this I didn’t.

“Dudes in suits. Usually US government.” I replied.  Ian had served in foreign military, specifically artillery. If it was US gov. in the room I’m sure they were roiling over what they would have to make him sign.

“Yea but do you know what’s going on?” Ian said.

“Nope!” I said.  I’d been knee deep in the regular reported vulnerabilities and MSRC work.

“How much do you know about WebDAV?” he asked.

Turns out I knew a lot.  Back then, WebDAV was a godsend to moving files around over the Internet vs. FTP or trying to use straight up HTTP.  WebDAV essentially treated certain web stores like a mapped network drive.

And in Windows 2000 it had a huge gaping hole.  It was enabled by default.  On all versions.

Ian explained carefully the issue to me, and that the guys in suits, from a section of the US government I’m not going to specify, had discovered it because they were attacked.  And that section of the government had a very important operation about to begin within 14 days.

“How soon do you think we could do a patch?” Ian asked.

I knew the Windows Sustained Engineering team’s schedule and backlog and made a scratch guess.

“No test, smoke test, full test, 14, 21 and 30 days.”  No test meant make the update, someone next to you tests that it fixes it, and you just ship it. Never mind the hundreds of millions of configurations in the world. It was the worst kind of update to ever release.  One we had never done before. 

Smoke test meant some more testing meaning seven days of in house testing.  Full test meant we would release the update to a number of high profile volunteer customers without letting them know specifically what it was for, so that we could understand the full impact.

“No good,” Ian said.  “We need to have it before mid March.”

“Ok, But that’s going to be a realignment of just about everything in the pipe.”

“This issue is worth it.”

That was no easy thing, and Ian knew it.  Before long I found myself in the room with George and Dr. Lipner and Ian and Mike Nash our VP.  Oh and the guys in suits, who I was never introduced to.

Here was the crux of the problem.  All Windows 2000 machines were essentially open to a trivial wormable attack like Slammer through this WebDAV vector.  It had been discovered by a government agency who had been attacked. Suddenly we had to re-evaluate how we communicated about updates.  This was bad enough we would have to consider going with how to block the attack before we actually had an update.  At the time that was anathema to the MSRC.  But this situation caused us to rethink everything.  We drew a line a long time ago before I joined, that no government got preference over users. But this wasn’t about an update per se it was about the existence of the hole. We had to figure out what to do if it became known, not for the agency involved but for everyone.

We handled it like we did any other update.  The reporter in this case we decided didn’t matter.  The severity drove the update, not who reported it.

The Windows team worked night and day to produce a fully tested update within 10 days.

On March 15th I wrote the very first Microsoft “Security Advisory” without a patch which contained information describing the issue and how to manually disable the functionality.  It was never released. We sweated the next two days until Wed, March 17th 2003 and released the update.  The security bulletin for the update contained much of the content I wrote for the advisory.

That particular event ended up forming the nascent idea that we should consider advisories when issues might take time to fix.

As I played the music down the MSRC hallway in building 40 that day, I was approached by a member of the senior staff. (Nope, not saying who)

“You know who got hit right?”

I had a good idea.  But just nodded. “Kinda ironic the patch is 007.”

“Watch the news in the next 48 hours.”

War fever has been gripping the US for the past 2 months, it wasn’t difficult to figure out what was about to happen.

On March 19th, the United States of America invaded Iraq.