Fergie's Tech Blog

Security: The Missing Ingredient in Buzz About RSS

Rich Miller makes some good points about the lack of security built into RSS, over at Netcraft:

Microsoft's support for RSS (Real Simple Syndication) in its upcoming Longhorn operating system and Internet Explorer 7 browser promises to bring RSS to the masses. Friday's announcement at GnomeDex 2005 generated excitement about new uses for the technology, as well as caution in some quarters about Microsoft's introduction of extensions to RSS.

But what about security? Microsoft's presentations discuss many new uses for RSS, but integrating RSS into the operating system will likely have hackers contemplating new scenarios as well. RSS is currently consumed through a wide variety of news readers, email clients, web sites and browsers. As RSS becomes a standard feature in IE7 and Longhorn, it may become more attractive to malware authors with an interest in delivering malicious code from the Internet onto RSS-enabled desktops.

posted by Fergie @ 6/26/2005 07:03:00 AM