[Infowarrior] - Microsoft Blames WGA Meltdown on Human Error

[Richard Forno]

Microsoft Blames WGA Meltdown on Human Error
Gregg Keizer   
 http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&tax
onomyName=operating_systems&articleId=301978&taxonomyId=89&intsrc=kc_top

September 03, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Microsoft Corp. last week blamed
³human error² on the part of its IT staff for a server problem that caused
the company¹s Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation service to
incorrectly tag legitimate users of Windows XP and Windows Vista as software
pirates.

The software vendor also promised that internal changes are being made to
avoid a repeat of the glitch, which affected users for nearly 20 hours on
Aug. 24 and 25. Users whose copies of Windows erroneously failed WGA¹s
antipiracy tests were prevented from downloading most software from
Microsoft¹s Web site. And those with Vista were unable to use some of the
operating system¹s features.

Alex Kochis, Microsoft¹s senior WGA product manager, wrote in a blog posting
that the troubles began after ³preproduction code² was installed on live
servers.

Those systems had yet to be upgraded with another code change designed to
enable stronger encryption and decryption of product keys, Kochis added. As
a result, ³the production servers declined activation and validation
requests that should have passed,² he wrote.

A quick code rollback fixed the problem on the product-activation servers
within 30 minutes, according to Kochis. But it didn¹t reset the validation
servers, which handle legitimacy checks on downloads and other transactions.

³We now realize that we didn¹t have the right monitoring in place to be sure
the fixes had the intended effect,² Kochis wrote. He also said that
Microsoft is taking steps ³such as increasing the speed of escalations and
adding checkpoints before changes can be made to production servers.²

Earlier last week, Microsoft said that fewer than 12,000 systems were
affected worldwide. But users lit up the company¹s support forums with more
than 450 messages about the snafu.

³A system that¹s not totally reliable really should not be so punitive,²
said Gartner Inc. analyst Michael Silver.

Michael Cherry, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft in Kirkland, Wash.,
said he was surprised that it was even possible to accidentally load the
wrong code onto live servers. ³It just begs the question of, what other
things have they not done?² Cherry said.