[Zirro]

Microsoft _should_ not be anything like where you work. I'm not a Windows-user, but if I were I would hope and expect that the update mechanism for one of the worlds most used pieces of software was closely guarded by several layers of computer-based signing and human approval.

[gdulli]

Employees of a company like Microsoft aren't special, they're like anyone else and they make mistakes. There's extra bureaucracy to catch mistakes, but the bureaucracy was also designed by people, who make mistakes. You'll never get perfection no matter how much you try. Windows has had few big failures for me in 20+ years. Measured against its considerable complexity, that's shockingly impressive.

[odonnellryan]

There are certainly test environments that these updates are pushed to much more freely than the production environment. Mistakes happen.

[Zirro]

I certainly understand what you are saying, but I must repeat the essence of my previous post. For something so critical, there should simply be too many safeguards for any test to make it through all the way to end users.

If a test update really did make it through, it would warrant significant questioning of the procedures at Microsoft. If a test could get through without being discovered, then so might malicious code.