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Microsoft's Court Ruling


aramike
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Menchise

There is no bad press. The handful of articles we read on the net is NOTHING. Most people don't have a clue. And when XP is released M$ is going to do their best to squelch any naysayers.

I hope the major media outlets pick up on the resistence to XP. They might, they might not. In the mean time vote with your wallets. And write a letter. Not an e-mail, a letter. I'm serious. You wouldn't believe how big an impact getting a piece of paper from a total stranger has on a software company. You may think it's nothing, but it does have an effect.

I still use Word for Win 95. If I were to upgrade, it would be to Wordperfect. For obvious reasons.

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If you thought Windows XP was bad enough now, wait until you read these articles about the bleak future of Internet Security, written by a high profile expert on the subject.

Why Windows XP will be the Denial of Service Exploitation Tool of Choice for Internet Hackers Everywhere

Microsoft Does Not Understand Security. What This Means About the Future of Denial of Service

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Umm, that thing about raw sockets is totally laughable, being able to generate raw sockets is not a vulnerability in itself. I should be able to create and send whatever data I want with my OS. It is a good thing MS finally decided to give their programmers some flexibility.

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Err...Darkvenom, I don't think you read the whole article.

Gibson provided concrete evidence that Full Raw Socket support will be a disaster for Internet security. It's already being exploited in Unix based systems despite the security measures (only programs with "root" privileges can access the feature). Windows XP will have no security measures at all for this feature. Any application can use it, which means that more malicious hackers will be able to send DDoS attacks to defenseless ISPs. The feature is also completely unnecessary, since the only programs that benefit from Full Raw Socket support are:

1. Internet Research Projects (the original reason why Berkeley implemented the feature in Unix).

2. Malicious hacks.

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Heh, well I aint upgrading to windoze XP or office anytime soon, I'm happy with my win 98 OS and office 97, plus and the side note I only use windoze for my games, other wise im usually surfin the net listen to music and the rest with my lunix OS

[ 07-05-2001: Message edited by: Herro YuY ]

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quote:

Apparently, Office 95 can't read Word documents that were created with Office 97, Office 97 can't read Word documents that were created with Office 2000 and so on. They might be able to open the files, but the contents aren't displayed correctly. This is because Microsoft keeps changing the Word format. Why? To maintain its stranglehold on the market

True Menchise, I wasn't thinking about that. I use Office 95 at home as my personal copy and whilst I have internet access at home it is usually only used by my Wife for Email. I work for an IT company and we have unrestricted T3 access to the net and keep uptodate with all software. Hence I am using office 2000 in work and any docs I download work fine in the majority of cases.

Cheers

Jez.

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I recently sent an e-mail to the developers of Debian (a Linux distribution) regarding this issue. After receiving the reply, it has become clear that I made a wild assumption about the vulnerability of Unix and Linux. Gibson's article criticizes the implementation of Full Raw Socket support in Windows XP, not the feature itself.

Unix and Linux OSes also support Raw Sockets, but only users and applications with "root" privileges can access the feature. Windows XP has no such restriction (all users have 'root' privilege). In the words of a Linux developer, "Allowing unprivileged users to use raw sockets, of course, is a terrible idea. Shipping an operating system that doesn't restrict superuser access is an even worse idea."

[ 07-05-2001: Message edited by: Menchise ]

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quote:

Originally posted by Menchise:

Which Linux OS are you using (just curious)?

I'm thinking about getting Debian.

I'm currently using Linux Mandrake 8.0 which is good for starters(like me)

Debain is a good OS, but the installation isn't as easy as Mandrake or Red hat.

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quote:

Originally posted by Herro YuY:

I'm currently using Linux Mandrake 8.0 which is good for starters(like me)

Debain is a good OS, but the installation isn't as easy as Mandrake or Red hat.

I've been upgrading quite a few machines from RedHat 4.2 -> 5.2 -> 7.0 and have installed from scratch as well.

It's very easy (and graphical), but if you decide to use RedHat, then do not forget to check the RedHat site for updated packages/fixes (and do not use the gcc 2.96!, downgrade to 2.95.3

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