Microsoft warns it'll hand out zero days for Windows XP.

[proxx]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/16/microsoft_warns_itll_be_handing_out_zero_days_for_windows_xp/

Microsoft has a Windows XP problem: people still like it and aren't willing to upgrade just yet. So it's warning users that if they don’t upgrade soon, each new Patch Tuesday will gift a new series of vulnerabilities to the hacking community.

"The very first month that Microsoft releases security updates for supported versions of Windows, attackers will reverse engineer those updates, find the vulnerabilities and test Windows XP to see if it shares those vulnerabilities," said Tim Rains, Microsoft's director of trustworthy computing, in a blog post.

"If it does, attackers will attempt to develop exploit code that can take advantage of those vulnerabilities on Windows XP. Since a security update will never become available for Windows XP to address these vulnerabilities, Windows XP will essentially have a 'zero day' vulnerability forever."

He points out that from July 2012 through July 2013, Windows XP received 45 patches, 30 of which were relevant to Windows 7 and 8 as well, and there is considerable flaw cross-over found among the three operating systems. XP is also by far the most malware-infected operating systems, he points out.

[Alin]

The title is a bit a play on words. They are not handling out zero-days, but when patching issues in successors to XP that heavily rely on much of the same code, they will reveal the issues that are present in XP.

[Kulverstukas]

I never updated and never will, still gonna use winxp as I am. Most infected you say? well I must be one tough motherflipper then living a virus-free life and shit.

Fuck you microshaft. They should of never given up on XP, it's the shit that will never be replaced.

[IFailStuff]

I never updated and never will, still gonna use winxp as I am. Most infected you say? well I must be one tough motherflipper then living a virus-free life and shit.

Fuck you microshaft. They should of never given up on XP, it's the shit that will never be replaced.

I AGREE. Its not too oldscool, but its practical. Not fancy colors and bars with buttons that dont look like buttons.... stupid shit.

[xC]

That's pretty low even for Microsoft.

[proxx]

The title is a bit a play on words. They are not handling out zero-days, but when patching issues in successors to XP that heavily rely on much of the same code, they will reveal the issues that are present in XP.

Its not play-of-words its a conclusion that might not even be so far from the truth.
If they gonna make sec holes public on purpose they practically give out 0-days.(not saying wouldnt happen otherwise.)
Ah well im pretty sure that windows xp is the nr one botnet platfarm anyway.
Dont really use it , if im lucky I still have some vbox somewhere.
In that way I dont really care, but we again discover what proprietary software does to this world, thanks gates.
He has so much money... why not make it opensource and bring the world a step forward.
Why would he continue this madness , its not the money? is it power? is it retardation? or does he really believe he is helping the world.
Seriously when you reach the point where money is no longer a relevant topic, whatever you want to do ... why not improve the world?
Or is that just me with my 'childish' or perhaps honest/logical brain?

[techb]

Its not play-of-words its a conclusion that might not even be so far from the truth.
If they gonna make sec holes public on purpose they practically give out 0-days.(not saying wouldnt happen otherwise.)
Ah well im pretty sure that windows xp is the nr one botnet platfarm anyway.
Dont really use it , if im lucky I still have some vbox somewhere.
In that way I dont really care, but we again discover what proprietary software does to this world, thanks gates.
He has so much money... why not make it opensource and bring the world a step forward.
Why would he continue this madness , its not the money? is it power? is it retardation? or does he really believe he is helping the world.
Seriously when you reach the point where money is no longer a relevant topic, whatever you want to do ... why not improve the world?
Or is that just me with my 'childish' or perhaps honest/logical brain?

He is helping the world. He donates millions to shit like "generic feed the world" charity. Pushes and stimulate economics, provide a lot of jobs too. Not just working for him but imagine the hacking and security jobs avail because he produces crap. I have respect for Gates. He has done and will do a lot more for everyone compaired to Jobs and Macinshit. Sure proprietary is a crap for the common good, but it is a buisness model and Windows blows *nix out of the water on home user base and corporate base. He provides more for people like us then we give credit for. Because of the crap os I have a great venue to exercise my intrest in breaking software.

I am in no way a Windows fanboy though. I am a *nix user and will pick Arch over anything. I preach the word of opensource and will stick by my love of the Tux. But, I do think Gates gets a lot of hate, uneeded and mostly driven by fanboys and people not seeing the bigger picture. Hate from consumers that don't know the full story and what Gates accomplished and contributes to the daily lives of all, from starving kids in Africa to the hacking world.

As for Kulvers rant, they didn't give up on XP. They made 7. 7 is xp but with vast needed updates. They built on XP to make 7, I can guarentee they didn't just throw all the code from xp away and rebuild windows from the ground up. I like and preffer 7 over xp. Win8 is a whole other beast though. I can agree bringing a mobile os to desktop is a very stupid move.

All in all I'm not hating or loving either way. It all has its flaws. I just think we all forget humble beggings and the bigger picture.

[artymig]

ReactOS seems like a cool thing, although I haven't managed to run it anywhere outside of a virtual machine, yet.

And it's being actively developed. So, that's a possibility.

Also wine.

[Kulverstukas]

ReactOS is garbage at this point. Not recommended to use for daily stuff even by the developers... but I have hopes ReactOS will become as good as WinXP one day...

@techb: yes I do agree and I knew it as well. Gates is helping the world more than regular douche bag knows about. They don't stuff their pockets with cash and laugh, they are donating part of it to charities. And I don't mind Windows being proprietary...

[lucid]

And I don't mind Windows being proprietary.....since there's torrenting.

[geXXos]

Well, "windows blue" is coming and we all gonna be amazed.

[vezzy]

Very funny how you preach "open source" over "proprietary" when open source is entirely an issue of pragmatics, and ignores the underlying ethics and freedom problems that truly make proprietary software a potential malice. Hence, it is important that we speak of free software, or more specifically, free and open source software. Although the former is interchangeable with the latter, since freedom 2 requires the source code to be open.

[proxx]

Very funny how you preach "open source" over "proprietary" when open source is entirely an issue of pragmatics, and ignores the underlying ethics and freedom problems that truly make proprietary software a potential malice. Hence, it is important that we speak of free software, or more specifically, free and open source software. Although the former is interchangeable with the latter, since freedom 2 requires the source code to be open.

I should have been more descriptive but you clearly understood my intentions.

He is helping the world. He donates millions to shit like "generic feed the world" charity. Pushes and stimulate economics, provide a lot of jobs too. Not just working for him but imagine the hacking and security jobs avail because he produces crap. I have respect for Gates. He has done and will do a lot more for everyone compaired to Jobs and Macinshit. Sure proprietary is a crap for the common good, but it is a buisness model and Windows blows *nix out of the water on home user base and corporate base. He provides more for people like us then we give credit for. Because of the crap os I have a great venue to exercise my intrest in breaking software.

I am in no way a Windows fanboy though. I am a *nix user and will pick Arch over anything. I preach the word of opensource and will stick by my love of the Tux. But, I do think Gates gets a lot of hate, uneeded and mostly driven by fanboys and people not seeing the bigger picture. Hate from consumers that don't know the full story and what Gates accomplished and contributes to the daily lives of all, from starving kids in Africa to the hacking world.

As for Kulvers rant, they didn't give up on XP. They made 7. 7 is xp but with vast needed updates. They built on XP to make 7, I can guarentee they didn't just throw all the code from xp away and rebuild windows from the ground up. I like and preffer 7 over xp. Win8 is a whole other beast though. I can agree bringing a mobile os to desktop is a very stupid move.

All in all I'm not hating or loving either way. It all has its flaws. I just think we all forget humble beggings and the bigger picture.

Well yeah as a billionare (that word is bullshit as a billion = 1 000 000 000 000 and not 1 000 000 000 you weird americans) you donate some change to charity, thats part of the play I guess.
Breaking it is fun I agree and thank you microshaft for that
But where I fundamentally disagree with you is on the part where hes doing the "right" thing.
As I previously stated when you have a shit load of money you could decide to brighten the future and to opensource/free the software.
Why not? more money is not gonna be an argument.
Security nor quality is achived this way thats one thing we learnt.
Clearly proprietary software has no future, its only a matter of time.
And this may be way ahead of time and maybe not even relevant to the discussion but money is a dead end street anyway.

This might be unrealistic and a "humble beggin" but isnt that where the truth lies in the end.
I know how this world spins, im not saying my ideas are realistic.
Nevertheless those day dreamers made the world today, not the fancy suit ppl.

[vezzy]

Actually Microsoft has been having a few open-source projects as of recent, most notably F#.

Then again it's worth noting that Microsoft Research in particular are behind this, the same who are working on the supposed 'Midori' which will mark the end of Windows.

[edu19]

Windows 7 was pretty much based on Vista, specially its kernel, it is a Vista improved Kernel. Windows 8.1 is coming out and guess what, I am testing it and it is worse than Windows 8.0 . IE 11 looks basicly the same as IE 10 which looks the same as IE 9, which is a cheap copy of Google Chrome, sad to say. IE should remain its classic look, but with improved performance and security, just that. Not rip the look and some features like the download manager, from eg. Google Chrome browser.


Windows XP is extremely good, Windows 7 is cool too. But Windows 8 unfortunately is worse than Vista (at least with SP2).


The real good Windows would have the features and look of Windows XP with the kernel of Windows 7. that´s it.


About vulnerabilities... well the attackers are probably targeting Windows XP because it is one of the most used OSes in the World. There are still a lot of people using IE 6 or at least with it installed on the machine. IE 8 is simply better and can be installed for free, and it comes in the automatic updates.
If one day Win 7 becomes the most used one, they will surely try to reverse the patches and then re-exploit the vulnerability even if 7 was not listed in the vulnerable systems. I remember one of my first findings which was in a Windows XP component and it remained active for like 2 years then someone else found the same thing and posted. I played a bit and found a way out to re-exploit it; Never got patched or publicly disclosed.