Windows XP To Block Use Of "Troublesome" Drivers

Johnno74 writes "According to this story on The Register, Windows XP rc2 now includes the ability for Microsoft to prevent users from installing certain device drivers. Sounds like a good idea? Well, apparently among the casualties are ZoneAlarm and BlackIce... Two popular free personal firewall products for windows. Guess What? XP includes its own firewall ... So you don't really need then anyway, right? The full details on how this works are in this 1mb word document on Microsoft's site.

The document details how XP will automatically download the latest drivers for your hardware from the windows update site, and more worringly, XP will reguarly update the list of blocked drivers from the site. Quote from the document:

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp"On a related note, Windows XP provides the ability for Microsoft to receive crash dump data on specific drivers (i.e. when a user receives a blue screen, we upload that information for further analysis). When Microsoft reporting systems indicate crashes have exceeded a certain threshold, Microsoft will notify the Vendor that the device is being considered for the blocked driver list. If reports pass an even greater threshold, we will then flag that specific version of the driver as needing to be blocked."

Boy, The site that uploads that crash dump data (and whatever else it snags...) better have a lot of bandwidth... ;-) As The Register points out, this brings back memories of how Microsoft killed Caldera DR-DOS by deliberately crashing Windows 3.1 if you were running on DR-DOS -- for no reason other than forcing you to use MS-DOS."

Note: according to this article, the change does not prevent Black Ice or other programs from running per se -- but it does require them to use updated versions tailored for XP.

Comments

Re:zone alarm and xp rc 2 - gotta love ZoneLabs

[tulare]

Still no reason to buy Bill's Bogus Journey, though. Although the idea of using ZoneAlarm to prevent Microsoftware from phoning home every time I crashed it (by using java?) does have some appeal :)

A whole new Bred of Hacks!

[QwkHyenA]

I can see this one coming a mile a way!

I can imagine someone flooding Microsoft's 'Crash Dump Servers' with loads of fake dump info making Microsoft take action on disallowing that application to run!

First one to make Windows XP NOT ALLOW OFFICE XP TO RUN --->!!WINS!!

Re:Microsoft Using OpenSource?

[plone]

yah, and outlook is just pine with a pretty interface. And internet explorer is just lynx with graphics. I'm pretty sure that microsoft stole the code for calculator from xcalc. They practically work alike, so Microsoft MUST have stolen it from the GPL'd version.

Gee

[Snover]

What happens if "explorer" crashes? God knows that it happens at least once-per-day to every Windows user. Would that be an unacceptable threshold? Would explorer be put on the banned driver list (putting aside the fact that it isn't a driver, heh)

Re:1mb

[Anonymous Coward]

Your criticism of a simple notation error has, by my count, at least three grammatical errors and a misspelling.

Those who live in glass anuses should not retain stones.

Re:Instability?

[Anonymous Coward]

its not the dress that makes you look fat, its the *fat* that makes you look fat!

Re:zone alarm and xp rc 2

[Anonymous Coward]

a new kinda of DoS attack... one where a bunch of computers are crashed purposefully to generate dumps that seem to indicate that a particular driver is faulty

Or if you wish to take a slightly more creative position, you could look at this from the other way around.

Over the course of three weeks, send in about 300 falsified automated crash reports with data claiming they are from microsoft internet explorer, with the crash report somehow indicating that the error stemmed from javascript errors viewing websites such as dirtygoatsex.com. IP-spoof all of these falsified crash reports to the offices of Sen. Jesse Helms..

Well, you get the idea. Is there any way these fake reports could be used to incriminate a user..?