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Windows 98, Me, NT4, 2000 and XP SSL Flawed
JoeSmack writes "In amazingly unexpected news, ComputerWorld is running an article that says the
SSL security hole found in Internet Explorer is not a flaw in the browser, but in the operating system itself." The article mentions
that Konqueror was patched against the same bug in 90 minutes.
Uh-oh. IANA Windows Developer....does anyone know how many apps use this API that microsoft might potentially break? (Fixing bugs: good, breaking stuff: bad....)
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
There's a difference? I thought they were the same thing...
is that for most consumers, this doesn't even matter. I mean, they will be effected by the security hole, but if their computer gets hacked or something, they'll end up just blaming their own lack of computer knowledge. They'll eventually install the patch from windows update (if they know how to access windows update), and then blindly keep surfing the net and playing "who wants to be a millionaire".
Glad it's only a client side issue then.
If you bothered to read Bill Gate's .plan, you would know that he eventually will own everything.
So, what's he afraid of? Stealing from himself?
So I guess it's safe.
It's a good thing I didn't upgrade.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
This "makes sense" up until the point where you have to patch your kernel instead of upgrading a library. When OpenSSL had a bug, they fixed it and you could upgrade OpenSSL. When Konqueror had this specific bug, it could be uprgraded easily enough. Now Windows users have to patch their entire OS to fix this (or just use another browser that doesn't use the crypto-in-the-kernel routines).
This is the result of "integrating" IE into the OS. Now when there is a "browser" sesecurity problem, it's really an OS problem.
Sorry MS - kill by integration, be killed by integration. It's a circle of life kinda thing...
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
You can disable SSL in the advanced options menu. ;-)
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
The article says: "SSL flaw doesn't affect any other application outside Internet Explorer and that it's a client-side issue only" But if it only affects IE, and not programs such as netscape (which also of course runs on windows), then technically it IS a problem with IE!
Here's a golden opportunity for MS to ramrod another "We can root your machine" EULA down the throats of desperate Windows Victims.
We only wrote bad code that made it through QA for 5 different versions of the OS dating back to the mid 90s. Of course, with Palladium, our new secure platform, things like this will never happen. Good thing we got that patch out quick!
(Oh wait, that was the Konqueror people!)
We'll I'm sure with our new secure computing focus it will be out any time now. Please don't stop doing ecommerce, just because all your personal data can be hacked, just use Passport.
(Oh wait, that happens with Passport too!)
Ummmm...
I am so shocked to hear Microsoft didn't follow the standards when implementing SSL. I wonder what other technologies they have failed to implement according to the standards everyone else follows?
http://www.askthevoid.com
Yeah, along with whoever discovered and reported the problem. Now that's scary.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Can we stop with the "Foo blah blah DMCA foo!" jokes already? The first 600 or so were funny (ok maybe not), but it's getting old. Especially when the subject matter has nothing to do with copy control circumvention or the ??AA businesses
Seeing continued OS-level design flaws in Microsoft products is, to me, reassuring. When MS goes ahead with Palladium I'm now quite confident that it will be riddled with fundamental design flaws that will make its "security" (read: capitalist totalitarianism rule over the masses) a joke.
In order to make sure we compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges, I suppose it would be fair to ask the question of when the Konqueror fix will be available to the normal and possibly rather non-sophisticated public consumer crowd?
I mean, when the fix becomes ready from MS (weeks or months, but it will) it will be applicable to most users of Windows, but the current fix for Konqueror after 90min weren't immediatly ready for the masses.
So, when will it?
MS TCP/IP stack is in inet.dll. That is probably where the bug is.
I was a beta tester for IE4 (so flame me, OK) and I found a bug in the HTTP1.1 keep-alive implementation. They never saw it because they tested only against IIS and I tested against Apache which implemented it correctly of course.
They didn't want to fix it until I explained that %60 (at the time) of the web runs on Apache servers.
In fact the MS product manager wanted me to call "the Apache company and have them fix Apache." Duh. Me- "There is nobody to call sir, and the problem is YOUR problem and not theirs."
They delayed IE4 for two weeks after it had gone gold to fix it. So don't flame me.
Anyway, that bug was in inet.dll, and I bet this one is too.
Use a different web browser.
;-)
(or better yet, a different OS altogether...)
Windows 98, Me, NT4, 2000 and XP SSL Flawed
Isn't this supposed to be " News For Nerds"?
Doesn't matter if everyone is qualified. If they aren't their suggestions will be ignored by those who are, who also happen to be those who integrate the suggestions/new code.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
- The bug is in the OS crypto services
- It's NOT MS's crypto api
- Only IE is affected.
Time for rhetorical questions:Anybody else not see the lack of logic here? MS has two crypto implementations? One for the OS, one for the API? Why the redundancy? Why cant the OS use the API? Or conversely, why is the API necessary when there's the services are in the OS?
How in the world is IE the only app affected? It seems more to logical to assume that any app using this crypto services are also vulnerable.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
You know what? I bet the 'soft could do this too. I mean have a guy, or team of guys available 24/7 to patch bugs. And you know what else? They'd still get flack for it, as Microsoft don't release patches straight away - for better or for worse, they do actually test them first (usually), make sure they don't kill wierd and exotic installs etc. I know they've released dodgy patches, but my point is that Microsoft isn't an overnight operation.
And more to the point, how does this patch get to people? Via autoupdate of course. The patch may have been written in 40 minutes, but it's still not available on SuSE auto update (as far as I can tell) despite the fact that Waldo works for SuSE! We really need to stop patting ourselves on the back simply because we can see the progress of the patch and Microsofters can't, otherwise this bullheaded arrogance WILL bite us on the ass.
90 minutes????? What are the KDE boys doing, sleeping???
This is just unacceptable. I cannot believe and refuse to accept that it could take 90 minutes to get a major security fix out for a browser. This is completely unacceptable. It's no wonder everyone uses IE.
I guess the Microsofties were right after all. Support for open source software is nearly impossible to find.
-- Before you post, are you sure you got it?
Just use mozilla or kmeleon. They are not affected by this bug.
I've already gushed about this gem o' news already, concerning MS's piss-poor plan to introduce better security in their OS's via Palladium...
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
...indeed.
Thank's for those memos, Bill.
Howard Dean for president
Note that this doesn't mean the bug was only there for 90 minutes, it was there for [months, years, I don't know]. Why didn't Konqueror take the initiative to fix this before instead of waiting until it was published? Sounds like they had the fix all along and were just waiting for the announcement so they could look good by fixing it so quickly.
1) Make contrived, stupid DMCA jokes.
2) ???
3) Profit
All your base are belong to us!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Although, as others have pointed out, Konqueror is really a *nix app (not just a Linux app or even an X app, as commonly assumed). You'd be best off just grabbing a copy of Mozilla if you're really worried.
--
Evan (no reference, not even to a certain Toho Industries character)
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Dial-up users with ignorance of patch/upgrade will never be able to trust on-line transactions. This is the vast majority of users, and the problem is going to haunt individuals for 2+ years.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Microsoft officials said it makes sense for the operating system to provide cryptographic services to any application that needs it, instead of each application having to include its own cryptographic technology
Yes, indeed, it does make sense for the OS to provide such a service to any program that wants to use it, so long as that's a GOOD service.
In general, it makes sense to provide everything from outside the program, and just have the program call on outside services. However, that means you need to make the outside services good, and it means that those writing programs don't just string together a bunch of requests (i.e., draw this, check that calls) but also work on looking for fixes to the common outside service, which would be shared by many programs.
In other words, this approach only makes sense when the outside services are OSS / FS / public domain, which means that developers of programs can check their integrity and submit improvements. Otherwise, its just a big black hole for developers: should I trust this cryptographic routine, or shouldn't I? One never knows with proprietary routines. One can check, and improve such routines provided OSS / FS.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
The BugTraq post describes the nature of a MOTM exploit using this vulnerability.
A BugTraq reader was able to successfully demonstrate this using dsniff and OpenSSL as his tool kit. Screenshots on his site illustrate this, with his own bank account!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Make products buggy as hell, then get people to upgrade and pay them for it by releasing new versions which have fixed the old bugs, but introduced new bugs. Repeat ad infinetum.
In parallel, also make sure to develop file formats and "standards" which aren't backwards compatable and don't work with any other OS', so as to lock people into MS products and force costly upgrades.
Bwuhahahaha.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Why is it, every 6 months or so, I get into an argument with somebody over the fact Microsoft doesn't seem to have a clue what DLLs are for?
I have people try to convince me that the integration of Internet Explorer into the Operating System is a good thing.
Where the hell do these people get their training? Microsoft has a tendancy to put function calls where they are convenient for the programmer at hand (not necessarily any future programmers mine you), not in the most appropriate DLL. This isn't unusual, it happens. But why the hell do people justify it??
Why the hell am I using a Web Browser (something whos base design is to browse web pages!!) to manage files on a local computer? The old Windows Explorer worked better and had a more appropriate (although similar) interface.
And then, when I chalenge them on this they always retort: Can you write an OS?
Damnit, yes I can. I don't have the time to write one, but I -could- write one.
Even if I couldn't, Microsoft is very much an example of bad design in general. (They have some well desgiend aspects to a lot of programs too. But Clippy isn't one of those!)
And note that I got the patch from windows update this morning. Total effort required by me: one mouse click.
Wait! what am I saying! this is slashdot, quick, ignore the facts:
"Micro$oft will probably patch this in a year, and then no one will get it cuz it requires 34 reboots to install"
Will this affect my ability to surf pr0n?
The object can be found here.
I liked this article under its former name, "IE and Konqueror Bug Makes SSL Insecure"
And to add to the irony, posting a Microsoft-bashing article placed against a giant square ad that says "Microsoft Visual Studio.NET - Try it Now! Get your Trial DVD today!!" is just ignorant.
Aw, fuck it. Let's go bowling. - The Big Lebowski
This is a pretty important point. Just because the KDE people fixed it doesn't mean everyone will have it. Instead of asking, "How long did it take for it to get fixed", we should be asking, "How long until it is widely enough deployed such that exploit writing becomes unprofitable?" It seems to me that even if Microsoft is a little slower getting a bug fixed, the universal "Windows Update" probably gets the patch on a greater percentage of machines more quickly.
;-)
Of course, the number of Windows desktops dwarfs the number of KDE desktops so if even a small percentage of Windows installations don't get patched, it would probably be about the same as if KDE never got patched at all.
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
Am I the only one who sees it coming? The Reg has an article about the new EULA for Win2K SP3 that gives MS explicit permission to examine your hard drive for installed hardware and software usage data. The SSL patch, when it comes, will surely include the same EULA...
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
In the Windows case you have to reboot.
In Linux, you just load a loadable module, no recompilation/reboot required.
And I think it's ironic that some /.'ers think this exploit is such a trivial one to pull off that it makes https:// worthless. For most intents and purposes, this isn't a practically useful exploit...it'd be much easier to just install a trojan/keylogger/etc.
As if 'everyone' were qualified to do so
Well, as a matter of fact everyone is qualified to review anything. The issue here is that anyone who wants to do so should be able to review any code that handles their private and critical information.
If you have a good knowledge of the area you could make suggestions and even corrections. If those corrections are added to the final product is a decision of the maintainers of the software.
It's a win/win situation. Besides, anyone here can tell you that you will write a _lot_ better code if you know that anybody will be able to see it.
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
From the article:
They're perfectly right. Everybody can have a bug like this. But there are two problems that puzzle me:
I really fear the time where users have to choose to either install a patch so fix a severe security hole and sell their (OS and computer data) souls to somebody else or just not fix their OS at all and be open to these man-in-the-middle attacks. This could become a very new quality of unsecured machines from a security point on the 'net: Users that don't want to install patches because they don't want Microsoft to own their machines - and trade this with security. (I can fully understand this.)
With Open Source OSes, if the vendor won't fix a bug like this, somebody else would (maybe even you). With Windows, you have to rely on Microsoft even recognizing something as a bug. And if they do, there's nothing you can do but wait.
Yes, I know, we all know this. But this problem hasn't gone away yet.
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
or something like that.
In fact, my XP and 2000 systems automatically updated - they notified me that there was a patch, what it was for, and could I please press OK to update my computer?
Then it just happened.
No sweat.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Anybody else not see the lack of logic here? MS has two crypto implementations? One for the OS, one for the API? Why the redundancy?
The logic is so obviously simple:
increased redundancy == increased failsafety
So, if one of the crypto API's has a security hole, the OS can rely on the backup API, just like how a bike with one flat tire can be ridden home on the remaining good tire.
I tell you, those MS guys really got some effective circumetry in their noggins!
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Yeah, but it makes it harder to write portable applications.
Surprise, surprise...
(In this case, the article mentions that Internet Explorer is nearly the only application to use these OS functions at all. But the concept is clear - Put more convenient functions into an OS so that vendors won't write them on their own. The resulting product is then bound to this single OS - if the vendor doesn't want to pay more to his programmers to re-program all this code. Most won't, after they've start selling the product. And: This will artifically make porting a product to another OS seem more expensive.)
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
"Then can you explain why Microsoft releases bugfixes that uhhm break stuff?"
Despite your glaring lack of maturity in the above sentence, I figured I would respond.
Microsoft software (Windows/Office/Internet Explorer or any combination of the above) runs on approximately 95 out of every 100 client computers on the Internet. Now, on those computers, you have every piece of weird x86 hardware ever invented, from crappy $5 ISA modems to $5,000 SCSI RAID arrays. You also have Microsoft software that runs on Macintosh, Solaris, HP-UX and FreeBSD computers.
Now, figure that Linux runs on approximately 1 out of every 100 client computers on the Internet. (This is a high guess -- I'm giving Linux the benefit of the doubt here.) Now assume that KDE runs on 100% of those computers (also an extremely high guess.) So for every 1 person who receives the KDE fix, there will be about 92 (I'm taking out the non-Windows, non-Linux users) people who receive the Microsoft fix.
Considering that there are hundreds of millions of people on the Internet, and hundreds of BILLIONS of different hardware configurations, the chance that a Microsoft fix will break something is much higher than the chance that a KDE fix will break something.
"Ever heard of Debian's apt-get, Mandrake's urpmi, RedHat's up2date, etc.? It's up to each vendor to make the fix available to the users."
Oh, I love these arguments. It's funny how most people who run Linux don't trust their vendor enough to release patches in a timely manner, and actually whine about fixes being easy to get. "But I run Linux so I can do everything myself!"
I run about 12 Linux servers. I trust my vendors (Red Hat and Sun Cobalt in this instance) to provide me with timely updates. But the funny thing is that whenever I recommend that people trust their vendor for services like Apache or PHP and use up2date, I get laughed at. In fact, when I say that I use Red Hat and Sun Cobalt, I get laughed at. "Why not just compile everything yourself? Why not just use Debian?" Well, guess what, ladies and gentlemen -- I run a profitable business off of my servers and I don't have time to sit on SecurityFocus all day and make sure I'm not affected by the myriad set of would-be bugs on my servers. I trust my vendor to test the updates on their set of supported hardware and release them to me in a timely manner. I will then run the vendor-supported update tool and download them.
The people I see who are the most rabid advocates of open source are also the most rabid advocates of doing everything themselves -- the epitome of the "trust no one" saying. These are the SAME people, much like yourself, who also say that it's up to the vendor to release patches. I have news for you. You either need to trust your vendor to provide patches, or you need to realize that in the real world, not everyone has time to make a test bed and test that every CVS patch works the way it is claimed to. You can't bash Microsoft for taking time to release tested updates and then claim that Linux is better because you can install a fix that is untested instead of "waiting for the vendor to catch up".
I really hate to hear about security bugs related to SSL and anything that has to do with my personal credit cards.
Does this really mean that people that weren't ment to might have my credit card numbers now?
Should everybody have to get replacement credit cards now? It is the banks that will eat the loss but in reality it should be Microsoft. It is their fault for giving me a fake sense of security due to false advertising!
It's sad to say, but given all those unpatched bugs in Internet Explorer, this flaw is a minor issue. Why bother with DNS Spoofing etc., when you just can install and start any executable you want on your victim's computer?
It's funny that Microsoft always comments publicly on the minor bugs, but ignores the serious ones, just until they release a patch.
How many people out there are REAL Windows Admins? Seriously? I bet not that many are true windows admins. Using windows does not qualify you as an admin. I'll admit I'm very weak on my nix admin but that's because I don't bother learning about it. In my mind Windows 2k can be just as good an OS. I bet many of you don't know that Microsoft's knowledge base acutally keeps track of all it's bugs and patches for them before they stick it on Windows Update for the rest of the masses. I bet many of you don't know that microsoft has a tool called hfnetchk ... what does it do?.. It'll download the LATEST patches that microsoft has available for you to use. It'll check your system to see what patches are installed and what aren't and give you a report telling you which article # in MS knowledge base you can find the patch for you problem. More tools you want?... How about Qchain... (which i know many of you don't know about either) that lets the user install multiple patches WITHOUT rebooting your system multiple times. For IIS Windows has IISlockd .. which many wanna-be admins didn't bother finding out during the time when nimda worms were going crazy. And the list goes on I can easily list pages worth of other tools that windows has that most people don't know about because they're ignorant. If anything I'd say windows has done a wonderful job by making people lazy.
But let's take a step back. I bet many of you are saying pfft the Nix machines have this and that tool. Think about that for a moment.. why would a multibillion dollar corporation, who have a million times more resources then the average linux programmer, not bother to make a similar tool for windows if it's so useful? Kinda defies logic doesn't it especially since nowadays with IBM's backing of linux MS needs to compete performance and feature wise even more (or are you going to tell me that MS has a stranglehold on IBM?).
So before anyone else goes on with the typical. . "wat you expect form MS"
read up about what MS really has and acutally maintain an intellectual conversation
How about Mac OS X or OS 9 Browsers, are they affected at all?
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Not quite. I was recently banned from posting to Slashdot for around a month (every time I attempted to post to a form, Slash would tell me I `wasn't allowed' to do that). I generally post intelligently, my karma sits at a perpetual excellent and has since it was fifty.
The only reason I can think of is because around the time I was banned I made a joke that the Slashdot editors didn't like. A joke that was
Judge for yourself - and decide how free of censorship Slashdot truly is
I run an apache server with mod_ssl. About two weeks ago we started geting complaints from mac people that they were getting encryption error. Last week the problem started with IE on win2k. Yesterday I downloaded the latest IE and run it on winNT and it worked fine. One the "security update" was applied, it started having problems with ssl connections to apache servers (but not IIS servers)
So there are more bugs out there and this one is going to make the Apache crowd look bad.
I have hfnetchk and yes, it works and d/ls patches that Micrsoft have released. If they haven't released the patch yet, you are stuffed. I also have qchain and I don't trust it (some fixes didn't stick after being chained) and anyway, why should I have to run it? I manage 2K server boxes and it makes life easier.
However, there are a lot of 0wn3d 2K and XP boxes out there which can be used DOS me, you or Slashdot at the drop of a hat sitting on Cable modems or ADSL. The guys running those boxes are at home and as someone else points out over half couldn't find the C:\ prompt if they tried.
On Linux, I use RedHat's up2dat and XImian's Red Carpet. Very nice and very prompt with fixes. I also have Gentoo, but this is definitely not for people who dislike shell prompts.
Ok. I have Red Hat 7.3 Linux... I have KDE 3.0 installed on this machine.
I want to know the answer to two questions.
a. Am I vulnerable?
b. If so where do I download a binary patch?
http://www.kde.org has no news postings about this flaw, they are apparently more interested in letting us know about a release candidate for KOffice.
http://bugs.kde.org is unreachable.
http://www.redhat.com has no security bulletins relating to KDE 3.0 that shipped with Redhat 7.3.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, you go to http://www.microsoft.com/security, click on the IT Professional information and this issue is the top headline. Yes, there is no patch yet, but at least Microsoft is acknowledging that there is a problem and letting us know that they are working on it.
Fact is, until there is a binary patch available for my Redhat 7.3 install, along with a security bulletin on the website at least acknowledging the issue... the issue is not resolved.
Oh yeah, I find no mention of this on the Mandrake Linux website either despite them shipping with KDE 2.2.x which is supposedly impacted. You know with all this patting yourself on the back, you sure haven't done anything to help out the enduser.
The person who found the SSL flaw in IE (and thus in Windows) said in his first mail to the bugtraq mailing list that he didn't bother mentioning this to Microsoft because he didn't believe it would help anyway.
I can only say that this kind of stupid behaviour is ruining more people than it does any good. Yesterday Microsoft released a patch for SQLServer, the fix was for a flaw which was reported in late July. At the same day the patch was released, the person who found the bug mails to the bugtraq mailing list.
THAT's how it should be done.
And yes, some KDE developers fixed it in 90 minutes and MS hasn't come up with a patch. Who cares who comes first. With MS you can be sure it's tested on a large set of setups. With the KDE patch, you can be sure it's not tested on a large set of setups. It's a client side risk now, but in general, do you trust patches on mission cricital systems when it's not tested on a large amount of setups? I surely won't.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
It is.
But they posted V 6.05 within 24 hours, making the fix available to Joe A. User before anyone else.
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
You think every corporation using Microsoft software is bound by their consumer licenses?
Yes. If not when they install the software, they become bound by the standard Microsoft EULA once they install any patches from Windows Update. Such EULA contains terms like "You may not disclose benchmark results of the .NET framework to a third party. For example, if you make a video game using the .NET framework, you may not include a frames-per-second indicator."
Will I retire or break 10K?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Ok, now I know there is a difference. I never noticed the lack of USB support because the only computers I've run 95 & 98 on didn't have USB ports.
I just think VS.NET makes a hell of a difference when it comes to raw productivity, when you compare the total package with a combination of tools on Linux. That's all there is to say about the sig. I also think you should read more serious media and less rant'n'raves on trollsites like The Register.
ps: my OSS is solely for Win32/.NET and BSD licensed, but still open source.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Consider as an equivalent, Hollywood and the movie "Three Weddings and a Funeral." More money was spent on promoting the movie in the USA than was spent on making the film in the first place. A lot of businesses make money that way, and Microsoft appears to be no exception.
You should see some counseler, dude. I don't see the link between software making and afghanistan.
.NET api. Not because MS doesn't want it, but because the viral part of the GPL which states that libs linked to the GPL-ed code should also be GPL-ed. In the case of the .NET api, this means that the .NET code also should be GPL-ed. Which is of course utterly stupid, because who am I to tell another company what to do?
and FYI: I'm a far left wing participant, 'bombs back to the stone age' is an expression, it has nothing to do with death nor with war.
About the GPL: I don't agree with RMS' POV so I'll never choose a non-freedom license like the GPL.
About the GPL and some EULA: I live in the Netherlands, where like in other European countries, some judges have decide no EULA can bound a user of a product in its creativity, so the EULA can't limit me in what I do with what I create. And yes, GPL-ed software can't be using the
(oh, and the same thing is valid for a piece of GPL-ed java code and Sun's non-GPL JVM + java api).
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Find a registry tool that does search-and-replace...
/usr, each providing a nugget of usefulness in scripts.
1) This is an added per-host software installation to address the inherent flaws in the Windows Registry and the poor design of most Windows applications.
2) If the added Registry tool requires purchasing per-host licenses, then you will never have enough licenses nor have it installed when you really need it.
Windows scripting host.
How do you get by the almost non-existant set of useful system utilities that Microsoft bundles with Windows. Solaris has nearly 800 command line utilities available, by default, under
Windows XP has fast user switching.
It's too bad that Windows XP doesn't have fast user adoption.
You write a script using WSH or DOS batch scripting, and you put it in the startup commands that Windows runs whenever you log on to the domain.
So, a person has to log out, first? I stay logged into Solaris months at a time, but I can update the service configurations on-the-fly with only momentary service interuptions (the time it takes to restart a specific daemon).
Only if you don't know how to properly administer it, and believe me, you don't.
Who does?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin