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WinXP SP2 Sacrifices Compatibility for Security
goldragon writes "TechRepublic is reporting that "Microsoft is pulling out all the stops to improve security. So much so, in fact, that it will cause many problems because SP2 will de-emphasize backward compatibility with legacy systems and code for the sake of security." One small step forward for Microsoft, one giant leap backwards for mankind?"
Let's face it, you can't remain compatible with old software forever.
Especially spyware.
I've found, that if you go into IE's securty preferences (TOOLS > INTERNET OPTIONS > SECURITY > CUSTOM LEVEL) and set all of the options that are set on "prompt" to "disable" keeps a PC from contracting spyware (that propagates through web browsing).
I've found that this is a better solution than telling my father-in-law to use the power button when he encounters a web page that LOCKS a user into picking YES when prompted with that ActiveX security warning garbage.
What will the slashdot community do when Microsoft fixes all of their problems? If they execute the antivirus and spyware solutions properly, It'll be a while until I look back.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
I've been looking at XP SP2's release canadidate for a couple days now, and it's pretty obvious that it will cause nightmares for Windows admins for quite a while. However, it looks like they're making steps towards better security, which will be better in the long run.
Anyone who works in Windows shops knows the proliferation of COM-based software that was thrown together in Visual Basic, and this software often performs critical functions. It will take lots of testing/planning to make sure SP2 doesn't break these extremely fragile apps. There are many, many in-house applications that are still chugging along, even in compatibility mode, because they simply can't be replaced easily. Unfortunately, Microsoft can't test these in-house apps.
We'll see what happens...
The NX flag was only announced 18th March, so I'd say that was 'quickly', not 'finally'. It only made it into Linux 20 days ago
WinXP by default starts 36 services. I doubt any one user needs more than 10 of those.
http://www.winnetmag.com/Windows/Article/Article ID/40722/Windows_40722.html
dinner: it's what's for beer
The WinXP article is dated June 7. The link points to a Silicon.com article about a security flaw in OS X, and that article is dated May 26.
It was on June 7, the same day, that Apple released a second Security Update that fixed the remaining vulnerabilities.
~Philly
I agree completely. It's the supid-ass comments posted with the headlines that reveals Slashdot for what it is: Anti-MS Zealots Central.
I don't care if comments like that are posted, but they should be kept off the front page in my opinion. If your trying to be a semi-serious news site, then do it, which means keeping crap like that out of the headlines. If you just want to be a community of Microsft haters, that's fine, but get rid of your grandiose tagline because it doesn't apply.
About the news itself... Geez people, hate Microsoft all you want, there's plenty of good reason. But even they deserve SOME level of fairness applied, and as the parent here posted, they are damned if they do, damned it they don't, in the eyes of this community anyway. That's unfair, and even THEY deserve some degree of fairness.
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
Far too many Windows applications require that the user be logged in as Administrator. So many apps unreasonably require admin privledges that many users opt to be permanently logged in as Administrator. This in itself is a huge security hole.
Microsoft needs to close this hole and improve the application install/uninstall process. Many of the other fixes in XP sp2 are just window dressing without these necessary loopholes being closed.
-- "Most people prefer a popular myth to an unpopular truth"
Fast User Switching is a nifty toy for home, but it's nothing more than a crippled subset of the virtual consoles that have been a standard part of PC-based UNIX (Linux, FreeBSD, even SCO) for over a decade. For Jobs to copy it instead of just taking advantage of the virtual console capability that's inherent in the OS Apple based Panther on is a wonderful example of the triumph of style over reality.
XP's "faster boot time" is an illusion. It takes XP a long time to complete booting... it just brings up the login dialog and lets you start logging in before it's finished booting. This can cause problems when you need services that don't get started until later from the users' login script... we always tell our users to wait for it to stop beating on the disk before logging in.
Firewall is on by default with XP SP2.
>You have absolutely no evidence to support your claim that SP2 is causing your machine to access hotmail.com.
You are correct, I have no evidence. I only know that it "happened" to occur as I was running Windows Update and that Windows Update "happened" to stall until I permitted the connection. I agree this is circumstantial at best, but interesting nonetheless.
>In fact, it was probably a virus your machine got earlier that is making it act as an email relay. You're just aware of it now.
First off, AVG scans daily and Adaware gets run once/week. Second, the "hotmail" machine in question isn't an MX server and won't accept connections on port 25 (SMTP). The connection attempt was on port 80 anyway.
Third, and most important, http://law15-f93.law15.hotmail.com:80/ redirects to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/.