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Windows XP SP3 Causing Router Crashes

Posted by timothy on from the insecurity-through-non-obscurity dept.

KrispyBytes writes "Windows XP SP3 has been named as the culprit causing home routers to go into a crash and reboot cycle. One router maker has released firmware updates to fix the problem, but has not yet revealed what is actually different about XP SP3's networking stack or UPnP behaviour that causes the problem. Router maker Billion Managing Director Raaj Menon said "as Microsoft plans to make Windows XP SP3 an automatic upgrade this month, the number of affected routers may increase significantly.""

2 of 337 comments (clear)

  1. Works for me, and probably for you by Ethan+Allison · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It only affects the "Billion BiPAC 5200" series.

    I've never used one, never seen one, never heard of one, and you haven't either. Odd how the summary fails to mention that the problem is only with this obscure model...

    --
    I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
  2. Re:Before anyone goes on a MS rant by Sleepy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    >just like a website should never crash a browser it is relevent that the OS/website is abusing the specifications soo badly to cause the crashes.

    All browsers MUST expect garbage input, and pretty much anyone who expects otherwise has their head in the sand, and shouldn't go NEAR code. Document formats don't run in local memory and do not have system access - they're interpreted structures. If a browser crashes, it's the browser's (or it's plugins) fault, 100% of the blame 100% of the time. At worst, you should expect degraded-looking content and that's that.

    I don't mean to be snarky, but your argument couldn't be more wrong or inappropriate. With networking, you're pretty close to the physical layer (not a great analogy, but browser code is far removed from traffic and is just a local representation, a user application).

    We don't know yet what this is caused by. If it is affecting a lot of routers, it might very well be a "DOS". Or it could be something that holds too many connections open, or IP6 traffic that doesn't go anywhere and ties up the router table till it times out.

    This could happen to Linux also, but it's less probable -- it's be code put out in the wild, and the distro's would do their own QA process, and may hold back. Most distros don't run kernel.org kernels, but their own patched tree.