Microsoft Patches 1990s-Era 'Ping of Death'

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday August 9, 2011 @04:18PM from the better-late-than-never dept.

CWmike writes "Microsoft on Tuesday issued 13 security updates that patched 22 vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, Windows, Office and other software, including one that harked back two decades to something dubbed 'Ping of Death.' While other patched vulnerabilities we more serious, one marked 'CVE-2011-1871' brought back memories for nCircle's Andrew Storms. 'This looks like the Ping of Death from the early-to-mid 1990s,' he said. 'Then, when a specially-crafted ping request was sent to a host, it caused the Windows PC to blue screen, and then reboot.' Two decades ago, the Ping of Death (YouTube video demonstration) was used to bring down Windows PCs remotely, often as a way to show the instability of the operating system."

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Too bad... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-08-09 17:45 · Score: 0, Flamebait

those of us stuck with Windows XP Pro SP1 (due to software/hardware issues) can't run this patch. Well, is there a workaround? To force it to patch without getting SP3 as it says it requires?
Seriously. I've tried upgrading to SP2 twice and it created nothing but problems. Very slow and some software broke. Plus on my other machines I found out SP2 changes IE6.