A while back I talked about Google Earth under Codeweavers wine almost working (or at least I think I mentioned it here, I KNOW I tried it…) Well, I tried with vanilla wine as well and couldn’t get it to work, BUT… I’ve just finished a successful run of it. How you might ask? Here are some of the details…
Tag: xp
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Windows XP SP3
Well, in the article the other day about the Windows wireless problem/(feature that could be exploitable?) there was a mention that the default behaviour for Windows would be changed with the next service pack, for XP users that’s SP3. So, when can we expec this? It seems that service pack three for Windows XP probably won’t be publicly available until the second half of 2007.
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WMF patch is the first patch for Microsoft Vista
It seems the WMF patch that was recently released for Windows 2000 and XP (and 2003) has been ported to Microsoft Windows Vista Beta…. This makes it the first security patch for Vista. eweek has an article on the issue. So, if you’re beta testing Vista, get it updated ASAP. Hopefully though, if you’re beta-testing it’s not a production machine and no great loss if you get infested with beaucoup spyware….
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MS responds to “intentional backdoor”, WMF claim
Microsoft is disputing claims by Steve Gibson, that the WMF vulnerability was an intentionally placed backdoor. There is a response to the claims in the Microsoft Security Incident Response blog. Apparently since the SetAbortProc procedure relates to printing, previous versions of Windows ignored the call unless printing was involved. (Why did windows start paying attention to it otherwise?)
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Microsoft Support extensions for XP
Good news for Windows XP users (especially XP Home). Microsoft has extended the support period for XP Home and Pro. Originally, security patch related support was expected to end December 31st of this year. According to the article for XP Home…
So for the consumer versions of Windows XP, mainstream support was going to end on December 31, 2006 and there was no guarantee of any security hot-fixes beyond that time. Microsoft has now extended the mainstream support deadline for the consumer versions to an undefined date that is two years after the release of the follow-on operating system.
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Windows 98 WMF patch
This hopefully will be my last post on the whole WMF exploit stuff…. It’s prompted in part by a comment on one of the articles on Windows 98 and the vulnerability. I realized that I hadn’t really brought things to a full conclusion for the Windows 98 users. Of course, Microsoft has released an official patch for Windows 2000 and XP and 2003, the sky is no longer falling quite as quickly and all is well right? Well, not exactly for pre-2000 Windows users. They’ve just been told, they have a vulnerability, it’s not as critical as it is for XP/2000/2003 and if it were critical – “oh we’d fix it there too”, but it’s not, better luck next time (and who knows the same vulnerability could come around more critical for earlier Windows versions next time…) Anyway, there IS a patch for Windows 98 systems.
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XP Home support period
This is something you should consider if you are looking to abandoned a pre-Winxp operating system in favor of a flavor of XP. The product life cycle. In their infinite wisdom, Microsoft has different support plans for consumer products than “business-products”. As such… arstechnica.com has a post explaining why support for Windows XP Home will end the end of this year 12/31/06 and Windows XP Pro will continue to be supported perhaps as long as December of 2013.
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Lack of working exploit does not mean Windows 98 is safe
I want to try to clarify a point. I’ve spent a couple days trying to get current exploits to work on a Windows 98 SE virtual machine. Not to prove that Windows 98 is safe, but to determine if current exploits affect Windows 98. Yesterday evening there were apocalyptic headlines saying that virus threatens every windows os shipped since 1990 which is overhyped. The current vulnerability exists in every windows operating system shipped since 1990. The current exploit for that vulnerability doesn’t seem to work on Windows 98 (you have to go a long ways to find a configuration that the current exploit works with… I haven’t yet.) This does not mean that Windows 98 is invulnerable. It simply means that this specific attack does not easily work. Tomorrow may be different, now that the problem is known, it may be just a matter of time before someone determines WHY windows 98 is not as affected and “correct” the problem.
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Metasploit
I had hoped to do an article on metasploit in the not too distant future, but not as early as tonight…. However, I’ve made a couple of references to it in previous posts which, well, it would be nice if I’d already given a bit of information about metasploit in general. For starters, metasploit is considered a “framework” for exploit modules and payload modules. Much like real weapons, knives, guns…. there are good uses and there are bad uses. It can be used by a network/security auditor to check for vulnerable systems. It could also be used by a cracker to exploit systems remotely. There’s a fine line.
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Windows 98 and the WMF exploit
I’ve seen breathless headlines that say “Windows PCs face ‘huge’ virus threat; Affects every MICROSOFT OS shipped since 1990…” and really would like to try to clarify (again) what the situation is. Yes, the bug or vulnerability that’s currently being exploited exists as far back as Windows 3.0, but as far as I can tell there is not an active, current exploit that is taking advantage of this flaw in earlier versions of windows. Currently the exploit only seems to affect Windows 2000, XP, and Vista.