Thanks Google: Over 10K Win XP PCs Attacked

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LOL
What did you expect.. All versions of Microsoft Windows is and has always been Unstable and very Unsecure. Nothing new about that.

If the half-wits, (rinning XP or Win7) on the internet want security . just Upgrade to Ubuntu or Mac-OSX.. The security and stability problems will go away when they up-grade.
 

ravewulf

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[citation][nom]wotan31[/nom]Why? Vista was a disaster of an OS, reminiscent of Win ME. And 7 has high system requirements and a high price tag - something that folks with perfectly good XP machines can't justify upgrading. Remember that since Vista was so awful, all the OEM's continued to offer XP on brand new machines, right up until the release of 7. So there's plenty of folks out there with PC's that are less than a year old, that shipped with XP. XP is gonna be around for a LONG time...[/citation]
Vista may have been a PR disaster, but it was no ME. Unlike ME, Vista actually works so long as you have a modernish system.

And the hardware requirements are not that high at all, even at the time of Vista's release. A dual core processor, 2GB of ram, and a graphics card that can run desktop composition isn't that much at all. It's not Microsoft's fault OEMs initial machines put together with pathetic specs.

Frankly I like Vista's UI look better than 7's even if 7 performs better.
 

Ed Oscuro

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What's disturbing is that Google is readying its own OS - so any researchers working for them immediately come under suspicion of conflict of interest, and more so when they release vulnerability information. Ten thousand infections and counting, jeez.

Also, I've read that Windows Vista / 7 have some lag compared to XP when gaming. You can take it with a grain of salt I suppose. I am looking forward to using 7 primarily on the desktop, though I won't be ditching the old XP box anytime soon.
 

kyeana

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[citation][nom]airborne11b[/nom]im gunna throw out the bs flag here and call it. Dependant on xp? You do know that win7 has an "xp mode" to run xp aps in windows 7.Second, what the heck kind of old software are you so dependant on? I dont buy it lol.I agree with others here. Xp needs to die naow.[/citation]

There is all sorts of software that doesn't run in vista, especially in businesses where they started using this software 10+ years ago, and it would cost a ton of money to try and migrate it to a new system when the current one still works.

Also, riddle me this. If i had to do all my work in an XP machine, what motivation would there be for me to run it in a windows virtual machine in windows 7 compared to just natively running xp, which would be faster and require less resources.

Also, riddle me a second item. If the flaw exists in normal XP, then the same flaw exists in a virtualized XP, so what benefits does running the virtualized XP give me? It is just as vulnerable to the attack.
 

SevenVirtues

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Well done Google, you are about to get sued by the only company capable of taking you on.

Did the guy seriously not know that by publicly releasing it he made himself and his company liable?
 

Anomalyx

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I fail to see how Google is liable in any capacity whatsoever. Was it this person's job to find and release Windows vulnerabilities? I doubt it. More likely he found it on his own time, and the finding and releasing had nothing to do with Google. If I had found and released it in my spare time, would you hold the Hospital I work for liable? Didn't think so.
 

BulkZerker

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[citation][nom]gmcd2201[/nom]LOLWhat did you expect.. All versions of Microsoft Windows is and has always been Unstable and very Unsecure. Nothing new about that.If the half-wits, (rinning XP or Win7) on the internet want security . just Upgrade to Ubuntu or Mac-OSX.. The security and stability problems will go away when they up-grade.[/citation]

How retarded are you? Osx is THE MOST insecure os on the market. And unbuntu has the worst support for the tech illiterate. Neither are options for people who have more money than time on their hands.
 

JOSHSKORN

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I hate when people 'live in the past'. Good God, get a new computer already, with Windows 7! Stop going all goobly gawky over your iPhones.
 

digitalraine

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The title of this article is absurd. The findings of one individual who works at Google (to the point that it was on HIS Twitter account-not Google's) goes to show right off the bat that it couldn't be put on Google.
I would be HOPING I could take credit for it if I were Google (just proving a point - not legally). Doesn't anybody remember earlier this year the problems that Google had because of a security flaw in IE? Furthermore - yes, I believe fully it is the ethical thing to do to FIRST go to the maker and then, if the manufacturer will not correct the error, you would have an obligation to inform the general public. The real issue to me here is: Why does it seem that nobody is asking Microsoft what the hell is wrong with them that they would refuse to fix a security problem announced to them within a 60 day period!? Personally... that's more reason for me to go with Mac or Linux because I know that if Microsoft doesn't fix a security issue - what criteria do they use to decide what they're fixing and not fixing.
Worst case - if I were still running Windows XP and somebody -whether they worked for Google, Microsoft, Apple, or Wal-Mart - had a legitimate basis for their claim that could be backed up and confirmed quickly... then the second I knew the software manufacturer planned to not fix it -- I'd be backing up my data (or taking it to a friend/company that could) and getting that operating system off of my hard drive.
 

digitalraine

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basically it comes down to the old saying "The only thing evil needs in order to succeed is for good people to do nothing." Eventually that was going to be found by a less ethical group. And if he said nothing and Microsoft did nothing... who then would be to blame?
 

proxy711

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at the cost of an iphone you could build a computer that runs windows 7 just fine. not having the funds to build a computer that can run windows 7 really isn't an excuse.

I was a die hard XP fan, but since im a computer systems major i could get a windows pro 64 bit version for free. i upgraded and haven't looked back. windows 7 is great.
 

efeat

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[citation][nom]VioMeTriX[/nom]ok moron as a systems developer im gonna ...............[/citation]

1) While XP mode benefits from Win7's memory management, the overhead of a host OS + guest OS is undeniably more than just a host OS. This could require a company to upgrade hundreds of systems just to handle both OSEs, and in the end they'd still end up falling back to XP in addition to a second OS to maintain.

2) XP mode is hugely based on the RDP stack, and thus is subject to the same limitations that terminal services suffers from.

3) Is it necessary to be so abrasive? The anger just makes you look immature.

4) Who on earth would save important work data on something other than a backed up network drive? It shouldn't take more than an hour to wipe a computer clean and get it back up to par again.

5) You're absolutely right about virtualization. It f*#*@(% rules =)
 
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shame because XP runs 2D apps way faster than 7
Vista is a joke with no GDI hardware acceleration at all.
 

kyeana

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So for a personal user, being poor isn't an excuse? And in the business world where you may have thousands of computers to maintains (in this economy) isn't an excuse either?
 

palladin9479

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I'm laughing at all the BS flying around and bad mouthing / language by little kids.

No virtualized XP on a Vista / 7 machine will not run faster then native XP run on same box. Virtualization always produces overhead and wait-states / NOP instructions. Because systems are rarely utilizing more then 50% of available HW resources its often a good idea to share those HW resources across multiple systems and reduce your cost. Thus virtualization is now pretty common in data-centers.

But a desktop is not a data-center, there is no need to run XP Mode (just vanilla MS Virtual PC with a pre-installed XP disk image) if all your work needs to be done within XP. Any XP run on MS Virtual PC will have the exact same vulnerabilities as stock XP, its the exact same. It doesn't pass the common sense test to have someone power on then log into a Windows 7 system only to power on / log into the XP virtual session to do their office work.

There are hundreds of XP era applications within the DoD that simply won't work on NT 6+ yet. In time the program managers will have their applications ported / tested / configuration managed then have a scheduled release. That time takes a year at least, and that is from the moment the decision to go with vista+ is made, that decision alone can take six months to a year. Corporations are not much quicker, their entire business relies on their automation just working. Big business does not treat automation as a hobby, people don't just "upgrade" anything their working on just-cause, there needs to be a documented requirement then a risk analysis / mitigation strategy developed. Then you have resource analysis / requirements determination, then prototype fielding, then testing / developing, then eventually configuration management and scheduled product release. Company's that don't follow these things tend to spend lots of money troubleshooting / tracking down problems.

Ontop of that, Vista's kernel is atrocious in its memory management. Superfetch was a good idea but it broke the OS on anything with less then 4GB of memory. The way it works in Vista is that ~always~ reads and loads into memory all your recently accessed documents / programs. It doesn't distinguish between temporary internet files, your last played games resource files, your PowerPoint documents, or your office PST file. Your HDD can only read one thing at a time and Vista will fill the I/O que with read requests for all these things that your not needing to use. Then when you load your actual program you want to use Vista will start to page out to swap all that stuff it loaded earlier thus consuming more disk IOs. It always seems to consume those disk IO's at the worst moments, the times when you need them. Windows 7 is a bit smarter on how it prioritizes IO / memory space. The biggest thing to remember is that if you consume all available memory as a cache, then when you do need more memory it must be paged to disk. Paging to disk cause's lag and delays any other disk IO's, there is no way around that. Consuming all available memory will lead to disk paging.

The amount of memory required in your system is not some mythical "set" amount, it all depends on what your habits are. If you run lots of different things, not necessarily at the same time, then super-fetch will try to load ~all~ of it into cache memory regardless of what your trying to do. I run 8+ GB of memory on a very beefy system and I had to turn off super-fetch on Windows 7 x64. I do too many games / have too much stuff going on for Windows to try to manage my memory footprint. Windows Vista also keeps a copy of everything in WDM twice. Each application gets its own WDM bubble to write into, but the WDM itself then copies the contents of those applications into WDM memory then into the display. So every GUI takes up twice as much display memory. Windows just passes a reference to the applications display memory rather then copying it, helps a ton.
 

BPT747

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Funny I still have a computer running XP SP1 and it is virus and malware free, seems to me the problem is upgrading XP, not XP itself.

If XP could run directx 10 I would have it on my new pc.

The mistake microsoft made is that XP worked too well and its nearly perfect stability is now expected of all microsoft products and they are having trouble meeting with vista and 7.
 

ravewulf

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[citation][nom]palladin9479[/nom]there is no need to run XP Mode (just vanilla MS Virtual PC with a pre-installed XP disk image) if all your work needs to be done within XP. ...

Superfetch was a good idea but it broke the OS on anything with less then 4GB of memory. The way it works in Vista is that ~always~ reads and loads into memory all your recently accessed documents / programs. It doesn't distinguish between temporary internet files, your last played games resource files, your PowerPoint documents, or your office PST file. Your HDD can only read one thing at a time and Vista will fill the I/O que with read requests for all these things that your not needing to use. Then when you load your actual program you want to use Vista will start to page out to swap all that stuff it loaded earlier thus consuming more disk IOs. It always seems to consume those disk IO's at the worst moments, the times when you need them. Windows 7 is a bit smarter on how it prioritizes IO / memory space. The biggest thing to remember is that if you consume all available memory as a cache, then when you do need more memory it must be paged to disk. Paging to disk cause's lag and delays any other disk IO's, there is no way around that. Consuming all available memory will lead to disk paging.The amount of memory required in your system is not some mythical "set" amount, it all depends on what your habits are. If you run lots of different things, not necessarily at the same time, then super-fetch will try to load ~all~ of it into cache memory regardless of what your trying to do. I run 8+ GB of memory on a very beefy system and I had to turn off super-fetch on Windows 7 x64. I do too many games / have too much stuff going on for Windows to try to manage my memory footprint. Windows Vista also keeps a copy of everything in WDM twice. Each application gets its own WDM bubble to write into, but the WDM itself then copies the contents of those applications into WDM memory then into the display. So every GUI takes up twice as much display memory. Windows just passes a reference to the applications display memory rather then copying it, helps a ton.[/citation]
 
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