Windows XP SP2 Impressions 683
A roundup of concerns and problems with Windows XP SP2 from the early adopters: Many, many users are reporting problems with SP2 limiting outbound TCP/IP connections. This appears to be nailing anyone who makes heavy network use of their machine, including especially users running P2P applications. A Microsoft blog rounds up some reports, as does SANS. Microsoft has objected to people helping them distribute SP2.
Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:5, Insightful)
If not, simply change the title to "Bad things popping up with SP2" or something to that effect.
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:5, Informative)
Personally I have installed it and have been using it since I learned of its release on Slashdot a couple weeks ago. It's nothing impressive for me but I didn't notice any slow downs.
I griped about my personal issues with the updated "features" and the nagging it causes.
YMMV.
Yeah, it's a little odd... (Score:3, Interesting)
Slashdot and its juvenile broken window graphic just wanted a FUD article to meet the daily quota for the garish-looking IT section.
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:4, Informative)
I've done the XP SP2 upgrade myself just fine.
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:5, Informative)
From the article: "Although 43% said the SP2 installation had gone without a hitch, 49% of those contributing had problems ranging from minor to severe. A few contributors said they had to completely rebuild a system before they could get the update to work."
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:5, Interesting)
Something can be overall workable even with a slew of minor issues. Windows has a history of this.
A better example is my Linux (Debian and SuSE) environments. I am very happy with them even though there are plenty of bits and pieces I'd like to see improved / fixed.
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:3, Interesting)
but sp2 turned my whole network into bubblegum with its rate-limiting tcpip.sys bug. A lot of expensive paperweights, here.
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:4, Informative)
SP2 breaks Aladdin hardlock drivers on AMD64 machines but not Athlon XP. It has to do with Hardware DEP in the AMD64 chips. I changed
http://www.ealaddin.com/hardlock/default.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/wi
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, this is slashdot. They aren't going to be objective. For years the whine has been "MSFT default security is teh suck". MS releases a service pack that locks the boxes down reasonably well. Now that's something to complain about: "my kazaa is teh broked!"
Limiting outbound TCP connections to something sane make sense. Let the extreme P2P kiddies relax the rules manually. On the majority of desktops (not SERVERS) out there, an inordinate amount of outbound traffic is a sign of something bad, like a backdoored spam relay or the machine has been taken over as a DDoS drone.
SP2 crashed a lot of machines that were already exploited. Good. They were already broken. Now those guys can go to Best Buy, who will format and reinstall for them, juice them up with SP2, and there's one less source of SPAM/DDoS/Worms/stupidness.
IMO, SP2 was a huge step in the right direction, and confirmation to me that MSFT is doing more than paying lip service to security.
Of course, this is slashdot, and everything they do is wrong.
It's worth noting that I've never borked a windows box installing a service pack, all the way back to win 95. On the other hand, I've lost track of how much time I've spent cleaning up after typing "emerge -uD world". I thought I'd mention that so I can ensure I'll be modded troll. It's true, though, I swear it.
How clever of you! :) (Score:5, Funny)
Or, better yet, I thought I'd mention that mentioning that I would be modded "troll" would actually ensure that I would be modded "+5, Insightful". :)
How clever of you! :)
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:3, Funny)
Before SP2, windows was a broken door. Now it's a broken door with a "do not enter" sign.
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your opinions are suspect, however, and the validity of your information is uncertain. As I mentioned on a previous occasion, I wonder if you are a MS employee working to offer favorable comments about MS and unfavorable comments about FOOS. Who knows?
Not everyone who says something good about Microsoft if some kind of schill or plant. Microsoft is a big company. They do some things right, they do some things wrong. Personally, I believe that the harm they do greatly outweighs the good, but others ar
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:5, Insightful)
I use emerge -p for doing this too, and I'm very cautious because I've read how this command can bork your system. And unless I've manually changed one of those config files myself, I don't know what they all mean or what the differences will make when etc-update changes them. I've heard dispatchconf takes care of this though. But my point is that he did what the manual said, and it borked the system.
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps your sysadmin skills are lacking. I've never had an issue with using 'emerge --pretend -uD world' to see what will be changed,
and
The fact that a M$ service pack (which replaces M$ only software) can blow up some systems up here and there (one of the reasons why they added system restore points to service pack installations) just gives you an idea of how hard it is to maintain the Windows operating environment.
So, if someone messes up a Linux "service pack" application, they're an idiot and Linux shares no blame, but if they muck up a Windows box, Microsoft is totally to blame. Yup, that makes all the sense in the world...if you're a Linux zealot.
I feel sorry for the M$ developers that have to deal with dll hell and have to worry about retaining ancient compatability with old libraries..
I'll remember that next time I can't get an RPM to install due to dependency hell. That's just so much more fun than DLL hell, isn't it? Sure, I can mitigate that with apt-get and Synaptic package manager, but likewise Windows DLL hell hasn't existed in a long, long time due to built-in Windows DLL version control. Again, you're judging current Microsoft products based upon what they were producing almost ten years ago. Clearly have no idea whatsoever about how much improved Microsoft's current product line is. Perhaps you should research the things you're criticizing before you criticize them.
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:5, Interesting)
Way to quote me out of context.. The parent was complaining about 'emerge -uD world' killing his system. I said he was a lousy sys admin for not checking what he was installing; a precautious (good) sys admin will only upgrade what is needed reguardless of what platform you're administrating.
Microsoft should be blamed for faulty service pack installations as they don't allow you to pick and choose (as far as I know) which portions of the service pack you'd like to use. (If they do, then.. I'll bite my tongue and retract that statement.) If I don't want to cap my incomplete TCP sessions (for whatever reason), then I won't install that particular update.
If you're worried about RPM dependency hell, go download rpmfind (or use the two other solutions you suggested in your post). My statements are based off of the general bloaty-ness of the OS. Do we really need progman.exe, mplay32.exe, grpconv.exe, etc.. in the latest releases of Windows XP? Do we really need Windows 95 compatability 9 years later? Like I said, if I were a OS developer at Microsoft, I'd be pissed off that I have to keep all of that stuff from 10+ years ago in my final product. Hopefully Longhorn will have most of that stuff trimmed down...
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, I got news for you: NT4 was released around 1996. The service pack in question was released prior to the year 2000. The product you're speaking of isn't available for sale, isn't current, and isn't even officially supported any longer. We're more than halfway through the year 2004. Isn't it time people quit judging the quality of Microsoft software by what happened almost ten years ago? Would it be fair if I judged Linux's fitness for a particular task based upon a bad experience I had with the 1.x kernel back in 1997? No, but I constantly hear Slashdotters harp about how awful Win95/NT4 was and how nice Linux kernel 2.4/2.6 is when Linux clearly has the benefit of several more years of development under its belt. If you're going to castigate Microsoft for something, castigate current products by comparing them with current alternatives. Doing anything else is comparing apples to oranges.
If such stuff came from Microsoft, it'd be called FUD, but since it comes from Linux lovers on Slashdot, it gets modded +1 Insightful. What a way to be fair and unbiased, huh?
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's wait until we have some real data, as in definitive reports that particular applications break.
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:5, Funny)
And don't forget that people who can't send in reports after applying XP SP2 are too, to some extend, self-selecting.
ask politely or look like a bigger fool (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:5, Informative)
I installed SP2 on three systems, and it worked flawlessly on all three. On my main system before SP2, XP would not allow me to install my SATA driver. I installed the SATA driver when I installed the OS, but once the OS was loaded, it referred to my SATA device as an "unknown device". Attempts to load the correct driver only caused the system to not boot.
I've been living with no driver officially installed for the device, which basically means that all the caching and performance increases that one would normally have (DMA, write caching, etc) for their hard drive were not activated on mine. Now with SP2, it let me install the driver and it booted fine without any problems. As a result, my computer runs twice as fast on almost every application and about 20 times faster when using virtual disk drivers (www.jetico.com) for container file encryption.
Their security center which monitors antivirus, firewalls, and automatic updates, as well as their HUGE automatic update selection box on startup are all good things too. I worked at a helpdesk for 6 months and 90% of the problems were users who had automatic updates turned off or set to install on notification (which they never selected).
Overall I've been very happy with it.
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's the same here. Sure there might be people who think SP2 did the best thing for their computer ever. But I imagine it's either... "it didn't break anything", or the range from "slowed me down" to "crashed everything".
Sure, I'm interested to know how many people had more problems, but I'm much more interested to hear what problems there were.
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is what is supposed to happen, the firewall is turned on now by default, and from a security standpoint this is a good thing.
Microsoft famously get criticised for slack security and when they try to do something about it they get it even worse.
I wouldn't mind so much but this is a tech website yet the poster wrote this up in a way that made the concept of a firewall as something alien.
People may well be having problems I don't know but it sounds like what is happening is that the less clueful are running an app, getting asked if they want to unblock it and don't know waht to do. Pretty soon they will learn what it all means and life will continue pretty much as normal.
Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? Or didn't read? (Score:5, Informative)
Its about two things, raw sockets go bye-bye, and TCP/IP stack based limits to simultaneous outbound connections:
"The Windows implementation of TCP/IP still supports receiving traffic on raw IP sockets. However, the ability to send traffic over raw sockets has been restricted in two ways:
*TCP data cannot be sent over raw sockets.
*UDP datagrams with invalid source addresses cannot be sent over raw sockets. The IP source address for any outgoing UDP datagram must exist on a network interface or the datagram is dropped."
Also, "The TCP/IP stack now limits the number of simultaneous incomplete outbound TCP connection attempts."
Please note that this last is *not* the firewall, but the TCP/IP stack.
Works well for me thanks (Score:4, Informative)
Other than that it's fine; I turned off the firewall; I'm already NAT'd and have limited ports of entry anyway.
Re:Works well for me thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
The nice thing about the firewall is that every program that isn't signed that wants to become a server (listen on a port) has to get your permission first. That makes it more likely that you'll catch a malicious program like spyware before it starts sending your browsing activities off to the deep dark jungle of the internet.
Your standard off-the-shelf router from BestBuy won't do that for you.
Unless you run something equivalent like ZoneAlarm, I would suggest you turn it back on.
Re:Works well for me thanks (Score:5, Informative)
Limited outbound connections (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Limited outbound connections (Score:4, Informative)
The odd thing is that SP2 RC2 did nothing of the sort. Everything worked beautifully under it; I'm tempted to see if I can dig up a copy somewhere and reinstall it.
Re:Limited outbound connections (Score:5, Informative)
why they consider Nmap an "attack tool", (Score:4, Insightful)
A gun in the hands of a policeman generally helps our society be a safer place. The gun in the hands of a criminal generally does the opposite.
It's simple, nmap is just like a gun. One key difference - the Geek Lobby is nowhere near as organized or influential as the NRA.
Re:why they consider Nmap an "attack tool", (Score:5, Insightful)
And one significant difference between a gun and nmap: a gun requires little training or knowledge. Nmap requires computer skills and knowledge of networking. Basic for us, maybe, but not for everyone. It's also only a computer tool, hard to kill someone with nmap.
In the end, though, restricting tools (whether they are to kill or hack) is a lost cause. You should instead try to provide wisdom in their use.
Re:Limited outbound connections (Score:5, Insightful)
On some occasions, I've used ARP poisoning on an owned box to figure out who's responsible. More often than not, it's a box at another university that was owned as well. Which is usually pretty obvious, thanks to nmap.
And now that nmap picks up versioning information, I can scan my entire living group and make note of anyone who's running something abysmally old, too. Quite frankly, it kicks ass, because it allows me to address problems that I would have had a bitch hard time figuring out without it.
As far as nefarious uses go... if people want to use the tool for bad, they're going to do so anyhow. From a *nix box at their disposal. Like any normal person. Also, if they're using the tool for bad, unless they're using the zombie scan feature, it's not all that anonymous, so... it's not something you want to do from your personal box, then.
All in all, I think this was a poor move by msft, nerfing raw sockets like this. They've trashed one of the good features in WinXP, and I think people are going to care.
As for those of you who think you know what the tools is for, I urge you to think a bit harder.
Sure, you can scan the entire internet doing version scanning on port 80 looking for vulnerable IIS boxes, but there is still fallout from the last virus epidemic doing that. Or you can use nmap to assess your own vulnerabilities and help prevent dozens of hours dealing with idiots who don't read security related emails.
Here is a workaround (Score:5, Informative)
I hope to have a patch restoring functionality within a couple days, but a workaround is available now. Try adding the --win_norawsock option to your Nmap command-line. That tells Nmap to avoid raw sockets and use the workaround that Nmap uses for systems like Win98 that never supported raw sockets in the first place. Several people have confirmed that Nmap works again for them now, as long as they use that option.
While I commend Microsoft for some of the real security improvements in SP2, limiting raw sockets like this is misguided and harmful. As this workaround shows, there are still plenty of loopholes for sending packets. If that continues, worms and virii will simply use the same techniques. Alternatively, if MS continues to cripple Windows until security scanners can't function, Windows users lose as well. While they won't be able to scan their own systems and networks for vulnerabilities, attackers on superior systems will suffer from no such limitations.
MS should focus on security the system against compromise in the first place (through more timely patching, limiting services available by default, code auditing, privilege separation, etc.) rather than crippling the system for legitimate users. Linux and *BSD offer full raw sockets, and yet they haven't become the haven for viruses and worm propagation that Windows has.
-Fyodor
Concerned about your network security? Try the free Nmap Security Scanner [insecure.org]
Re:Limited outbound connections (Score:3, Informative)
I believe that 2K had raw sockets support only for applications running as administrator. XP runs everything with administrator privileges, so everything has access to full raw sockets.
Full Disclosure: I'm taking this info from GRC [grc.com].
--LordPixie
Re:Limited outbound connections (Score:4, Insightful)
You also need administrator privilages to use raw sockets on XP.
Limit tcp connections (Score:5, Informative)
Check for the error code!
By design SP2 limits the number of simultaneous incomplete outbound TCP connection attempts. Who cares? This mostly stops trojans.
Run the event checker as described in the article above. You'll prove to yourself that you don't have a problem.
If you don't want XP SP2 deployed by auto-update.. (Score:5, Informative)
No Problems Here (Score:4, Informative)
If you're using a 3rd party firewall (Score:3, Informative)
-Markvs
Raw sockets (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Raw sockets (Score:5, Informative)
What new functionality is added to this feature in Windows XP Service Pack 2?
Restricted traffic over raw sockets
Detailed description
A very small number of Windows applications make use of raw IP sockets, which provide an industry-standard way for applications to create TCP/IP packets with fewer integrity and security checks by the TCP/IP stack. The Windows implementation of TCP/IP still supports receiving traffic on raw IP sockets. However, the ability to send traffic over raw sockets has been restricted in two ways:
TCP data cannot be sent over raw sockets.
UDP datagrams with invalid source addresses cannot be sent over raw sockets. The IP source address for any outgoing UDP datagram must exist on a network interface or the datagram is dropped.
Why is this change important? What threats does it help mitigate?
This change limits the ability of malicious code to create distributed denial-of-service attacks and limits the ability to send spoofed packets, which are TCP/IP packets with a forged source IP address.
Read the reason- (Score:5, Interesting)
While the reason is valid, I don't see anything about if/how this is user configurable. It would be nice if you could actively turn this off, and/or grant certain programs (doom3, kazaa lite, iTunes, etc.) to have "unlimited" access.
Then again, this is all conjecture, because I haven't installed it yet and don't know if this actually is possible. Someone care to comment?
Re:Read the reason- (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Read the reason- (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Read the reason- (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Great idea, actually. (Score:3, Informative)
As it happens, this only applies to "puts limits on outbound incomplete TCP connections" which is like preventing you from getting killed in a traffic accident by ensuring you can only drive 1 car at a time.
MOD PARENT DOWN. Re:Read the reason- (Score:4, Informative)
Anybody concerned about "download logging"? (Score:5, Informative)
CHANGES DUE IN SP2
Pop-up ads blocked
Revamped firewall on by default
Outlook Express, Internet Explorer and Windows Messenger warn about attachments
Origins of downloaded files logged
Web graphics in e-mail no longer loaded by default Some spyware blocked
Users regularly reminded about Windows Updates
Security Center brings together information about anti-virus, updates and firewall
Protection against buffer over-runs
Windows Messenger Service turned off by default
The "Origins of downloaded files logged" feature troubles me a little. What do they mean by "downloaded files"? Do HTML files count as "downloaded files"? What do they want to keep track of and log my downloaded files? How will they know if I use another browser and download files using that instead of IE? What about the other files I download through File sharing applications?
What log "origins of downloaded files" at all? Does it improve security in any way? If they were logging keys/certificates of software updates (to AV software for example), it would make a little sense (but not a whole lot, it shouldn't concern the OS at all), but this feature sounds a heck lot more like a Big Brother OS thing, something like IE tracking all websites visited in a hidden+undeletable folder for the suits.
IIRC, just keeps track that a file was downloaded (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think it is so much of a tinfoil-hat thing, as one more layer of warnings against installing applications off the internet.
Most slashdotters know about the safety, or lack therof, of things on the internet. Grandmama may not.
Re:Anybody concerned about "download logging"? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not a sinister as you seem to think.
IE simply straps another NTFS stream onto the file so that the shell can warn you that you are running a file that came from a particular source.
It doesn't log it anywere else (like a log file).
So, it's more like an origin-stamp on the file, rather than logging.
Re:Anybody concerned about "download logging"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wah? I thought?
So I clicked a couple more EXE's that were already on my system. Nope, no warning. Copied one over from another machine on my local network. Nope, no warning. Downloaded another EXE. Yep, warning.
I think it could get a tad bit annoying to someone like me that knows what I'm doing, but (a) I think I saw an option to turn it off on the dialog, and (b) it's I think a great idea for someone like my mom, or even the so-called "power users" who just THINK they know what they are doing.
I don't know if that's the logging that's referred to, I haven't done the requisite research to find out. But I suspect it is, and if it is, it strikes me as a good, non-sinister thing.
Heh (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly, this means that worms and malware authors need only make themselves appear to be Microsoft software (if Microsoft can bypass its own firewall, the credentials will be reverse engineered) in order to continue to spam from zombie boxes without informing the user.
Secure Computing, yay!
Re:Heh (Score:4, Insightful)
So, while the builtin is WAY better than nothing, everyone should really install a third party one that controls all access on application basis.
I wonder if Steve Gibson is cackling? (Score:5, Informative)
Restricted traffic over raw sockets
A very small number of Windows applications make use of raw IP sockets, which provide an industry- standard way for applications to create TCP/IP packets with fewer integrity and security checks by the TCP/IP stack. The Windows implementation of TCP/IP still supports receiving traffic on raw IP sockets. However, the ability to send traffic over raw sockets has been restricted in two ways:
TCP data cannot be sent over raw sockets.
UDP datagrams with invalid source addresses cannot be sent over raw sockets. The IP source address for any outgoing UDP datagram must exist on a network interface or the datagram is dropped.
I bet his "I told you so" [grc.com] rant will be entertaining.
Re:I wonder if Steve Gibson is cackling? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm talking about the "shields up" thing. It claims if you're in "stealth mode" then your machine is invisible. This is idiotic.
Dropping incoming packets doesnt make you "invisible". If you were "invisible" and I tried to ping you, I'd get a "destination unreachable" error. If I get timeouts, I know you're there and dropping my packets. If you replied to my pings with "destination unreahables" you might trick me, unless I noticed that the destination unreachable messages were coming from the IP I was pinging (duh!).
It's as false as the "your machine is broadcasting an IP!" popups.
Fuck him and his crusade to break the internet by trying to convince people there's something to be gained by dropping incoming packets, instead of responding with a proper RST packet or ICMP message.
Linux folks, set your default firewall properties to DENY, and not DROP. It doesn't make you vulnerable, it doesn't allow SYN floods (which attack by spawning multiple server threads on a local port - an application vulnerability not a TCP/IP one).
It doesn't "hide" you from scanners, as he claims.
It doesn't prevent DDoS attacks, if I have enough bandwidth to clog your downstream, it doesnt matter what you do with all the crap I flood you with.
Actually, heh, he is doing a spin on the old "your machine is broadcasting an IP address" scam:
Many Internet connection IP addresses are associated with a DNS machine name. (But yours is not.) The presence of "Reverse DNS", which allows the machine name to be retrieved from the IP address, can represent a privacy and possible security concern for Internet consumers since it may uniquely and persistently identify your Internet account -- and therefore you -- and may disclose other information, such as your geographic location.
Uhhh, I can get that from the numeric IP, who cares about the reverse DNS. Do the RIAA do reverse DNS lookups when they launch all those suits against IPs?
This machine does have a static IP and proper DNS, so I dont know why his tool says it doesnt. Though, I don't really care.
Re:I wonder if Steve Gibson is cackling? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's non-technical, and not about whether this change is good or bad. Instead my post is about a certain pundit who claimed the sky would fall (more or less) when XP was released due to its raw socket support. He was so strident that he was dismissed as a bit of a crackpot. [theregister.co.uk]
It turns out that now, a couple years later, Microsoft actually addressed his concern. It is anticipated that the pundit will have something entertaining to say about it.
Many, many users are reporting problems... (Score:3, Funny)
Odd.
NTBugTraq Impressions (Score:5, Informative)
To: NTBUGTRAQ at LISTSERV.NTBUGTRAQ.COM
Subject: XP SP2 - Statement of the NTBugtraq list
Ok, so I feel like I need to do this, hopefully its understandable.
1. XP SP2 is the most significant security effort Microsoft has ever produced. Granted, it may not be a "silver bullet", or solve all problems, but it is significant in so many ways that we as a security community cannot fail to acknowledge it. I admire "discoverers" as much as the next, but before XP SP2 can be written off it will take many, many, vulnerability announcements.
a) IMO, this is the first time that Microsoft has put security over existing, and frequently used, features.
b) IMO, this is the first time that Microsoft has accepted the fact that their choice is going to lead to "some" incompatibilities.
c) IMO, this is the first time that Microsoft has taken a stand against ISV who are definitely making money out of some features they (MS) made available to them.
2. I, at least, as NTBugtraq Editor, believe we, as the NTBugtraq community, need to stand behind Microsoft's efforts. That means we need to continue to endorse XP SP2 despite what problems have arisen or may arise (within obvious reason.) The media is only going to state the problems. They cannot appreciate, nor do they believe their customers are willing to pay for, stories about XP SP2 successes.
So, I want to hear from you, every one of you, regarding XP SP2 success or failure. Obviously, I want those stories in as much detail as you can provide.
There are, no doubt, some (many?) applications which will not be compatible with XP SP2. I say they represent Vendors who are not prepared to accept the responsibilities we've always felt they should have as reasonably security-minded Vendors. They've had lots of time to figure out how to make their apps compatible, and have *chosen* not to.
I offer any Vendor who feels Microsoft left them "in the lurch", regarding their problems with XP SP2. a forum to express their problems.
Equally, I offer all NTBugtraq subscribers a place to state the problems they are encountering with an ISV application.
It is extremely important for corporate environments to get XP SP2 deployed to all home systems running XP. Let's make sure the media has the right information.
Cheers, Russ - NTBugtraq Editor
Here's a fix for the EventID 4226 bug (Score:5, Informative)
There's both a downloadable patch as well as manual instructions for patching by hand for the ultra-paranoid.
Anything to Smear Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Ya'll complain that Microsoft doesn't care about security, but when they release a MASSIVE security patch, you try to find (and if that fails, fabricate) any and all tiny inconveniences it causes.
As others here have pointed out, it doesn't block ALL outbound TCP connections, just incomplete ones. Would it kill an editor to come out and say for once that "Microsoft did a pretty good job here."?
And no, I'm not new here.
Re:Anything to Smear Microsoft (Score:4, Funny)
A User's Impressions Of XP SP2 (Score:5, Informative)
- Things truely do seem to be snappy. I am not sure where to attribute this, but it is welcome.
- My notebook has wireless which had the annoying habit of showing that there wasn't a wireless connection (the disconnected red x) coming out of hibernation even though it was fully operational. That appears to be fixed.
- I was afraid that the firewall would prove to be annoying, but it actually works pretty well. When I load ICQ, Activestate Komodo, or other applications that try and used blocked ports, it pops up asking if I want to unblock things. The old SP1 firewall didn't do this.
- IE's popup blocker is pretty slick. It will show a little dropdown area above the current page asking about the popup, if it should be displayed, etc. Neat. I do wish Firefox would do this instead of the small icon in the lower right of Firefox's window. It isn't enough to make me stop using Firefox, though.
Now, for the stuff I find annoying.- Their Windows Security Alerts interface isn't compatible with my corporate Norton I have from my work place. It isn't a big whoop, but I am surprised they don't work together.
- Some of my folder settings have changed. I am not sure why, but Microsoft feels the status bar shouldn't be on by default. To hit this point home, it changed it back to disabled after the install. Come on.....
- Along those lines, they decided to mess with my sound scheme. I normally turn all of that off, but sure enough after reboot it is back in all its glory!
- A lot of the wireless stuff has been funneled into wizards, need to find a way to turn that stuff off.
- IE and PNG is still pretty broken. Alpha doesn't work, and that problem where the colors are slightly off of what they actually are is still there. You would have thought that they would have addressed some of that stuff!
There you go, a user's point of view. Take it for what it's worth....Re:A User's Impressions Of XP SP2 (Score:5, Informative)
Recent Firefox nightlies have this exact feature. Blatantly copied from IE yes, but hey if it's nice then what the hell. The icon on the status bar is still there as well.
Colors (Score:5, Funny)
It must be a Microsoft conspiracy.
Re:Colors (Score:3, Funny)
Security limits functionality (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft management has finally realized that in order to avoid the gigantic fiascos of the past year's worms, they have to limit some functionality. My guess is Microsoft engineers have been telling their management this for a long time, and finally, they were heard.
M: Is our product secure?
E: The only way to improve security is at the expense of features.
M: No way. Features sell the product.
M: We need to patch this security hole.
E: The only way to improve security is at the expense of features.
M: I still can't accept this.
M: Please, dear god, do ANYTHING to fix these security problems!
E: The only way to improve security is at the expense of features.
M: All right, all right! Do it!
OpenGL tooltip bug fixed, Blue tooth concerns (Score:3, Informative)
Bluetooth seems more reliable than the implemention that was shipped from Belkin with my USB bluetooth device. It does seem to have fewer services though. For instance, there is no way to send a contact to Outlook from my phone or vice versa.
As well they should (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you blame them? Untrusted sources and all that?
Good reviews of SP2? (Score:5, Informative)
For the normal "Joe Average" user there won't be too much of a difference -- a simple reboot and the system looks just the same. IE has the pop-up blocker, which has a semi-intuitive way of adding a sites to the white-list and is a bit imperfect, IMHO (if the pop-up displays a page which has a different URL than the originating page, then the "normal" user will be confused why adding the URL of the originating site doesn't work and the pop-up still doesn't display... this is the case even for subdomains of the same principal domain).
The firewall is pretty nice, the default being to ask when some program is trying to access "the internet". BitTorrent works very fine with me and I haven't had any problems with IM programs.
So, overall, after 2 days of SP2 experience, I can only recommend it to people who still use XP.
Top impressionists. (Score:3, Funny)
Devil's Advocate (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to play Devil's Advocate, but DUH... look at this from Microsoft's perspective. Having non-Microsoft sources distributing SP2 has two huge negative aspects for them:
1) Unthrottled Rollout
Having P2P'ers flooding the patch to "everyone-and-their-monkey's-uncle" destroys any potential throttle control that Microsoft might have had. Microsoft's initial plan was to trickle the rollout of SP2 out at only 25,000 downloads a day, exclusively via Windows Update. This is extremely practical due to the scope of the patch -- it makes a lot of sense for them to control the release in case a catastrophic show-stopper pops up, and also to allow developers some extra update time.
2) P2P Security Liability
Let's face it, Microsoft has a right to have their skivvies in a knot over people downloading any Windows patches from 3rd party sources. The infamous "Average Joe" (they guy who opens email viruses twice a week) isn't going to do an MD5 checksum comparison on a patch from a P2P net before running it -- who's to prevent someone from hacking up their own little "SP2" cocktail exe and distributing it? Ultimately the shit would hit the fan and Microsoft would take it in the face.
Even those who do check MD5 digits on a P2P-downloaded patch need a trusted source for the correct checksum... again, Microsoft doesn't want to be liable. Sure, it could be argued that Microsoft could provide the MD5 checksum themselves, but then "Average Joe XP User" would never check it anyway because "Microsoft says it's ok, so it must be safe!"
Re:Devil's Advocate (Score:3, Informative)
Any sites that are doing more than linking to the official download sources are probably going to be getting nastygrams though; check out the second to last paragarph. There are some pretty usefu
Anyone have issues with Perl & Net::FTP? (Score:4, Informative)
Anyone else have this problem or know how to fix it?
Other than that, it seems fine. Some good new options (and by new I mean newly copied from Mozilla) in Internet Explorer.
I Love It (Score:5, Funny)
How do I resolve these issues?
Stop the application that is responsible for the failing connection attempts.
Me: "Mr. Goodwrench, my car makes this horrible knocking noise and it will only go 40 miles per hour. What do I do?"
Mr. Goodwrench: "Stop driving the car."
P2P issue (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:P2P issue (Score:4, Informative)
Photoshop 5.5 stopped working (Score:3, Interesting)
Has anyone tried the new Firewall API? (Score:4, Interesting)
Many of these functions are new for SP2, for example the InetFWAuthorizedApplications [microsoft.com] interrface has a method to add [microsoft.com] a new application as "Authorized." Similar APIs allow the opening of ports, etc. (And most of these say Client: Requires Windows XP SP2. which indicates they were newly added.
Here's my question: What's to prevent programs from simply adding themselves as authorized and opening the ports they need? After all, if the Firewall control panel applet can do it, can't any other program? And since many, many XP users run all the time in the "Adminstrator" group, can this somehow be blocked?
Is it time for Microsoft to make a new "Super Administrator" level and start putting certain critical things (like changing the firewall) as needing that security level?
Now I need to write a program to see if my XP box won't indicate if I authorized myself and open up a port....
Wrong end of the stick! (Score:4, Insightful)
Before they spend ONE MORE DAY on this kind of kludge to limit the utility of the OS, they need to deal with the FIRST stage of the infection. They need to remove the dangerous coupling between programs through the Microsoft HTML control, so that you don't have every program that registers a handler... even for *local* file access... suddenly becoming a potential attack point.
How to get around the connection limits. (Score:3, Interesting)
Psst. File Traders. Yes, you. Get some old Pentium machines (you can get these for free, since people can't run new games on them and are throwing them away - Pentium2 300 works fine), take memory from several of these, and concentrate it all on one machine so it has some 128MB of it. Then install a silent power source and a big, silent hard disk, install Debian GNU/Linux, VNC, xterm, all the fonts and sshd.
Now you have a silent server machine, which can run several P2P clients at once (Gtk-Gnutella (for Gnutella) and Lopster (for OpenNap) in the VNC, Mldonkey (for eDonkey) from console (use nohup) with the Web Interface, and BitTorrent (btlaunchmany.py) in a "screen" session), Leafnode for newsgroups caching (so you don't need to keep on checking your news server daily), and if you install Samba you can mount your download dirs as network shares from Windows.
There's even a program which automatically downloads pictures from Usenet News and shows them in a web gallery (automatically parsing the original messages to add initial keywords, of course) but that's still in early alpha and not publicly available (it can't handle multipart binaries yet, and yenc decoding in pure Python is pretty slow - but it's getting there).
Just remember to firewall the machine from the Internet to keep out uninvited guests, and only open those ports that you actually need.
And you never need to worry about connection limits again ;).
The only thing it can't really run is Freenet - that darn bunny eats memory more than Ryo-Ohki eats carrots :(.
Re:Makes Sense (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Makes Sense (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.ntbugtraq.com/default.asp?pid=36&sid
Re:Makes Sense (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.ntbugtraq.com/default.asp?pid=36&sid=1
Re:oops. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yet another... (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember when most people would wait for a RedHat build after a X.0 rollout. I remember when MacOS X would require you to pay for upgrades, and I remember when IT departments were deploying patches for known exploits and got burned in the ass when a worm was released.
Just another example of how the world works in different ways.
Re:Yet another... (Score:3, Insightful)
As for not rolling out SP2 on the desktops that's the only smart way for large organizations to handle large updates like this. My employer isn't rolling SP2 out anytime soon. Why? Because we need to test it to make sure that the applications we can not do our jobs without still work, and so that the IT staff has time to learn what changes SP2 has that they are going to have to support.
I don't like Windows, and I dispise Microso
Re:Yet another... (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, we found on Win2k SP4 that Hummingbird was failing to make a constant connection on some installs with a VIA chipset. As a result, we delayed the rollout until we had a solid solution to the issue.
Any company that chooses to apply patches and service packs without relying on outside experience and independent testing - they'r
Re:Of Course (Score:5, Funny)
Did you just say that?
Re:Of Course (Score:5, Funny)
Re:limiting outbound TCP/IP connections (Score:5, Informative)
There is no limit if connection if the connection attempt was sucessful.
Licences have no effect.
There is no limit on the number of connections.
You will probably reach the memory limit of your system before you reach the maximum number of connections that XP can support.
Re:Windows Security Alerts Icon (Score:3, Informative)
Well almost right (Score:4, Insightful)
But with MS updates you are guessing. Sure an update may fix a bug but what else have they done?
It is not that I fear patches being badly done, the SSH/SSL stuff had recently 2 patches right behind each other, but that I fear the "features" they added.
Remember this update really gives you a different product that behaves differently.
So a simple rule is to always first test a patch/update on a test setup. Then you test it for a length of time in scale with the size/complexity of the patch/update. I would suggest that SP2 is somewhere between a version upgrade and an OS rollout.
All I can say about SP2 is, thank god I am a unix guy. Yeehaw!