Windows XP SP2 Almost Final

[Mkz]

Regarding pirate keys, here's some info

http://www.msfn.org/comments.php?shownews=9214

Many users have questioned why illegal PIDs are being allowed on a Windows XP SP2 installation when they were blocked in previous betas. This is due to Microsoft's new approach on security in Service Pack 2 to prevent any further Windows XP machines from getting infected with viruses and malicious attacks. Microsoft's Gary Schare answers:

"There have been a number of discussions on this newsgroup regarding whether SP2 will install on non-genuine (aka "pirated") versions of Windows. Here is the official Microsoft position on this topic:

We expect that nearly all Windows XP users, running genuine or pirated Windows, will have access to the security technologies in SP2. The same users that were blocked from installing SP1 - those that have used a small set of legacy pirated product keys - will be blocked from installing SP2. We believe that there are very few systems in use today that use these keys -- in other words, the pirates have moved on to other keys which we are not blocking.

So how do we charaterize our policy?

We want to make sure that the broadest number of people can install SP2. The nature of malicious attacks on computer users is constantly changing and we will continue to evaluate how we deal with security updates for pirated versions of Windows to best protect our genuine Windows customers.

[JMI]

That's why some of us are waiting for all you gungho hotshots to figure out all the problems before we push "install." We can ALWAYS count on M$ to break or f*ck up something, somehow, and often "on purpose."

I remember several years ago when they were releasing a "free" version of Encarta everywhere, that worked perfectly with M$ product, but, "oh did we do that", just "happened" to break everyone's current version of Wordperfect, which just "happened" then to be more popular that "Word." Took them a long time to conceed that "anything" they might have done could possible have affected another competitor's software and "certainly" we wouldn't have done that to one of our big competitors "on purpose." Right.

Regards,

[aldente]

You will need SP2 for having an up-to-date system!

Microsoft probably did not WANT to put that bug there, and the rest is caused by the big number of newbies using Windows XP:

Or why isn't there a SP7 for WinNT 4.0, which consists of an easy-to-use, coloured firewall, which blows up the system, and all the other crap, nobody with a brain needs?

I think it's even getting worse in the next years.

Windows XP Service Pack 2 Network Installation

hxxp://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=049C9DBE-3B8E-4F30-8245-9E368D3CDB5A&displaylang=en

got mine up and running... no problems so far.
i'm interested in the memory protection features of SP2, do you guys know of any link where tests (and results) were made regarding this? (e.g. testing slammer, codered, or even simple BOF code)

no luck with me, my box stops working when loading SI 3.1 with sp2, anyone else?
It is ok if without using SI.

[Mok]

Originally Posted by tomlynx

no luck with me, my box stops working when loading SI 3.1 with sp2, anyone else?
It is ok if without using SI.

Compuware already released an updated OSINFO.DAT which supports SP2. Grab it here:

ftp://ftp.compuware.com/pub/driverstudio/outgoing/OsInfo/OSINFO.DAT

and replace the old one in c:\windows\system32\drivers.

Originally Posted by tAz

i'm interested in the memory protection features of SP2, do you guys know of any link where tests (and results) were made regarding this? (e.g. testing slammer, codered, or even simple BOF code)

I think that even if this is implemented, some viruses will still be able to circumvent it, since it's not forced by the MMU (Memory Management Unit) of the corresponding CPU platform. I think only until this kind of protection fully implemented "in very close relation" to hardware such as the NX bit of the 64-bit's AMD CPUs (AFAIK Intel is implementing the NX bit) this will become an effective solution for the BOF attack.