[ale] OT: A funny one from Computerworld on XP SP2

Irv Mullins irvm at ellijay.com
Mon Aug 23 10:11:45 EDT 2004


On Monday 23 August 2004 08:45, Matthew Brown wrote:
> I cut-and-pasted this one from the ComputerWorld site.  It is in the
> middle of the article on Windows XP SP2, discussing the benefits of
> SP2's new networking security:
>
>     * Protection against DoS attacks
>
>       SP2 should help significantly with denial-of-service (DoS) attacks
>       caused by buffer overflows
>      
> <http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,82920,0
>0.html>, when too much data is sent to an application's temporary storage
> area -- sometimes causing that excess data to act as executable code. One
> of the most popular DoS exploits, buffer overflows will now be prevented
> from executing commands and will shut down
>       systems instead. It's an inconvenience that's worth the peace of
>       mind that no code can be launched and the device won't be further
>       damaged.

Typical Microsoft 'solution'. All your work will go bye-bye, but that's a 
small price to pay "to prevent further damage" :)

"ABORT, RETRY, IGNORE" offered two too many options for the average computer 
user, so they went to just plain "ABORT" with Windows. Now they've dropped 
the "ABORT" option as well.  Jeez.

Irv



More information about the Ale mailing list