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

[Robert Heaven]

If I'm reading this right... M$ has now given the hackers a convenient
and easy way to shut down everyone's Winbloze computers...

>From a user's perspective they're now faced with 2 choices:

1. Let the hackers execute malicious code.
2. Let the hackers shut down all the computers at will.

That's not much of a choice. I wonder which one would have the most
impact on a production environment?


On Mon, 2004-08-23 at 10:07, Irv Mullins wrote:

> 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
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