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Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

retrocomputing.stackexchange.com

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Re: Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

#101

Post by mmis1000 »

SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #95
smolder wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overclocking was fun, but I'm also glad modern CPUs can precisely control clocks and voltages to make use of what used to be safety margin.

Yeah, today it is even more fun. I underclocked my alder lake, now it consumes 10% less power at 100% load.

Some recent processor has even more ridiculous curve, you can even get 80% performance with half power usage. Or even 1/2 performance with 1/4 power. Recent amd/intel processor has the habit to push the frequency to heat envelope (in other word, overclocked to the extreme by default) instead of a proper frequency with sane power usage.

Re: Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

#102

Post by hornban »

mywittyname wrote: post #80
ok123456 wrote: post #66

I knew this CPUID thing was a bad idea.

I find it humorous that the Windows developers felt the need to put add a "trustworthiness" section in the struct.

Actually, that kind of thing makes a lot of sense to me and I think it's a good idea. I've read so many stories about hardware with bogus ACPI and EDID data causing problems with Linux support over the years. It seems to me that Linux tends to treat hardware information as always correct, whereas Windows is far less trusting and has information about device-specific bugs. The result is that while things tend to work out-of-the-box on Windows, they require far more tinkering on Linux.

Re: Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

#103

Post by justsid »

queuebert wrote: post #98
red_admiral wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My math professor used to say there are two kinds of problems: easy ones, and ones you don't understand yet.

Unsurprisingly the mathematician ignores real world problems: problems we understand but can't be bothered to solve (e.g. hunger, poverty, climate, etc.).

They are all easy to solve if it weren’t for social inertia though. It’s not like there is a fundamental law requiring poverty to exist, we know exactly what is causing these issues and have the resources to deal with them. We just don’t want the inconvenience of it.

Re: Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

#104

Post by pjgalbraith »

H8crilA wrote: post #32
pjgalbraith wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He does mention a bit more in a hidden comment: "NTOSKRNL.EXE + debug symbols + IDA helped me understand how the remote break-in is supposed to work. I knew that something in the remote break-in code path before the first debug packet is sent is going to reboot my machine. So I patched "JMP SHORT $" instructions into the relevant code-path. If I placed it before the crash point, the machine hangs. If I placed it afte…

Not sure why this is downvoted, the comment is on point. Is it because it is partly gpt-generated content? I wonder if patching memory worked in the debugger, if not this would have to be done by manually editing the kernel file with IDA or something, and rebooting the machine. But in either case this is a good way to find the problem.

I added the ChatGPT explanation after the fact because I thought some readers might not have the background to understand the original explanation and I could vouch for its accuracy.

Honestly didn't expect it to cause such a backlash in this forum...

Re: Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

#105

Post by keepamovin »

technothrasher wrote: post #94
switchbak wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I look back to the computers before my time - the PET's and such, and I think it'd be fun to play with them. Or maybe an old IRIX box. But a 486?? That brings back too many memories of blue screens and waiting forever because we couldn't afford memory and was thus swapping to disk. Still too soon for me, I suppose.

I went back and booted my old Indigo from back in the day, as well as an old Sun 3/80 recently. It wasn't as great as I expected it to be, and all the annoyances from when I used to do actual work on them came flooding back quickly. Nostalgia is a heck of a drug. I still reserve the PET as a perfect machine because 1) it's the first machine I really used as a kid, and 2) I haven't yet been foolish enough to try and g…

Ha ha ha ha these ‘confessions’ read like a retro computing anonymous group.

Re: Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

#106

Post by keepamovin »

SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #93
keepamovin wrote: post #54

Ah, the retro-computing rabbit hole. Harmlessly divorced from any real-world consequences, but truly satisfying nonetheless. A real honey trap for nerds. I just had to click that 6 more comments expander

Well, the material in the article is borderline relevant today too.

Thanks for reminding me of that classic Madonna hit

Re: Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

#107

Post by hestefisk »

Dwedit wrote: post #96
H8crilA wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when Win95 could be crashed or even rooted just by pinging it the right way? We really have come a long way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping_of_death I also remember SMB vulnerabilities that stayed unpatched for years on some machines. That was already when Metasploit existed, so you could inject VNC into most Windows hosts on local network with just a few commands. These days at least the patching is sup…

My favorite 'thing' for historical windows was that accessing "C:\con\con" was an instant BSOD (Even over file sharing, or even over an image URL pointing to "file://C:/con/con")

Yeah or a JavaScript location href = …

Re: Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

#108

Post by naveen99 »

queuebert wrote: post #98
red_admiral wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My math professor used to say there are two kinds of problems: easy ones, and ones you don't understand yet.

Unsurprisingly the mathematician ignores real world problems: problems we understand but can't be bothered to solve (e.g. hunger, poverty, climate, etc.).

Hunger is not a problem, it’s a useful sense.

Poverty also not a problem, just a definition (bottom 10-20% producers).

Climate also not a problem. Just the reality of humans paper clipping finite resources. algae did the same thing when it took co2 from 99% of atmosphere down to less than 1%. Now it’s the algae left arm wrestling the human left.

Re: Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

#109

Post by smolsky »

H8crilA wrote: post #19
tzahifadida wrote: post #5

I build a port check way back to determine if services are up. It crashed half the company by simply opening a few tcp ports to the machines. Ridiculous days :)

Remember when Win95 could be crashed or even rooted just by pinging it the right way? We really have come a long way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping_of_death I also remember SMB vulnerabilities that stayed unpatched for years on some machines. That was already when Metasploit existed, so you could inject VNC into most Windows hosts on local network with just a few commands. These days at least the patching is sup…

LOL, I remember compiling a tiny C program that sent a TCP packet to NT 4.0 to trigger a hang...

Re: Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

#110

Post by efreak »

dboreham wrote: post #62
Circuitstorm513 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earlier versions of Windows (98? 95?) also used to share things like drives (C$, D$) and printers with the dial-up connection by default. I remember connecting to a printer of a classmate over the internet and printing a page, to his surprise. All you needed was the IP, which was trivial to get from ICQ, back in the days.

There was a time when you could SMB mount shares from servers at MS over the public internet (and e.g. do things like download alphas and betas that were not visible on the ftp server).

\\live.sysinternals.com can still be mounted as a network drive, according to https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/
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