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Windows XP source code has leaked

gizmodo.com.au

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Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#261

Post by aaron695 »

Daniel_sk wrote: post #133
dgellow wrote: post #86

Friendly reminder to use a VPN in the hypothetical case where you would want to download such a leak for _research purpose_.

I think this applies only to US. In EU there is no way you can even enforce those EULA screens at install or prosecute someone for downloading warez (distribution is a different topic).

It's a torrent. So you are a distributor under all common clients.

I'm not sure you can get a client that would distribute nothing. You also have to make sure you don't advertise others in the swarm or any info.

Researchers have done it, not sure how technically.

Why My Printer Received a DMCA Takedown Notice - http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#262

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

dx034 wrote: post #132
bzzzt wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want people to accept forced updates, just send the security fixes. Don't change the UI and don't mess with the users preferences, especially concerning privacy.

Honestly, I've never heard anyone complain apart from tech people. Long reboots are annoying but overall, Windows 10 is pretty well accepted by every non-technical person I know.

What are you talking about? Non-tech people complain all the time about it. Updates deciding to run right before you have to give a critical presentation is a meme at this point.

All this "well, users are stupid so it is ok to treat them like garbage" nonsense is part of the reason I've come to fucking hate IT. I wish all of you who think that way would go away.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#263

Post by dkarl »

w0utert wrote: post #248
hnlmorg wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XP, when it was first released, was a more resource hungry and uglier version of Windows 2000. Win 2000 was amazing when it was released. Games (albeit not DOS ones) worked well, it was stable and really your only other options were worse (Mac OS 9 was less stable than Win 98, ME was a dumpster fire, Linux wasn't quite ready for the desktop and BeOS was awesome but barely supported). Then when XP was released, it had…

Totally my experience as well, Windows 2000 really was the only Windows version I actually liked, it had very few faults for its time. Windows 7 probably comes second. What I remember from XP is that it took until SP2 before all the problems were worked out, and SP3 actually introduced more annoyances in the name of security. I also think the default theme and general visual style of the XP is downright terrible and…

Agreed about the UI. Even at a distance of twenty years, Windows 2000 looks more pleasant and professional. The Windows XP UI managed to be somehow childish in its aesthetic and stressful in its complexity.

Of course every Windows OS eventually gets stable and fast on current hardware, at which point everyone starts praying that they'll get to use it forever and they'll never have to deal with a new major release again.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#264

Post by i_am_proteus »

christophilus wrote: post #257
Piskvorrr wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. When saying "XP was great", people mean "XP SP2 and on" - for me, the move from W2k to WXP was "the same thing, now with Fischer-Price aesthetic!"

> Fischer-Price aesthetic That is the perfect description. It’s one of the ugliest UIs I’ve ever experienced.

XP also shipped with the 2000 skin and it was trivially easy to switch over.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#265

Post by beagle3 »

Aachen wrote: post #253
cududa wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is correct. Back at least in the Vista days each public release had to be passed to the NSA to validate the encryption algorithms and implementation. I’d imagine they poked around a few other parts of the OS

> each public release had to be passed to the NSA That sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory. Any references on this?

The NSA has a dual mandate - to improve security for the US government (and by extension, US businesses to an extent), and to peek into communications outside the US.

They have been pretty negligent about the first (or even malicious about it - e.g. the dual drbg case), letting the second take over - but officially they still have the first mandate.

In fact, DES was considerably strengthened in its day by the NSA review - at that time for reasons not understood by industry or academia. It was later discovered that the change required by the NSA made DES much more resistant to differential cryptanalysis, a technique that was (re)discovered by academic cryptographers much later.

Every “conspiracy” I’ve heard about the NSA and friends turned out to be true, most with definite proof from the Snowden releases.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#266

Post by vultour »

toyg wrote: post #110
SquareWheel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And also, Microsoft claims to love open source so then I guess they'll love how open this source code is now that it's passed around on BitTorrent. One can love open-source and still be against license violations. What a warped world view.

I mean, he uses the term "OG Microsoft source code". He's just a kid.

That's some serious reach.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#267

Post by beagle3 »

segfaultbuserr wrote: post #226
unnouinceput wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's why modern compilers won't have that. It was exactly so the same source, even compiled a second later, it will generate different binary file. I hate it. It was so easy in DOS era - same source, same binary file, easy peasy.

The major variables in modern compilers are just automatic timestamps, exploit mitigation random seeds, and toolchain versions, it is possible to make them immutable. The problem can be fixed, and there are already major projects to address it. Do you know that 90% of the Debian packages are already reproducible [0]? [0] https://isdebianreproducibleyet.com

That’s true. But that may also be a plausible deniability thing - you create a place to hide binary modifications by making sure no two builds are exactly the same.

It could be chalked to some lack of care; however, up until 2000 or so, non reproducible builds were considered a bug in at least two places I worked in. The fact that it has become so hard to make builds reproducible could be Increased “entropy” (because no one cares To fix it) - but it could also be orchestrated by someone with a vested interest.

E.g. - suppose you are a three letter agency, and want to implement a “reflections on trusting trust” attack. Non reproducible builds become a pre-requisite.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#268

Post by MayeulC »

FractalParadigm wrote: post #146
quacksmack wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting looks like theres also Xbox source code in there? Is that old or new? I don't really keep up with the reversing scene

Having not looked at any of the files yet, I wonder if it's just the changes that were made to WinXP for Xbox-use. IIRC throughout its' history the Xbox OS has just been a modified version of whatever version of Windows Microsoft is pushing at the time, with the OG Xbox being based around WinXP. I'm very curious to see more come out as the code is picked apart piece by piece, and whether or not it'll confirm my suspi…

AFAIK, the original XBOX was always based on a heavily stripped-down win2k kernel, and evolved very little. The "API" games used was a jump table to kernel functions, everything ran in kernel-space. I don't know much about later consoles, but I wouldn't be surprised if they used the same generic architecture.

https://xboxdevwiki.net/Kernel that site has quite a bit of info, with ongoing reverse-engineering and clean-room reimplementation projects (reactos, xquemu)

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#269

Post by beagle3 »

tgv wrote: post #48
mindfulhack wrote: post #31

My immediate thought is whether researchers or investigative journalists will find cold hard US government backdoors. This is potentially big.

There have always been rumors about such back doors, but even the public ones, encryption schemes, have never been proven by pure analysis. As far as back doors in code goes, have a look at this: http://underhanded-c.org/ . It's a pity it seems to have been short lived.

“Never been proved” is correct, but this proof is quite a tall order.

Remember, almost everything in the Snowden disclosures was known before snowden - but generally dismissed as “conspiracy theories”.

None if it was proved, until it was.

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