{OT} time to dump 98 / ME

[*ProteanThread*]

Microsoft has encountered a critical vulnerability in Windows 98, 98 SE
and Windows Me that it simply cannot fix, the company acknowledged
Friday. The flaw affects Windows Explorer and after investigating the
issue, Microsoft said it would need to reengineer a significant amount
of the operating system.


http://tinyurl.com/gocpk

 

[bily]

I use 98SE+IE6 and I dont plan to dump it. After some XP experience I
feel 98SE is the last OS that do what __I__ want, not what __THEY__
want. In my opinion this is the purely marketings info. The day later
Vista will come, you'll see the copy of the above about XP.

 

[Man-wai Chang]

I use 98SE+IE6 and I dont plan to dump it. After some XP experience I
feel 98SE is the last OS that do what __I__ want, not what __THEY__
want. In my opinion this is the purely marketings info. The day later
Vista will come, you'll see the copy of the above about XP.

But it still couldn't explain why the general public tolerates M$ to
keep rewriting the OS without much quality and security guaranteed.

--
.~. Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY. http://www.linux-sxs.org
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (Ubuntu 6.06) Linux 2.6.16.20
^ ^ 16:35:01 up 9 days 2:18 0 users load average: 1.03 1.03 1.00
news://news.3home.net news://news.hkpcug.org news://news.newsgroup.com.hk

 

[John Jay Smith]

I don't like this.. now when vista is coming out all of a sudden they find
this
unfixable flaw?

Microsoft is playing a dirty game here....

They know that there is a great number of people who wont upgrade of change
their computers
because they still have win98/me and it does what they need.

How can they increase sales? Scare everyone into
upgrading-updating-purchasing new vista machines!

 

[Rene]

Microsoft has encountered a critical vulnerability in Windows 98, 98 SE
and Windows Me that it simply cannot fix, the company acknowledged
Friday. The flaw affects Windows Explorer and after investigating the
issue, Microsoft said it would need to reengineer a significant amount
of the operating system.

The only thing You have to do is close port 139. Or off course switch to
Vista when it appears to have all the latest vulnerabilities... ;-).

Greetings,
Rene

 

[d12s34f56]

Microsoft has encountered a critical vulnerability in Windows 98, 98 SE
and Windows Me that it simply cannot fix, the company acknowledged
Friday. The flaw affects Windows Explorer and after investigating the
issue, Microsoft said it would need to reengineer a significant amount
of the operating system.


http://tinyurl.com/gocpk

Why? I personally haven't been using 9x for a couple of years, but why
dump it now after it has become a legacy OS, true, there maybe a few
vulnerabilities Microsoft can't or won't fix, but there are always
vulnerabilities on 9x/xp/2003/linux/Mac OS, it's not like many
virus-writers out there who are actively trying to exploit 98's
vulnerabilities, you know, who want to spend time and effort targeting
such an old system? As long as it can do its job and your work, stick
with it.

 

[Ross]

I use 98SE+IE6 and I dont plan to dump it. After some XP experience I
feel 98SE is the last OS that do what __I__ want, not what __THEY__
want. In my opinion this is the purely marketings info. The day later
Vista will come, you'll see the copy of the above about XP.

You just need to ensure TCP ports 136 and 445 are blocked by your
firewall. This is the work-around to the Windows Explorer exploit.

 

[meow2222]

Microsoft has encountered a critical vulnerability in Windows 98, 98 SE
and Windows Me that it simply cannot fix, the company acknowledged
Friday. The flaw affects Windows Explorer and after investigating the
issue, Microsoft said it would need to reengineer a significant amount
of the operating system.

why do some take this seriously? All versions of ms's Windows OSes are
riddled with security flaws, this is why we have antiviruses,
firewalls, hadrware AV chips, trojan scanners and so on.


NT

 

[Luis Cobian]

*ProteanThread* wrote:


why do some take this seriously? All versions of ms's Windows OSes are

Correction. All versions of ALL OS are full of bugs. Some *seem* to have
more due to their incredible popularity and propagation. ;-)

 

[DS 007]

Microsoft has encountered a critical vulnerability in Windows 98, 98 SE
and Windows Me that it simply cannot fix, the company acknowledged
Friday. The flaw affects Windows Explorer and after investigating the
issue, Microsoft said it would need to reengineer a significant amount
of the operating system.


http://tinyurl.com/gocpk

So, Protean Thread, you cut and paste some info that has absolutely
NOTHING to do with alt.comp.freeware, and you cannot even make your own
"informed" comment about the topic ? Why bother ? Go get a life !

My comment .... methinks that there are LESS "real life
vulnerabilities" in a suitably PATCHED and REINFORCED (well protected)
9x series version of Windows than in NT/XP/Vista.

Less code to hack, a smaller 'audience' ... why would the hackers still
bother ?

My own experience ..... 98FE/98SE/ME , same machine since 99 ..... not
a single worm/virus/trojan. And believe me, I surf all sorta sites that
supposedly 'infect' ya.


Care to comment PT, or are you just a cut and paste merchant ?

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Correction. All versions of ALL OS are full of bugs. Some seem to
have more due to their incredible popularity and propagation. ;-)

Hi Luis!


Not to praise MS too much again. I was already amazed about NT 4.0, but
NT 5.1 is mucking even less! A great intel(and compatible)-based OS,
IMO. Windows 95, or even DOS is great, too!



Best Regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[John Jay Smith]

Hey ProtenThread has always posted good stuff.... he is entitled to post
some (ot) from time to time....

I find this news interesting.... I am glad he posted it here.

Posting news without a comment IS a valid action in a NEWSgroup!

 

[John Corliss]

Microsoft has encountered a critical vulnerability in Windows 98, 98 SE
and Windows Me that it simply cannot fix, the company acknowledged
Friday. The flaw affects Windows Explorer and after investigating the
issue, Microsoft said it would need to reengineer a significant amount
of the operating system.

http://tinyurl.com/gocpk

PT, this is a link to a post which was made by somebody to a tech site.
I would be far more interested in a link to a really for real MS website
with this kind of info. This page though, merely contains what I would
consider to be heresay.

Along these lines though, I note that MS just made EIGHT "Critical
Updates" available for XP. What these updates really do, who can be
sure? I'm still undecided about whether or not I will install them
because I simply don't trust Microsoft enough to believe that they won't
start sabotaging XP in order to drive people away from it and into the
....warm ...loving arms of Vista.

--
Regards from John Corliss
I don't reply to trolls like Andy Mabbett or Doc (who uses sock puppets)
for instance. No adware, cdware, commercial software, crippleware,
demoware, nagware, PROmotionware, shareware, spyware, time-limited
software, trialware, viruses or warez for me, please.

 

[RGreen]

I'm still undecided about whether or not I will install them because I
simply don't trust Microsoft enough to believe that they won't start
sabotaging XP

Let me ask you, why are you using a system you don't trust? There are a
lot of alternative, believ me.

 

[*ProteanThread*]

techtree always had some good posts. you'll find a similiar post on
cnet. if you notice, that one 95 is not listed so its more an IE issue
than a 98 or ME issue (95 doesn't use the desktop enahncements be
default where 98 and ME do) and it affects the 9x kernal only, not the
NT kernal.

 

[ms]

Microsoft has encountered a critical vulnerability in Windows 98, 98 SE
and Windows Me that it simply cannot fix, the company acknowledged
Friday. The flaw affects Windows Explorer and after investigating the
issue, Microsoft said it would need to reengineer a significant amount
of the operating system.


http://tinyurl.com/gocpk

When I first loaded W98SE years ago, I initially installed only 12
patches for "critical security" issues. No more after that, browsed for
years with no problems (I don't use IE/OE).

After a recent install, I ran W98SE with NO patches for 3 months and the
web environment is certainly more of a risk than it was 4 years ago.
I had no problems, probably due to conservative browsing.

Since then, the computer died, on a W2K/SP4 computer now, but don't plan
to keep loading patches here either.

Fred Langa- MS patches can be a risk, I agree with that.

Mike Sa

 

[Bob Phillips]

Do you know how to do that on a Netgear router Ross, or where I can find
out?

--

HTH

Bob Phillips

(replace xxxx in the email address with gmail if mailing direct)

 

[Bob Phillips]

That's odd, Ross says 136 and 445?

The only thing You have to do is close port 139. Or off course switch to
Vista when it appears to have all the latest vulnerabilities... ;-).

Greetings,
Rene

 

[Bob Phillips]

And he did say {OT} so purists can ignore ...

 

[george1234]

Not to praise MS too much again. I was already amazed about NT 4.0, but
NT 5.1 is mucking even less! A great intel(and compatible)-based OS,
IMO. Windows 95, or even DOS is great, too!

I find w2k pretty stable... Iuse avg, a firewall, a nat router, close
off unused services, and use firefox to keep down the malware