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A comment on Microsoft Issues WanaCrypt Patch for Windows 8, XP. Parent comment

Re:Microsoft Issues WanaCrypt Patch for Windows 8, XP by pjmlp on Saturday May 13, 2017 @08:47AM (#14330687)
> I think most C libraries are binary backwards compatible. But even if not, you could just use the old C library for that application and it should work - I don't see why it should not.

If dynamic linking was used, the entry points might have been moved, the syscalls have changed, bugs are were being taken advantage of were fixed.

If static linking, the calls into the kernel might have changed or data read from /etc, /dev or other type of expectations from target OS.

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Re:Microsoft Issues WanaCrypt Patch for Windows 8, XP by 4ad on Monday May 15, 2017 @06:41AM (#14340532)
> If static linking, the calls into the kernel might have changed or data read from /etc, /dev or other type of expectations from target OS.

No, Linux takes binary compatibility seriously. I can run statically linked binaries from 1992 on a modern system just fine.

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Re:Microsoft Issues WanaCrypt Patch for Windows 8, XP by pjmlp on Monday May 15, 2017 @07:21AM (#14340718)
I doubt it very much, specially since ELF was not even a thing in 1992 distributions with kernel versions still in the 0.x.y range.

ELF was being slowly introduced in 1994, with Slackware 2.0 being one of the first distributions to support it.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/1059

So I really really doubt you can pick a static executable compiled against kernel 0.x.y, using a.out format and execute it in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS as example.

Actually, I just need to take the dust out of my Walnut Creek CD's to prove my point.

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Re:Microsoft Issues WanaCrypt Patch for Windows 8, XP by 4ad on Monday May 15, 2017 @07:55AM (#14340856)
You can run a.out executables on Linux just fine. Not sure if Ubuntu ships with a.out support or not, but that is really irrelevant.
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Re:Microsoft Issues WanaCrypt Patch for Windows 8, XP by pjmlp on Monday May 15, 2017 @08:09AM (#14340922)
Nice how you avoided the issue of running code targeted for 0.98.1 (latest kernel release in 1992) against kernel 4.4.z.

Not to mention how disparate the file system structure, including device drivers, of something like Yggdrasil Linux 1.0 is compared with modern distributions.

As I said, easily verified by dusting off Walnut Creek CD's and picking a random binary from them.

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