Windows XP source code has leaked

Re:Windows XP source code has leaked by balola on Friday September 25, 2020 @03:32AM (#24587476)

Form my experience, mostly government and state-owned companies, which account for a big part of China's paid software market. Even some Shanghai government systems support only IE6 to 8, some only love IE11.

Most state-owned banks too, popular browsers are all duel-engine. There's little to no incentive to change what's working, and customers experiences don't really matter.

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Re:Windows XP source code has leaked by szhu on Sunday September 27, 2020 @06:23PM (#24610639)

> customers experiences don't really matter

To consider it from a different perspective, perhaps customer experiences matter more in China. Technology in the US is super cool and cutting-edge but the constant shift to new technologies and the rapid deprecation of slightly old software leaves a significant body (perhaps even the majority?) of consumers in the dust.

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Re:Windows XP source code has leaked by Kliment on Friday September 25, 2020 @03:34AM (#24587480)

Industrial equipment control computers mostly - the computer is part of the machine and cannot be upgraded. You see this quite a lot outside China too.

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Re:Windows XP source code has leaked by dx034 on Friday September 25, 2020 @04:03AM (#24587659)

Honest question: Would using Linux have been a better idea then? An old unpatched Win XP has tons of vulnerabilities but so does an unpatched 20 year old Linux Kernel.

Using Windows XP on those devices often gets very bad rep but is there a viable alternative for machines that are air gapped and technically won't be upgradable for several decades?

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Re:Windows XP source code has leaked by tpxl on Friday September 25, 2020 @04:22AM (#24587767)

Remote vulnerabilities don't really matter for air-gapped machines.

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Re:Windows XP source code has leaked by eternalban on Friday September 25, 2020 @04:55AM (#24587935)

"Attacks like Stuxnet, the computer worm deployed against an Iranian nuclear facility a decade ago, shattered the myth that air-gapped systems are impenetrable fortresses."

source: https://www.cyberscoop.com/duo-labs-air-gap-radio-mikhail-da...

Links to: https://duo.com/labs/research/finding-radio-sidechannels

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Re:Windows XP source code has leaked by tpxl on Friday September 25, 2020 @05:32AM (#24588140)

It wasn't really air-gapped if someone plugged an USB in it, was it ;)

I'm aware of the "over the air" methods to _read_ data from air-gapped systems (The blinking hard-drive light!), however I was referring to doing damage to industrial systems running legacy software, where you usually find this (think a big machine with a "terminal" attached to it that just controls the hardware and has no inputs).

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Re:Windows XP source code has leaked by GoblinSlayer on Friday September 25, 2020 @07:04AM (#24588580)

That's exfiltration, not infiltration.

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Re:Windows XP source code has leaked by sumtechguy on Friday September 25, 2020 @09:09AM (#24589293)

At that time using XP was a very viable thing to do. You would pretty much never do it now. Think about it from a business perspective. Something goes wrong in the OS. At that time you would have had to have linux guru on staff to take care of it. OR you could pay 30 bucks for a OEM embedded copy. If something went kinda bonkers you could call microsoft and they would fix it. Their support on things like that is pretty good. At that time getting that sort of support for linux would have been basically nonexistant. Today you could get that kind of support for linux. Back in 2000-2004 it would have been tough. At this point no company is going to re-write the firmware on a machine they sold 20+ years ago unless they happen to be still selling that exact same model and you are paying for some awesome support contract.

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Re:Windows XP source code has leaked by stjohnswarts on Saturday September 26, 2020 @12:38AM (#24596457)

Not if Linux won't run the programs you want to run or you don't have IT staff to get it to run with wine or something. Average users will just "take their chances" if they're behind a firewall and not surfing the web then chances are very low for getting a virus if you glue up the usb ports.

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Re:Windows XP source code has leaked by Kuinox on Friday September 25, 2020 @04:33AM (#24587828)

In the XP days Linux was not seen as a serious things.

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Re:Windows XP source code has leaked by wheresmycraisin on Friday September 25, 2020 @06:06PM (#24594603)

No, there are tons of regular office computers and even home computers that run XP. Industrial computers in China would actually be running fairly up to date OS's compared to, say, US.

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Re:Windows XP source code has leaked by Kliment on Saturday September 26, 2020 @03:23AM (#24597033)

I visited a number of factories in China last year and saw lots of XP on measurement, production and test equipment. All the office desktops were on W7 or W10. I'm sure lots of XP desktops exist, but I didn't see any in the (quite many) offices I passed through. I can't speak about home computers, I only saw a small handful.

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Re:Windows XP source code has leaked by unnouinceput on Friday September 25, 2020 @04:40AM (#24587854)

You'd be surprised how many KIOSK's out there are running XP under the hood. Especially ATM's.

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