Maximilian
Lifer
- Feb 8, 2004
- 12,604
- 15
- 81
Originally posted by: Soviet
I already moved to vista due to its infinite superiority over windows XP. People still using XP are living in the past, like dinosaurs, they will be left behind and die out.
Jealous? I have veeesta and youuu donnnt nah nah nah nahhhh nah
I disagree with that. Starting with some arbitrary evidence from Symantec's researchand *security* is no advantage with Vista [yet].
Advantage: VistaAnalyzing the results
Approximately 2,000 unique instances of malicious code were executed during the life of this project.
...
On average, about seventy percent of the malicious code executed under Windows Vista loaded successfully and executed without a crash or runtime error. Note that malicious code is always looking to latch on to another process, bind to a local port, or modify system critical files; thus, identifying a successful execution does not indicate it fully compromised the victim host. Out of the seventy percent that were able to execute, only about six percent of the samples were able to accomplish a full compromise and an even smaller number (four percent) were able to survive a reboot. The rest did not execute properly due to incompatibility, unhandled exceptions, or security restrictions.
Originally posted by: apoppin
i just saw your post, mechBgon, and noted that *someone* above or in another thread ADVISED turning OFF the UAC for being a nuisance
:Q
that'll help security
unfortunately i think many users will disable it
I sure wish the AnandTech.com article on Vista would've taken more of that tone Help help, my new car has airbags and seatbelts! An outrage!Originally posted by: Mem
Originally posted by: apoppin
i just saw your post, mechBgon, and noted that *someone* above or in another thread ADVISED turning OFF the UAC for being a nuisance
:Q
that'll help security
unfortunately i think many users will disable it
UAC only took me about a week to get use to it,what's the hassle with an extra click?....nothing really .
Originally posted by: Mem
Originally posted by: apoppin
i just saw your post, mechBgon, and noted that *someone* above or in another thread ADVISED turning OFF the UAC for being a nuisance
:Q
that'll help security
unfortunately i think many users will disable it
UAC only took me about a week to get use to it,what's the hassle with an extra click?....nothing really .
Originally posted by: HomeAppraiser
The only reason I moved from Win98 was the security holes in it. My appraisal software finally upgraded from 16 bit to 32 bit in 2004 and I don't see them upgrading any time soon. If my sons junior high school makes the move to Vista, then I will bump his machine up to 2GB and take the plunge, but again I don't see that happening unless Gates or someone gives our school district 1000+ new PCs with Vista
In point of fact, you could run almost any x86 OS inside of Vista, if you want to have your cake and eat it too. Download Virtual PC 2004 (or the 2007 beta if you need to run a VM on Vista), if you want to goof around with it: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspxOriginally posted by: keysplayr2003
Originally posted by: HomeAppraiser
The only reason I moved from Win98 was the security holes in it. My appraisal software finally upgraded from 16 bit to 32 bit in 2004 and I don't see them upgrading any time soon. If my sons junior high school makes the move to Vista, then I will bump his machine up to 2GB and take the plunge, but again I don't see that happening unless Gates or someone gives our school district 1000+ new PCs with Vista
Better hope ACI, Day One or WinTotal don't take their time to support Vista then. I use ACI32 myself. Vista can wait.
Originally posted by: zodder
Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
Originally posted by: zodder
I have a VLK for Vista, so I'll be dual booting it for many months to get familiar with it before it goes company-wide. So at this point, I'm more interested in the business end of it than the gaming/DX10 part of it.
Can you elbaorate a little about the business end advantages of Vista? If there are any advantages. Not clear what they might be. -thanks.
I'm mostly concerned with ease of roll out, integration into a domain, security features and how they interact with active directory, and the general compatibility with legacy devices and OSes. Dry stuff, I know, but that's what they pay me for. It's also why I'm obsessed with WoW. All work and no play makes zodder a dull boy.
Originally posted by: Beachboy
Microsoft is high if they think I am gonna pay them for additional DRM and them having more control over my computer's content.
I see they want to incorporate the X-Box Live system into Vista gaming too. I haven't seen details but something tells me that Microsoft is not going to do this for free and is no doubt hoping to make gamers cough up $50 a year(or maybe only $5 a month ) for them to provide this "service".
I'm not seeing any pro's for the consumer right now outside of a fancier interface and this is not worth $400. I do see several con's. I've never been a Microsoft basher but this new Vista O/S leaves a lot to be desired from where I'm sitting.
Originally posted by: suction
i m thinkin of buyin it but still confused..of which version 2 buy....help me out tell me not so expensive but good version..
I sure wish the AnandTech.com article on Vista would've taken more of that tone Help help, my new car has airbags and seatbelts! An outrage!
*/me slaps ViRGE around a bit with a large Trout*
As a person who studies the security scene on a daily basis, I think you are somewhat too confident about your l33t ability to avoid danger. Normally-safe websites can be hacked and turned malicious, it happens all the time. The official Dolphins Stadium site, Asus's site, CircuitCity's site, my former employer's site, possibly AnandTech.com at one point... hmmmm? Need some more? How about spreadfirefox, debian.org, and The Register. More? How about Neowin, Capital City Bank, Wakulla Bank, and Premier Bank.Originally posted by: Aikouka
I sure wish the AnandTech.com article on Vista would've taken more of that tone Help help, my new car has airbags and seatbelts! An outrage!
*/me slaps ViRGE around a bit with a large Trout*
There's a difference... no matter how good of a driver you are, things can happen. However, being a decent "PC'er", you can avoid just about any issue, except exploits where there's no patch to fix (which technically a firewall may've stopped it anyway ).
I turned off UAC, it was annoying and I don't need it to ask me, "Do you really wanna open the System Control Panel when you clicked on a link from another Vista control applet?" Of fricken course I do! I clicked it didn't I?
I get more annoyed by the graphical issue that I mentioned earlier that stems from UAC graying the screen. Also, it seems nVidia DIDN'T fix the graphic issue in their driver. I'm so tempted to throw in my 6800GT just so I can play a game and a video at the same time (without the PC locking up 10 seconds or more into the video). Unfortunately, Microsoft's new graphic driver model doesn't stop the PC from going to hell either.
EDIT: Fixed the quotes
Originally posted by: mechBgon
As a person who studies the security scene on a daily basis, I think you are somewhat too confident about your l33t ability to avoid danger. Normally-safe websites can be hacked and turned malicious, it happens all the time. The official Dolphins Stadium site, Asus's site, CircuitCity's site, my former employer's site, possibly AnandTech.com at one point... hmmmm? Need some more? How about spreadfirefox, debian.org, and The Register. More? How about Neowin, Capital City Bank, Wakulla Bank, and Premier Bank.
Waiting for your AV program to complain before you decide you have a problem is not safe either. I have a nice collection of Zlob trojans that really drive that point home... it's a little distressing to see how poorly some AV companies detect them. Even Kaspersky, with 24 updates a day and ruthless prosecution of Zlob, still has a de facto in-the-wild detection rate of only about 70%, due to the time lag between discover and delivery of signature updates.Originally posted by: Aikouka
Originally posted by: mechBgon
As a person who studies the security scene on a daily basis, I think you are somewhat too confident about your l33t ability to avoid danger. Normally-safe websites can be hacked and turned malicious, it happens all the time. The official Dolphins Stadium site, Asus's site, CircuitCity's site, my former employer's site, possibly AnandTech.com at one point... hmmmm? Need some more? How about spreadfirefox, debian.org, and The Register. More? How about Neowin, Capital City Bank, Wakulla Bank, and Premier Bank.
Mmm nope, never had a problem. Only thing I've ever had an AV program complain about was a program I specifically downloaded to monitor net traffic on my own NIC (to find out what port a program was using).
Originally posted by: mechBgon
Waiting for your AV program to complain before you decide you have a problem is not safe either. I have a nice collection of Zlob trojans that really drive that point home... it's a little distressing to see how poorly some AV companies detect them. Even Kaspersky, with 24 updates a day and ruthless prosecution of Zlob, still has a de facto in-the-wild detection rate of only about 70%, due to the time lag between discover and delivery of signature updates.Originally posted by: Aikouka
Originally posted by: mechBgon
As a person who studies the security scene on a daily basis, I think you are somewhat too confident about your l33t ability to avoid danger. Normally-safe websites can be hacked and turned malicious, it happens all the time. The official Dolphins Stadium site, Asus's site, CircuitCity's site, my former employer's site, possibly AnandTech.com at one point... hmmmm? Need some more? How about spreadfirefox, debian.org, and The Register. More? How about Neowin, Capital City Bank, Wakulla Bank, and Premier Bank.
Mmm nope, never had a problem. Only thing I've ever had an AV program complain about was a program I specifically downloaded to monitor net traffic on my own NIC (to find out what port a program was using).
If you're expecting modern malware to wave a big sign in your face saying IM IN UR PUTER STEALIN UR KEYSTROKEZ LOL then you need to read a few thousand virus descriptions at Symantec, NAI and other security vendors. The best (or worst) malware lies low and does its thing. Rustock.B is a general wake-up call as to just how far the bad guys are prepared to go (so far). This one looks interesting too: Hacktool.Unreal.A is a proof of concept stealth rootkit that is designed to be invisible to all current rootkit detection technologies
Anyway, you have your mind made up, so good luck. And be careful what site you visit.
A default install of Vista, versus a default install of XP? Absolutely. Can I suggest you read this document, it isn't too long or technical.I appreciate your heavy concern for security and your involvement here. But, do you really believe Vista will be any safer?
I don't want to sound like a broken record, but if you didn't notice my previous post, Vista breaks ~95% of the existing Windows malware used in Symantec's testing. UAC is certainly part of the reason.How long do you think it will take before hackers find untold exploits in Vista? Then we are in the same boat all over again. Until I really see that Vista is as close to bulletproof as you can get, I will be fairly doubtful that it isn't otherwise.
This lady is someone to listen to.Joanna Rutkowska uber security researcher
I would definitely recommend installing Vista rather then XP and if I had to pick just one reason for that it would be the User Account Control (UAC) feature, which effectively eliminates the need to run most of the unnecessary processes with administrator privileges. I know very few people who work as restricted users on their XP machines (because many applications are designed in such a way that they assume administrative rights) and this is very disturbing, because working as an administrator effectively negates any local protection the OS might be able to provide. UAC might not be perfect and we might see some ways to bypass it in the future, but still it's a very important step toward implementing the least-privilege principle in the Windows environment.
There are also many more security improvements in Vista than just UAC, like the anti-exploitation techniques (ASLR, NX) or kernel protection which is based on allowing only digitally signed code to be loaded into kernel (the latter only in the 64 bit version). [gee, wasn't I just trying to tell you guys that?]
Of course, still, some people might argue that it's more likely that one find an exploitable bug in the brand new Vista code (such as in its new network stack) rather then in the "good old" tested XP. But, in fact, no matter how "old" and well tested the operating system is, we still can never be sure that there are no bugs in there - think for example of all the kernel bugs which might be introduced by various 3rd party kernel drivers...
Vista puts much more effort, compared to XP, into making exploitation harder and limiting the damage after the unlikely event of successful exploitation.
Originally posted by: mechBgon
A default install of Vista, versus a default install of XP? Absolutely. Can I suggest you read this document, it isn't too long or technical.I appreciate your heavy concern for security and your involvement here. But, do you really believe Vista will be any safer?
I don't want to sound like a broken record, but if you didn't notice my previous post, Vista breaks ~95% of the existing Windows malware used in Symantec's testing. UAC is certainly part of the reason.How long do you think it will take before hackers find untold exploits in Vista? Then we are in the same boat all over again. Until I really see that Vista is as close to bulletproof as you can get, I will be fairly doubtful that it isn't otherwise.
If you're asking about future exploits instead of past ones, that's what UAC is there to put the brakes on. Even if you opt to run as an Admin instead of Standard user, stuff still gets launched with non-Admin privileges, a heavily-proven deterrent even against fully-operational exploits such as the WMF Exploit (see the AntiSource.com Forums > Exploits for my WMF Exploit fact-finding reports, where my use of non-Admin accounts arbitrarily shot down working WMF Exploit attacks, despite my use of a completely-vulnerable test system with no antivirus software).
Here is someone infinitely more qualified than me, so ponder:
This lady is someone to listen to.Joanna Rutkowska uber security researcher
I would definitely recommend installing Vista rather then XP and if I had to pick just one reason for that it would be the User Account Control (UAC) feature, which effectively eliminates the need to run most of the unnecessary processes with administrator privileges. I know very few people who work as restricted users on their XP machines (because many applications are designed in such a way that they assume administrative rights) and this is very disturbing, because working as an administrator effectively negates any local protection the OS might be able to provide. UAC might not be perfect and we might see some ways to bypass it in the future, but still it's a very important step toward implementing the least-privilege principle in the Windows environment.
There are also many more security improvements in Vista than just UAC, like the anti-exploitation techniques (ASLR, NX) or kernel protection which is based on allowing only digitally signed code to be loaded into kernel (the latter only in the 64 bit version). [gee, wasn't I just trying to tell you guys that?]
Of course, still, some people might argue that it's more likely that one find an exploitable bug in the brand new Vista code (such as in its new network stack) rather then in the "good old" tested XP. But, in fact, no matter how "old" and well tested the operating system is, we still can never be sure that there are no bugs in there - think for example of all the kernel bugs which might be introduced by various 3rd party kernel drivers...
Vista puts much more effort, compared to XP, into making exploitation harder and limiting the damage after the unlikely event of successful exploitation.