Microsoft, HP ready XP SP3 endless-reboot patches Help is ON the way for The Endless Reboot Monster

Well it looks like help might be on the way for those of us that got hit by The Endless Reboot Monster that owners of HP Computers with AMD chipsets were having.

Help is on its way for users affected by the Windows XP Service Pack (SP) 3 endless-reboot problem that has plagued some users for the past week-plus.

Both Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard are readying patches that should remedy the glitch, which seems to affect primarily users of AMD-based systems.

Microsoft blamed OEMs who improperly placed a Windows XP image created for Intel-based machine on non-Intel-based systems.

HP is advising users running XP on AMD-based systems to delay deploying SP3 until the company releases a patch, which sounds like it is due out this week or next at the latest. From a May 15 report in Computerworld:

“HP is working diligently with Microsoft on a software update and will be proactively distributing a patch this week through HP Update that will prevent this error from occurring….The patch will be posted to this page of HP’s support site when it’s available.

“Microsoft is also developing a prerequisite fix that must be downloaded before SP3 will automatically install prior to its proactive distribution of SP3,” HP statement added.”

Microsoft XP SP 3 The Reboot Monster

I'm not a High tech person, I'm pretty simple really and not very demanding all I want is for something to work properly. I tried installing SP 3 on My AMD machine. I read all the paperwork on known issues and thought I was safe, needless to say I was not.

I ended up getting the endless reboot monster. I was lucky though I was able to get into a safe mode where I could do a restore some people are not even able to do that! Now I'm spending hours fixing everything reinstalling security fixes and that does not even cover my losses.

I'm sick and tired of Microsoft putting out things that break your computer at what point should they be held financially liable? My thoughts are the only time we are going to see them take responsibility is when it Hurts their pocket book.

I'm going to take a wait and see approach though, as I know Microsoft is Blaming HP for using an alleged disk image that was only to be used for Intel machines, but I think Hp is saying Microsoft put in an unnecessary driver that is causing the crashes either way I'm one ticked off customer. I also don't think this is an isolated event please take the time to report your problems with Microsofts XP SP 3 here. You will also find some links below to some helpful info.

Jespers Blog

Steps to take before you install Windows XP Service Pack 3

The Gozi Strikes Back ( Russian Gozi Trojan powering massive ID-theft ring)

I have just taken two points from the article below "Users state-of-the-art, modularized Trojan code" " Launch attacks through Internet Explorer browser exploits"

Now if you read The article it's rather scary, that all that information was being gathered and put up for sale and even might still be up. When is Microsoft going to take security seriously?

Even with Vista that was delayed a year, has bugs up the gazooo, one reason why a lot of Business are reluctant to jump on board.

My advice stay with XP and try and make sure you can be as secure as you can be. Remember though, even then you could still be prone to attacks as long as Windows chooses to make security a lower priority. Let me know what you think? Are you tired of this? What Should Microsoft Do?

Russian (Gozi) Trojan powering massive ID-theft ring by ZDNet's Ryan Naraine -- Researchers at SecureWorks have stumbled upon what appears to be a massive identity theft ring using state-of-the-art Trojan code to steal confidential data from thousands of infected machines in the U.S. The Trojan, which connects to a server in Russia, has so far pilfered information from more than 5,200 home computers with 10,000 account records. The [...]

WINDOWS THE TWILIGHT ZONE

I have thought about this for about a day, as I did not want this to be just another among endless Windows rants. I finally decided to write about it as some thoughts came to me that I hope people might like to add their opinion too.

I'm using Windows XP SP2, my problem developed yesterday, when I tried to play a game. I received an error message that the driver binkw32.dll could not be found. I thought to myself Ok this should be easy to fix as I had the driver. I put the driver in the locations I thought it should go, I'm no computer expert, though I can find my way around. This is where some fun began, I got an error message saying the driver was in the wrong location and that it had to be located in another location, I can not remember where now as it's probably a side effect of hours spent trouble shooting.

The funny thing is this would have been so simple if the error message said along with it being in the wrong folder the location and how to find the proper folder that it needed to be in. This to me is just common sense why can't Windows get it?

Needless to say I did get the problem fixed, though I had to do a complete system restore, as I could not find where to put the driver, that seemed to be the easiest fix. This though caused me to lose hours of time that I will never get back re-downloading all the security patches and re-installing anti-virus and so on. So I had a thought how many people have lost time and productivity to Windows bugs? This is where things get fun hopefully if you decide to participate in this informal survey. How many Hours Have you lost trying to fix Windows bugs? Please leave your estimate in the comments section.

Also, to get the ball rolling here is my estimate of lost time With Windows, I think I have lost about 400hrs of time to Windows probably more , but I'm trying to be conservative. I started out with Windows 98 SE so I'm including all the time spent with all versions of windows.

So please in ending let me know how much time have you lost to the twilight zone that is called Windows?

McAfee, Symantec and vested interests

I found this to be an interesting article, as I do find it strange they want to hide the kernel so to speak and I'm really not sure why this guy supports that. It's my opinion that having something open makes it more secure, because more people get a chance to attack it and find ways to fix it.

Is it just me or does anyone see the irony in that Microsoft has had years of lax security that helped create the industry's that help protect those breaches, now late into the game Microsoft comes out with it's Onecare product line. So you have a company that is selling something that is flawed, and now are selling you the product to fix those flaws, anyone see a conflict of interest there?

http://blogs.zdnet.com/carroll/?p=1611&tag=nl.e622

McAfee, Symantec and vested interests Posted by John Carroll @ 9:25 am
Digg This!

Vested interests often force governments to continue with policies that are counter-productive, if not downright negative. Examples aren't hard to find. Even if congress had the will to confront the vested interests that protect all the various deductions in the US tax code and create something that is clean and simple, truckloads of lobbying dollars would be spent by tax preparation companies to block the changes. Mandatory minimum sentencing laws are strongly supported by the private companies that build and maintain many of America's prisons, even as those laws swell America's prison population to levels not typically found in nominally "free" nations. Likewise, the DEA and companies that support them can be expected to fight against any attempts to stop America's futile war on drugs, a war that sends Bolivian leaders into the arms of Hugo Chavez, funds both sides in Colombia's civil war (think Al Capone times 1 million) and provides a steady stream of cash to Afghani insurgents through sale of poppies - the raw material used in heroin.

Though Symantec and McAfee lobbying the EC on behalf of their ability to hook the Windows kernel doesn't wreak as much havoc as these other vested interests, as an instance of business interests using government to warp policy in selfish directions, it falls into the same category. This smells of companies trying to preserve the flaws in a product upon which they have built their businesses. Really, does anyone in these forums WANT third parties to have access to the Windows kernel? The fact that no one does is why McAfee/Symantec aren't trying to defend the inherent value of such access and opt instead for the "futility" argument. The core of the argument is that PatchGuard won't work and that hackers will find workarounds that McAfee will have to ride in and fix for Microsoft. Essentially, there's no point in Microsoft trying to protect the kernel because they will never make it bulletproof, anyway. Following that reasoning to its logical conclusion, Microsoft shouldn't bother to alter its software development processes so as to emphasize secure coding techniques, given that perfection is impossible, and from a business standpoint, deprives Symantec and McAfee of the opportunity to protect consumers from the consequences of those flaws. As noted, I'm not seeing many in ZDNet Talkbacks rushing to defend McAfee and Symantec in their quest, probably because they DON'T WANT Symantec and McAfee to have that kind of access.

If McAfee and Symantec want to do something useful, they should build products that help to to enforce the kernel protections represented by PatchGuard. What they should NOT be doing is trying to prevent Microsoft from locking down the kernel in the first place. People really should read this blog post by Stephen Toulouse, a program manager in Microsoft's Security Technology unit, as it clarifies considerably the situation as it pertains to kernel hooking past, present and future. http://www.stepto.com/default/log/displaylog1.aspx?ID=258

Some useful excerpts…

Regarding Microsoft's past encouragement of kernel hooks: Wrong. For the implementation of the 32 bit kernel of Windows, there existed undocumented and unsupported system hooks into the kernel. Their use was frowned upon, even inside Microsoft. It's simply not a safe practice to utilize these interfaces into the kernel. Regarding the termination of support for kernel hooks being something that is "new:" Wrong.

Kernel Patch Protection was implemented almost 2 years ago in Windows XP x64 edition and Windows Server 2003 x64 edition. Regarding supposed "insecurity" resulting from a ban on kernel hooks: What security vendors are misrepresenting, is that only through unrestricted access to modify the kernel at the highest level of privilege can they protect you.Of course, the referenced blog predates Microsoft's decision to enable in some as of yet undetermined fashion a means by which to enable kernel hooking "in a secure fashion."

On that note, consider the perils of such an approach as explained at the end of Mr. Toulouse's blog. First, you grant one, pretty soon you have to grant thousands. That's how many people are out there using these undocumented, unsupported interfaces into the kernel.

Second, the more exceptions you grant, the more you dilute the protection. Attackers will simply morph their attacks to try and mimic the "safelist" to get an exception – this may be as simple as malicious software “bundling” third party software in order to disable the protection.

Third, because the OS was still designed to be run with the unmodified kernel, you still have the problem of code running at highest possible privilege crashing the system or causing performance problems.

Fourth, by granting an exception list you introduce a huge performance problem into the kernel, as you force it to check a safelist with every single operation.

Fifth, how would the logistics for adding and removing exceptions work? Would it only be done in software updates? Service Packs? Would someone sue because we weren't fast enough implementing them into a safelist?

That last issue is particularly worrisome for Microsoft, and constitutes the problem with selectively allowing people to have access to the kernel. If McAfee and Symantec get access, you can expect most security companies to want comparable access, and once that happens, the question becomes: how big do you have to be to have access? Pandora's box, truly.

Like prison construction companies encouraging policies that lock up as many people as possible (let's not call them prisoners; let's call them "customers"), McAfee and Symantec are trying to encourage an architecture that "needs" the fixes of a McAfee and Symantec. In so doing, they show how self-interest and government controls over software design collide to create "solutions" that have little to do with benefitting consumers.

Zero Day

Here is an article about even more security flaws in XP. I really don't understand how Microsoft can come out with operating systems that are so prone to problems like this.

Microsoft releases 6 patches for flaws

October 12, 2006 - 12:16PM

Microsoft has released six patches to fix software flaws that carry its highest threat rating, including three for defects that attackers were already trying to exploit.
The company said all six of the critical flaws could allow an attacker to obtain some access to other people's computers.

The software maker also released four other patches to fix vulnerabilities that the company deemed less severe.
Customers can download all the patches for free on Microsoft's security website and also can sign up to have them automatically delivered to their computers. The automatic update system went down for several hours on Tuesday, but the problem was later resolved.
Microsoft said last month that it knew attackers were already trying to take advantage of defects in its Windows operating system, Microsoft Word software and PowerPoint presentation program.

Christopher Budd, a program manager with the Microsoft Security Resource Centre, said that the company had seen limited attacks exploiting the flaws, but were nevertheless recommending that users apply those and other patches immediately.
Such vulnerabilities are rare. In most cases, security experts quietly provide Microsoft evidence of a security flaw, allowing the company to fix the problem in secret and release a patch before attackers can take advantage of it.
But recently, the company has been hit with a number of so-called "zero-day" attacks, in which flaws are targeted before Microsoft is aware of them or can release patches.
Such attacks have prompted some security researchers to release their own interim fixes. Microsoft also has occasionally taken the unusual step of releasing patches outside of its normal monthly fix schedule, so users can be safeguarded more quickly.

Budd said Microsoft isn't seeing any specific pattern to the burst of zero-day attacks. But he said the company is seeing more focus on attackers trying to infiltrate computers through applications - such as Word or PowerPoint - rather than the Windows operating system.
Microsoft software is a constant target of internet attackers, in part because the company's products are so widely used.
Microsoft has yet to release a patch for one other publicly known flaw - one affecting the Internet Explorer browser that is part of its Windows operating system. Budd said the company was seeing very few attacks as a result of the flaw.

AP

MicroSoft We Share Your Pain

It's a bit old but still funny, if only they really did feel our pain.

WSYP Project:
"We Share Your Pain"



Now I am all for increasing the connection
between Microsoft's customers and the software product
teams...especially, the individual developer.

So, if you've ever wondered what happens when
you press the Send Error Report button after an application failure,
you need to watch the four minute video!

We Feel Your Pain