XP's retirement will be hacker heaven

[A Guy]

Cyber criminals will bank their Windows XP zero-day vulnerabilities until after Microsoft stops patching the aged operating system next April, a security expert argued today.

Jason Fossen, a trainer for SANS since 1998 and an expert on Microsoft security, said it's simply economics at work.

Source

A Guy

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I'm amazed by the number of people on forums that are convinced that XP will still be safe after its EOL. The number rivals those who believe RAID is a secure backup.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
these sorts of worries are absolutely pointless. If you want to keep using XP -- no problem at all - simply run it as a VM and DON'T CONNECT IT TO THE INTERNET. I'd assume that the XP machine is running legacy applications and Internet access can be provided for in other ways.

If your machine currently can only run XP then simply run it as a stand alone machine - you can share disks if you have to - but the XP machine doesn't need Internet access.

A lot of XP machines are also stand alone computers in places like LABS etc.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[A Guy]

These worries are not pointless as most will not run it in a VM, and will continue to connect to the internet. These are "average" users, who likely don't even keep their systems updated. No one is sayin XP can't be used offline, but that's not how most home users are using them, or will continue to use them. A Guy

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Hi there
these sorts of worries are absolutely pointless. If you want to keep using XP -- no problem at all - simply run it as a VM and DON'T CONNECT IT TO THE INTERNET. I'd assume that the XP machine is running legacy applications and Internet access can be provided for in other ways.

If your machine currently can only run XP then simply run it as a stand alone machine - you can share disks if you have to - but the XP machine doesn't need Internet access.

A lot of XP machines are also stand alone computers in places like LABS etc.

Cheers
jimbo

To quote Ronald Reagan, "There you go again!" Your examples are only limited scenarios where what you say is true. The fact is most home users will be connecting to the internet. All businesses other than possibly some small Mom & Pops have to connect to the internet for banking, contacting vendors, communicating with various branches, etc. yet there are a frightening number that have not upgraded yet. THAT has me seriously worried since my credit/debit cards would be subject to being compromised. I might start using cash for a while after March of next year.

 

[Indianatone]

Hi there
these sorts of worries are absolutely pointless. If you want to keep using XP -- no problem at all - simply run it as a VM and DON'T CONNECT IT TO THE INTERNET. I'd assume that the XP machine is running legacy applications and Internet access can be provided for in other ways.

If your machine currently can only run XP then simply run it as a stand alone machine - you can share disks if you have to - but the XP machine doesn't need Internet access.

A lot of XP machines are also stand alone computers in places like LABS etc.

Cheers
jimbo

To quote Ronald Reagan, "There you go again!" Your examples are only limited scenarios where what you say is true. The fact is most home users will be connecting to the internet. All businesses other than possibly some small Mom & Pops have to connect to the internet for banking, contacting vendors, communicating with various branches, etc. yet there are a frightening number that have not upgraded yet. THAT has me seriously worried since my credit/debit cards would be subject to being compromised. I might start using cash for a while after March of next year.

The major hospital I had my surgery in is still using Windows XP and so is the Surgeons office, and my own regular Doctor. Now these are possibly completely closed systems but there was internet and email access as the nurse was using it one night to email. A good adnin should be able to lock down the system but if the underlying OS is no longer secure????

 

[Wenda]

I'm amazed by the number of people on forums that are convinced that XP will still be safe after its EOL. The number rivals those who believe RAID is a secure backup.

Mine will be, because after EOL it won't be going online again once I pull the last of the updates.

It'll work fine, and securely offline. As it does 98% of the time now.

Apart from the Win 7 laptop and this Win 8 one, none of my OSes are connected to the net very often.

Wenda.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Hi there
these sorts of worries are absolutely pointless. If you want to keep using XP -- no problem at all - simply run it as a VM and DON'T CONNECT IT TO THE INTERNET. I'd assume that the XP machine is running legacy applications and Internet access can be provided for in other ways.

If your machine currently can only run XP then simply run it as a stand alone machine - you can share disks if you have to - but the XP machine doesn't need Internet access.

A lot of XP machines are also stand alone computers in places like LABS etc.

Cheers
jimbo

To quote Ronald Reagan, "There you go again!" Your examples are only limited scenarios where what you say is true. The fact is most home users will be connecting to the internet. All businesses other than possibly some small Mom & Pops have to connect to the internet for banking, contacting vendors, communicating with various branches, etc. yet there are a frightening number that have not upgraded yet. THAT has me seriously worried since my credit/debit cards would be subject to being compromised. I might start using cash for a while after March of next year.

The major hospital I had my surgery in is still using Windows XP and so is the Surgeons office, and my own regular Doctor. Now these are possibly completely closed systems but there was internet and email access as the nurse was using it one night to email. A good adnin should be able to lock down the system but if the underlying OS is no longer secure????

Considering that a hospital has to interface with insurance companies, vendors, financial institutions, etc., I simply do not see how they can have a closed system.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I'm amazed by the number of people on forums that are convinced that XP will still be safe after its EOL. The number rivals those who believe RAID is a secure backup.

Mine will be, because after EOL it won't be going online again once I pull the last of the updates.

It'll work fine, and securely offline. As it does 98% of the time now.

Apart from the Win 7 laptop and this Win 8 one, none of my OSes are connected to the net very often.

Wenda.

Your scenario will be an exception to the majority.

 

[sygnus21]

These worries are not pointless as most will not run it in a VM, and will continue to connect to the internet. These are "average" users, who likely don't even keep their systems updated. No one is sayin XP can't be used offline, but that's not how most home users are using them, or will continue to use them. A Guy

Exactly.

Anyway if these people continue to use these machines to surf the web and get their e-mail, they WILL be vulnerable to attacks.

Putting finances aside, I personally can't see why anyone is still running XP. Pretty much anything you "need" XP for is way outdated by now. You also have the decreased performance due to memory limitations - not everyone has/had XP 64.

So yeah, aside from us geeks, the average PC users running XP are pretty much at risk. And for these people "taking the machine offline" is NOT an option.

 

[Diosoth]

We're assuming that XP will still be useful for online access in a year. Hardware that can run the OS will be old, limited and web browsers will eventually be obsolete as new plugins and all that are made. Firefox is becoming a RAM and CPU hog. We're probably lucky there is still modern web browser support for the OS.

I use a second PC with XP to play older games, though I do go online with it if I need to download something direct to it as it's a hassle transferring files with a USB stick.

 

[lehnerus2000]

Putting finances aside, I personally can't see why anyone is still running XP. Pretty much anything you "need" XP for is way outdated by now. You also have the decreased performance due to memory limitations - not everyone has/had XP 64.

IMO, Windows Live Photo Gallery works better in XP, than W7 (and probably W8).

XP doesn't have Libraries, so it doesn't run amok.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Putting finances aside, I personally can't see why anyone is still running XP. Pretty much anything you "need" XP for is way outdated by now. You also have the decreased performance due to memory limitations - not everyone has/had XP 64.

IMO, Windows Live Photo Gallery works better in XP, than W7 (and probably W8).

XP doesn't have Libraries, so it doesn't run amok.

I don't use Windows Live Photo Gallery so I can't comment there but XPs photo downloading wizard and photo viewer were much better than Win 7's. I use the photo viewer in Office 2010 instead. To download photos from my camera card, I download them directly to the destination folder, then mass rename them using IrfanView.

I haven't had any problems with libraries.

 

[lehnerus2000]

I don't use Windows Live Photo Gallery so I can't comment there but XPs photo downloading wizard and photo viewer were much better than Win 7's. I use the photo viewer in Office 2010 instead. To download photos from my camera card, I download them directly to the destination folder, then mass rename them using IrfanView.

I haven't had any problems with libraries.

Libraries are typical MS.
They are an OK idea, poorly implemented.

For me personally, Libraries offer no benefits over "Favorites", "Jump Lists", "Recent Places" or just navigating to the actual directory.

MS programs like WMP and WLPG automatically attempt to add EVERY Library folder into themselves and there is no way to stop them (WMC is the only exception).

The only way to prevent that from happening is to remove every folder from the Libraries, except for the one that you want to work on.

In XP you just add whatever folders you like into WLPG.
Since I only use it to tag items in one folder, it works much better in XP.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I don't use Windows Live Photo Gallery so I can't comment there but XPs photo downloading wizard and photo viewer were much better than Win 7's. I use the photo viewer in Office 2010 instead. To download photos from my camera card, I download them directly to the destination folder, then mass rename them using IrfanView.

I haven't had any problems with libraries.

Libraries are typical MS.
They are an OK idea, poorly implemented.

For me personally, Libraries offer no benefits over "Favorites", "Jump Lists", "Recent Places" or just navigating to the actual directory.

MS programs like WMP and WLPG automatically attempt to add EVERY Library folder into themselves and there is no way to stop them (WMC is the only exception).

The only way to prevent that from happening is to remove every folder from the Libraries, except for the one that you want to work on.

In XP you just add whatever folders you like into WLPG.
Since I only use it to tag items in one folder, it works much better in XP.

Admittedly, the only thing I use Libraries for are to duplicate the Start Menus links XP had that were replaced by the Library links in Win 7. For example, I just have the My Documents folder in the Documents Library so, to get to My Documents, I click on the Start Button, the Click on the Documents Library link. That essentially takes me directly to My Documents. Works like a charm.

I can see advantages to using Libraries as designed but, to do so, I would have had to rearrange massive amounts of the data I had already organized when it was on my XP machine before transferring it to my Win 7 machine and just didn't feel the time it would take to do so was justified (I'm too close to the grave already). When I start putting videos on my present machine, I will put each HDD that the videos will go onto into the Video library so I will have them all on one directory.

 

[sygnus21]

Well for quickly viewing photos I just use Windows Photo Viewer. For anything else I use either Adobe bridge, Photoshop, or Adobe Lightroom. Didn't mess with Windows Live Photo Gallery.

But yes there were some apps in XP that were better but are now gone, scaled back, and/or changed. The way Microsoft probably sees it most users are using other suitable apps anyway so why bother.

However, even with those "better" apps, they still can't overcome the aging OS and it's increased vulnerabilities.

XP was great in it's day, but that day has passed. Time to move on.

My two cents.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Well for quickly viewing photos I just use Windows Photo Viewer. For anything else I use either Adobe bridge, Photoshop, or Adobe Lightroom. Didn't mess with Windows Live Photo Gallery.

But yes there were some apps in XP that were better but are now gone, scaled back, and/or changed. The way Microsoft probably sees it most users are using other suitable apps anyway so why bother.

However, even with those "better" apps, they still can't overcome the aging OS and it's increased vulnerabilities.

XP was great in it's day, but that day has passed. Time to move on.

My two cents.

I agree; time to move on. There were only two apps in XP that were degraded in Win 7 that affected me and I found ways to deal with that. It's definitely not worth trying to stay with an outdated OS (no matter how good it was) just because of two apps.

 

[lehnerus2000]

I can see advantages to using Libraries as designed but, to do so, I would have had to rearrange massive amounts of the data I had already organized when it was on my XP machine before transferring it to my Win 7 machine and just didn't feel the time it would take to do so was justified ...

I made the exact same point on another thread (last year?).

If you are already organised, Libraries don't really add anything.

Personally I'd remove them from the Navigation pane, if there wasn't a risk of something weird happening.

I tried to do the same thing with the User Folder that keeps popping up and annoying me.
I followed a tutorial to get rid of that and the auto-expand feature broke on my W7, so I had to undo the modification.

Well for quickly viewing photos I just use Windows Photo Viewer. For anything else I use either Adobe bridge, Photoshop, or Adobe Lightroom. Didn't mess with Windows Live Photo Gallery.

WLPG actually has a great tagging feature, which is all that I use it for.

For viewing pictures, I use IrfanView (you can also use it for sound and video files).
It also has some nice batch operation tools.

But yes there were some apps in XP that were better but are now gone, scaled back, and/or changed. The way Microsoft probably sees it most users are using other suitable apps anyway so why bother.

I'm using the 2010 version of WLPG.

However, even with those "better" apps, they still can't overcome the aging OS and it's increased vulnerabilities.

Create a VM and run a copy of it on Linux.

I run all of my old games on an XP VM, which means I can play them on W7 or Linux Mint.

 

[sygnus21]

However, even with those "better" apps, they still can't overcome the aging OS and it's increased vulnerabilities.

Create a VM and run a copy of it on Linux.

I run all of my old games on an XP VM, which means I can play them on W7 or Linux Mint.

Well for the average everyday user who can't spell VM, that's not an option, and thus doesn't solve the issue.

As for me, I've no reason to run XP. In fact, I haven't touched it since wiping it off my backup PC a year or so ago.

Again, the PC enthusiasts may find a use for it, but for the average Jane/Joe Blow, it's going to be more problematic than it's worth.

 

[Diosoth]

I have 64-bit Windows 7 which can't run 16-bit applications. That means I need another OS to run old games like the first Max Payne. DOSbox can bypass some limitations but not all. Furthermore I had some unexplainable physics bugs in shadow Man playing under 7, yet the game works fine in XP..

As for running in a virtual machine, this also gives me a second PC to go online with in case my 7 PC has issues.