What windows does

[UbuWu]

Read this article, but only if you are prepared to never boot back into windows again, otherwise you might get nightmares :grin:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/10/298702.html

A little bit paranoid and maybe not everything is quite accurate, but a little bit frightening none the less ;-)

[bored2k]

I do not agree nor a find anything to be worried about. I find this yes, way too paranoid [firewall/trashcan/temp files problems? wth we all love them; Automatic updates installing crapware? I don't think so] .

I'm not going deep in details but I'll say that in the case of being a Microsoft OS user [wich I'm mostly not], these psychotic reasons won't really make me change my mind over it (so Internet Cookies is an M$-created-only-problem? What nonsense?! Internet Temp files being a problem? I like them! Autocomplete? bleh, etc) .



Interesting idea, but filled with misinformation

http://img227.echo.cx/img227/7734/buglist9si.th.jpg (http://img227.echo.cx/my.php?image=buglist9si.jpg)

[YourSurrogateGod]

Read this article, but only if you are prepared to never boot back into windows again, otherwise you might get nightmares :grin:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/10/298702.html

A little bit paranoid and maybe not everything is quite accurate, but a little bit frightening none the less ;-)
Windows is a good OS... it's just that Linux is a much better OS.

Just my $0.02.

[Nano]

I just prefer Linux but I was user of Windows for many many years and, as in Linux, if you know how to, your system will be pretty safe and your privacy will be protected.

I still have a Windows partition and I run it from time to time, especially for gaming.

All this "I'm linuxer, I'm different, I don't use Windows and whoever uses it is a looser" mania is something that will keep many people away from Linux since many consider us just geeks that want to keep free OS only for us.

My two cents.

[Leif]

OK, first tidbit :


3. Microsoft Backup

Designed to bypass all security, even ownership rights of a drive. Try it.

Done by design.

Second tidbit :


a. HKEY_CURRENT_USER - psychological profile of logged on user, real-time usage focus.

b. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE - Detailed reporting of hardware and a wide range of traceable unique identifiers

c. HKEY_USERS - psychological profiling of all users, post-forensic usage focus.

d. HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG - Advanced psychological profiling based on a ranking system of 'psychologically-based options' embedded throughout the system. This could include things like favorite colour, pictures, sounds, etc.

This stuff is priceless.

[Frustration]

13. Memory Usage

Designed to use large amounts of memory to drive the hardware industry sales of components. For Windows XP to function correctly, it requires at least 1GB RAM and at two physical drives on separate IDE channels or SCSI interface I/O.

;-) I'd better tell all the people I know who are happily running XP on systems with 256MB and a single 20GB or 40GB harddrive to stop using it as their system isn't up the task :?


A Small Bit of Advice

Linux...Open Source...Free...No worries.

No large multimedia editing type applications either unfortunately (yet), or much in the way of new 3D games, or BIG database apps.. or.. or.. :roll:

[KiwiNZ]

I have no problems with this either .
But I have protected myself with the Tinfoil hood I constructed for my PC:-P:-#:)

[nautilus]

this is the part that really got me rolling on the floor:


19. Alternate Data Streams

This 'feature' of Microsoft Windows relates to how information is stored on your harddrive. Under NTFS, not only is there the file, but there is a second, hidden aspect to each file. This hidden aspect is stored separately on your hard drive and not as part of the file.

I suppose the term, 'Alternate Data Streams' make better business sense, than 'hidden information gathering process combined with standard file functions'. :)

All additional information to a file, such as date/time stamps, file name, size, etc. is stored in this layer. Not only this, but so is the thumbnail cache of all images viewed by the system. This 'feature' is hidden by design and requires either a 1 month long 'disk nuke' (for average 80GB HD) or physical destruction of the disk platters to remove.

Physical destruction is recommended, as it requires specific manufacturers codes to access bad blocks, internal scratch areas and internal swap/cache areas of the drive. Even with the codes, certain problems can arise from unreadable sectors which may contain copies of sensitive information.

...wtf?! haha! this guy's a nutjob :roll:

[bored2k]

I actually want to know what Linux distro is he using, one that doesnt have a trash can, temporary files, internet temp files, cookies, his gaim/amsn/other apps doesn't connect to their main page to check for updates, etc. It's got to be Wonderland Linux: Free J-Juice for everyone.

[dataw0lf]

this is the part that really got me rolling on the floor:
...wtf?! haha! this guy's a nutjob :roll:

Although I don't want to feed into the tasteless, pointless Windows flames, NTFS Alternate Data Streams _do_ exist. A good friend of mine (tierra, you joined yet? He's a Gentoo kiddie ;) ) did a talk at DefCon 12 on Alternate Data Streams and their use in hiding data.

[tierra]

19. Alternate Data Streams

This 'feature' of Microsoft Windows relates to how information is stored on your harddrive. Under NTFS, not only is there the file, but there is a second, hidden aspect to each file. This hidden aspect is stored separately on your hard drive and not as part of the file.

I suppose the term, 'Alternate Data Streams' make better business sense, than 'hidden information gathering process combined with standard file functions'. :)

All additional information to a file, such as date/time stamps, file name, size, etc. is stored in this layer. Not only this, but so is the thumbnail cache of all images viewed by the system. This 'feature' is hidden by design and requires either a 1 month long 'disk nuke' (for average 80GB HD) or physical destruction of the disk platters to remove.

Physical destruction is recommended, as it requires specific manufacturers codes to access bad blocks, internal scratch areas and internal swap/cache areas of the drive. Even with the codes, certain problems can arise from unreadable sectors which may contain copies of sensitive information.

Nothing beats an nice afternoon with a screwdriver and grinder. :)

The caching can be disabled, however, Microsoft has made this as 'obscure' as possible. Microsoft Windows also does not explain the function of 'Do not cache Thumbnails'.

It is aware 90% of end-users have the technical aptitude of 'a banana with a with a drink problem' and would never grasp the implications, let alone, understand.

Done by design.


Although I don't want to feed into the tasteless, pointless Windows flames, NTFS Alternate Data Streams _do_ exist. A good friend of mine (tierra, you joined yet? He's a Gentoo kiddie ;) ) did a talk at DefCon 12 on Alternate Data Streams and their use in hiding data.

Yes, they do exist, and they are hard to work with and find without the right tools and knowledge that they actually exist, but they are definately removable. You can easily delete them (without formatting or touching the hardware of the drive) even without those tools so long as you know where they are. There's plenty of tools that'll search your drive for them and tell you where they are as well.

A little bit of extra info to add to that:

Windows XP SP2 (or might of been SP1) fixed the fact that ADS streams weren't included in the drive free space report.

Most virus checkers also check alternate data streams for virii, and have been for a long time, so that isn't a problem anymore (and there was actually only one virus ever recorded to have used alternate data streams to spread in the first place).

Among the information stored in ADS, he is right about file summary information, but to expand on the thumbnailing, Windows XP still uses Thumbs.db instead of ADS for thumbs, it's only IIS that uses ADS for thumbnailing, and it's only on webservers. There are very few other applications that use alternate data streams since not every Windows user uses NTFS still.

DefCon 12 Presentation summary:
http://www.defcon.org/html/defcon-12/dc-12-speakers.html#grifter

.... Gentoo kiddie .... I should slap you for that one dataw0lf =)

[dataw0lf]

.... Gentoo kiddie .... I should slap you for that one dataw0lf =)


He's an angry young man, don't pay attention to him.

[tierra]

He's an angry young man, don't pay attention to him.

I was going to mention something about the fact that aside from my Gentoo boxes, I do still have Ubuntu installed on my laptop, and do frequently use it now. I'm not completely decided on it yet, but I'm leaning towards keeping it on there now, it's working fairly nicely now that I've had some time to play in it. I won't however be replacing my other Gentoo boxes though, I still like Gentoo better. =)

[jerome bettis]

very interesting article ... the comments at the bottom as well.

the point of it, at least in my opinion, was that since the hood of windows is completely shut, it really can do whatever the hell it wants while the user remains oblivious. face it, 98% of windows users have the technical knowledge of a chimp, so they won't even know such a thing could even happen .. let alone find out that it actually is.

the part of the article that really hit home for me was the idea that you can get all the anti-virus / firewall / whatever software you want and windows can still do things behind the curtain. these programs can only interact with what MS lets them see - it can still do it's own thing without these programs even knowing that such stuff exists. whether or not you think the author is a crackhead, this idea is true - maybe not actually happening, but true nonetheless. he mentions the posibility of the OS being encrypted in the future ... that's a VERY disturbing thought.

this is not to say i bought every point in his article .. some of it was complete BS, although humorus. but a good bit of it is plausible; and like that one guy said, even if 20% of it is in fact true, that's pretty damn scary.

seriously, i want an HONEST explination from MS as to why the all knowing index.dat file(s) is sooo hidden and when you click search for files it connects to one of their servers. that's very suspcious in my opinion ...... ....

[jerome bettis]

I was going to mention something about the fact that aside from my Gentoo boxes, I do still have Ubuntu installed on my laptop, and do frequently use it now. I'm not completely decided on it yet, but I'm leaning towards keeping it on there now, it's working fairly nicely now that I've had some time to play in it. I won't however be replacing my other Gentoo boxes though, I still like Gentoo better. =)
you could do what i do and use both at the same time! it's great. boot into gentoo, mount your ubuntu partition and chroot into it. su to your user name, do source /etc/profile and start gdm & any other services you wish. it's the best of both worlds!

[benplaut]

alot of the stuff on that article is total BS, but he has some points...

i think i'll let my (WinXP) dad read that... might be enough propaganda http://ubuntuforums.org/images/smilies/eusa_whistle.gif

[TravisNewman]

I think the author KNEW that what he was saying wasn't definitely true, but he just wanted to show what is possible.

[jerome bettis]

also waaaay back when i used windows 2000 i once tried to clear my IE temporary files. this took about an hour and a half .................................................. ... WTF is with that????? just delete the files!!! what's really going on?

[TravisNewman]

good lord, how long had it been since you'd cleared them?

[jerome bettis]

good lord, how long had it been since you'd cleared them?
probably never before, and my system was pretty decent (1ghz 256 etc etc) but that shouldn't matter!!!! it shouldn't take more than say 30 minutes to delete every file on the entire disk! why does one folder take so long?

very suspcious is it not?

[TravisNewman]

indeed it is. It always has taken longer though, and I always wondered why-- maybe it's a **** poor algorithm to delete the files that they just haven't bothered to fix.

[graigsmith]

Therefore, even with all the security, in the known Universe, installed on a Microsoft Windows Platform, it is still the responsibility of Windows to inform the security products of each event happening. If Microsoft Windows fails to report, or hides certain messages/events, then your security software becomes 100% completely redundant.

Scary, and possibly true. Im not an expert on how windows works. but i guess if your paranoid - you really can't be sure microsoft isn't doing monitoring of the incoming packets to see if there is a kind of keycode coming in to unlock the system, or cause some kind of communication to occur.

then again theres no evidence for such a thing.

[bigzak]

It seems that a lot of people (esp. the people who commented on the article) thought that this guy was for real. The VERY FIRST LINE reads:

"A hypothesis that Microsoft's Windows XP is a complex variation of a bugging device."

A hypothesis or, in other words, a geek joke ;)

[tierra]

you could do what i do and use both at the same time! it's great. boot into gentoo, mount your ubuntu partition and chroot into it. su to your user name, do source /etc/profile and start gdm & any other services you wish. it's the best of both worlds!

That's a pretty cool idea, but slightly overkill. If I did that, I'd want to be sure there was a way to spawn both a gnome-terminal that started in my chrooted environment, and also (with another icon or something) in my Gentoo environment. Also having icons all in my Gnome menu (or other window manager if I switched to something else since I tend to do that a lot playing with E17 and XFCE4) for applications started in either environment. I might toy with setting it up if I know that's possible without too much hassle.


indeed it is. It always has taken longer though, and I always wondered why-- maybe it's a **** poor algorithm to delete the files that they just haven't bothered to fix.

Depending on how much his Win2k box was used for surfing the web along with how long he went with never clearing his cache, and whether he was using FAT32 or NTFS, there's a very good chance it could of piled up to taking that long. Surfing the web tends to build up tens of thousands of files in a number of folders really quick. It's not like it was formatted ReiserFS =)

[dataw0lf]

Depending on how much his Win2k box was used for surfing the web along with how long he went with never clearing his cache, and whether he was using FAT32 or NTFS, there's a very good chance it could of piled up to taking that long. Surfing the web tends to build up tens of thousands of files in a number of folders really quick. It's not like it was formatted ReiserFS =)

The obligatory Reiser plug from tierra. I should've known..

[carlc]

I am not out looking for big foot or ufo's but I think that some underlying thought of what he is saying is true. I believe Microsoft works to gain user info and does little to nothing to protect it. I don't think XP is a bugging device but I do see it as a work in progress to gain more and more user info. I think the basis of XP comes down to the fact that Microsoft is out to make money and is very good at doing so. I also believe that some of the privacy concerns will emerge more and more as the entertainment industry clamps down on music and video sharing and microsoft has made it clear whose side they are own.

[mark]

Windows is closed-source software. As such, I fully expect & anticipate that MS will do their damndest to hide a lot (if not most) of what they're doing "under the hood". They may do it with fairly straight-forward intentions ("protection of IP rights") or nefarious ones ("right, we're gonna look at this guy's usage patterns and...").

Forewarned, forearmed.

I use Windows at work because I have to. I have dual-boot capability here at home, also because I have to (compatibility reasons). At work, I take as many precautions as allowed by our IT people (okay, maybe a little more - they don't like me<g>). At home, I boot Windows when I have to, I'm behind a NetGear router/firewall, I'm running software AV/firewall and malware detection and I update EVERYTHING whenever I have to us Windows. With this scenario, I haven't had any problems (at home!) in quite a while (knock wood).

[JmSchanck]

This is absurd:



20. Stability

Microsoft Windows is designed to collapse upon extensive number crunching, of large arrays, of floating point calculations. This would prevent; nuclear modelling, physics modelling, and genetic modeling. These three aspects can produce Nuclear, alternative and biological weapons.

I don't know about you, but this 'feature', I can live with, or couldn't live without, for very long.

Done by design.


All this time I thought I was just hashing data into arrays for easy retrieval, noone told me that I was inadvertantly creating nuclear weapons. Surely if they had I would have used another datatype, maybe a linked list, but I hear those are being used to torture people. ;-)

[escuchamezz]

good marketing for Linux: Fast, stable and more reliable to create nuclear weapons in your own bedroom! :smile:

p.s. it's a joke

[TravisNewman]

good marketing for Linux: Fast, stable and more reliable to create nuclear weapons in your own bedroom! :smile:
*L* You better watch what you say, big brother is always watching.

[nocturn]

Well, the article goes somewhat overboard on paranoia.

But some of the things in it are true (the facts, not the motivation, which is subject to speculation only).

The secondary storage for Internet history is one of those. The callback on local searches is also documented and there is not really a good reason for this.

The fact remains that Windows keeps more data then it acutally should and some of it is obfuscated. The fact remains that Windows calls back way more then it should.

The reasons behind it may be spying on you, but the motivation is a question. Is it for marketing purposes, to fight piracy or anything else. In any case, I do not like my systems doing something without my explicit knowledge or consent.

[Mike Douglas]

You heard it here folks:

Microsoft: It's By Design :)

[localzuk]

From experience, it doesn't matter what you have on your computer OS wise. The cops who will end up looking at it are generally not computer savvy. The computer experts are there to do things like copy the disks and remove admin passwords - and if nessecary break encryption. The 'searching' for data is done by normal desk job people. They know to look in 'My Documents' etc... anything else will confuse them.

[TravisNewman]

It seems that a lot of people (esp. the people who commented on the article) thought that this guy was for real. The VERY FIRST LINE reads:

"A hypothesis that Microsoft's Windows XP is a complex variation of a bugging device."

A hypothesis or, in other words, a geek joke ;)

I think people may have missed your post, as it appears people are still taking him seriously