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  1. #1
    Old Merits
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    Vista's Security Rendered Completely Useless by New Exploit

    1st reporting of story: http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com...324395,00.html

    http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/0...by-new-exploit

    detailed PDF: http://taossa.com/archive/bh08sotirovdowd.pdf

    MS can't do anything right. I'm a Mac guy I only built PCs because of gaming, which I wouldn't have bothered building a new one if SE came out with an updated FFXI for PS3. Too hard to get a PS3 with backwards compatibility now.

  2. #2
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    Macs suck

  3. #3
    Banned.

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    Interesting read

  4. #4
    Tottenham 'til I die
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    You know why mac has less malicious attacks then microsoft? Because, "Who gives a fuck, it's a mac".

  5. #5
    The God Damn Kuno
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    Quote Originally Posted by oldoldman View Post
    You know why mac has less malicious attacks then microsoft? Because, "Who gives a fuck, it's a mac".
    That's changed quite a bit these days.

  6. #6
    Hayleystrator
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    Interested to see how this plays out.

  7. #7
    Nidhogg
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    Quote Originally Posted by oldoldman View Post
    You know why mac has less malicious attacks then microsoft? Because, "Who gives a fuck, it's a mac".
    That's only partially true. Most exploiters target the largest userbase possible, aka Windows. If Mac was the dominant userbase, you can rest assured it would be under fire.

  8. #8
    blax n gunz
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    Sooo, basically stop visiting crazy porn sites, turn off active scripting and don't give your kid cousins admin access to your computer and you're fine?

    What exactly is so fundamentally earth-shattering about this discovery to the users who've taken the time to protect themselves since the dawn of time?

  9. #9
    Ive sucked 27 dicks, in a row.
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    There's a lot of really shitty/inaccurate coverage going around about this, and that Neowin article is some of the worst. I'm no MS apologist, as any of you who know me would certainly know, but let's at least be accurate.

    First, this is a "secondary exploit". It's not an exploit in itself, it's a way to deliver a more traditional exploit through ASLR (address space layout randomization) and the other memory corruption safeguards Vista has. You still need software vulnerability through a buffer overflow or similar to actually exploit it.

    Secondly, it relies upon Flash/Java/ActiveX to "break" those features. I'm not 100% sure on the methods used, but I've heard that the Java plugin marks its entire stack as executable and the Flash plugin uses predictable address space layout. I don't know how accurate that is, because I'm way too lazy to check myself, but it honestly wouldn't surprise me. I don't know what the precise flaw in ActiveX/.NET is, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was something of a similar nature to the above.

    Third, the claim that it's not fixable is complete bullshit. There's two things working together to cause the vulnerability. Shitty programming on the part of the plugin authors, and shitty design on MS's part. The dangerous part is the vulnerable programming, not the design, and the vulnerable programming is also the "fixable" part. In other words, it's perfectly possible to fix Flash/Java/ActiveX so that a prospective hacker would have to find another attack vector.

    In short, while it's a very serious vulnerability, the coverage of it is vastly overblown and inaccurate.

  10. #10

    Microsoft will take care of it. if they don't, it's ubuntu for me.

  11. #11
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    Yeah it really sucks having a computer that works flawlessly, is fast, stable, and immune to 99.99% of viruses and trojans. I mean I can use VMware Fusion and use Win XP without the risk of smoking my computer and having an unusable mess. If I want to really get the full windows experience I can just boot into my XP partition and play any PC game I've got.

    Yeah, having such a versatile computer really sucks, I'd be much better off locked into the Microsoft only solution.

  12. #12
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    Ok I wasn't sure at first, but now that I'm sure you are trolling...

    So let me get this straight your OS is so awesome because you have to load up another OS or virtual OS just to be able to do anything remotely fun outside of photoshop? OKKK I SEE.

  13. #13
    Ive sucked 27 dicks, in a row.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Myst View Post
    Microsoft will take care of it. if they don't, it's ubuntu for me.
    I can actually strongly recommend Ubuntu. I recently had to reinstall due to some badness with my XP install, and I decided to try out Vista and Ubuntu in a dual boot situation. I installed Ubuntu first, and I've rebooted into Vista about... twice total in the past week, both times just to do some basic post-install stuff and install games.

    I'm really very impressed with how far Ubuntu has come in the past few years, particularly the ease of installing ATI/Nvidia drivers and running Windows apps via Wine. ATI/Nvidia drivers are easier than Windows, you just click the restricted drivers tray icon and reboot when it tells you. Wine is absolutely amazing now, a lot of stuff "just works", including running .exe files from Nautilus, setting file associations and system tray icons. They've also done a lot with integration, if you open a file open/save box in a Wine program, it shows your Unix filesystem and transparently converts the path to a valid Windows path for the app. I run uTorrent and Diablo II using Wine every day, and I don't experience any "weirdness" at all, it feels just like running native apps, but with slight cosmetic differences.

    Oh yeah, and Compiz is as good or better than Aero. There's a little bit of funkiness with Compiz + official ATI drivers + other OpenGL programs, but it's known to be an ATI problem, and hopefully we'll see that go away either when ATI gets around to fixing it or the open source ATI drivers catch up and support current cards.

  14. #14
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    You're the fucking troll. You post nothing of any value to this thread, so just fuck off already.

    I work in Photoshop, Illustrator and Quark all day, yeah getting work done is the priority with my computer not games, although yeah when I played WoW it was native.

  15. #15
    Ive sucked 27 dicks, in a row.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Day View Post
    Ok I wasn't sure at first, but now that I'm sure you are trolling...

    So let me get this straight your OS is so awesome because you have to load up another OS or virtual OS just to be able to do anything remotely fun outside of photoshop? OKKK I SEE.
    Plenty of fun (or productive, depending on your needs) things you can do without leaving OS X. It's not an OS for hardcore gamers, that's for damn sure, but claiming that you can't do "anything remotely fun" without Windows is not only incredibly ignorant, but subjective as well.

    Personally, I don't have a modern console, so I reboot into Windows for "serious" gaming or run things via Wine if they're supported. If I had an Xbox or PS3, I probably wouldn't bother even having Vista/XP installed.

  16. #16
    Demosthenes11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rowe View Post
    Yeah it really sucks having a computer that works flawlessly, is fast, stable, and immune to 99.99% of viruses and trojans. I mean I can use VMware Fusion and use Win XP without the risk of smoking my computer and having an unusable mess. If I want to really get the full windows experience I can just boot into my XP partition and play any PC game I've got.

    Yeah, having such a versatile computer really sucks, I'd be much better off locked into the Microsoft only solution.
    you know why macs really suck?
    douchebags like you

    I bet you drive a fucking prious too

  17. #17
    A. Body
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    Quote Originally Posted by Day View Post
    Ok I wasn't sure at first, but now that I'm sure you are trolling...

    So let me get this straight your OS is so awesome because you have to load up another OS or virtual OS just to be able to do anything remotely fun outside of photoshop? OKKK I SEE.
    At least he's actually got experience with both platforms =P

    They both have pros, cons, and plenty of software. The larger point is that it's far easier to get access to Windows stuff on a Mac than vice versa. In part by necessity, as Apple's market share makes it far more in their interest to be compatible...but still...

    That being said, this:
    Yeah, having such a versatile computer really sucks, I'd be much better off locked into the Microsoft only solution.
    is just sorta ironic...considering how locked down Apple tends to like making their hardware. You can just as well run one of the more polished Linux distros on a PC and do much the same thing, just with very little commercial software.

    I like the Mac OS. I loathe (for the most part) the lack of selection in Apple hardware.


    In fairness, OS X has had a number of security vulnerabilities found, and Apple hasn't always been particularly expedient in addressing them. That being said, I can't think of a single rampant piece of malware or virus that's hit as a result. When I'm dealing with multiple Windows machines a week infested with spyware/viruses, that's certain a major plus >.>

  18. #18
    I Am, Who I Am.
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    You mean theres a new exploit!?? OH NO! Thats never happened before! Nor have they ever been fixed!!

    Who cares about Vista anyway, MS doesnt even care about Vista, Windows 7 will be out soon.

  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zosi View Post
    Plenty of fun (or productive, depending on your needs) things you can do without leaving OS X. It's not an OS for hardcore gamers, that's for damn sure, but claiming that you can't do "anything remotely fun" without Windows is not only incredibly ignorant, but subjective as well.

    Personally, I don't have a modern console, so I reboot into Windows for "serious" gaming or run things via Wine if they're supported. If I had an Xbox or PS3, I probably wouldn't bother even having Vista/XP installed.
    Trust me I understand, that was more for OP. I really don't have anything against macs, its just I could tell from the very first he's just a typical mac user that can't wait to bash MS. "MS can't do anything right." were his first words uttered. Hard to take someone serious after that.

  20. #20
    Spiders are Awesome
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rowe View Post
    Yeah it really sucks having a computer that works flawlessly, is fast, stable, and immune to 99.99% of viruses and trojans. I mean I can use VMware Fusion and use Win XP without the risk of smoking my computer and having an unusable mess. If I want to really get the full windows experience I can just boot into my XP partition and play any PC game I've got.

    Yeah, having such a versatile computer really sucks, I'd be much better off locked into the Microsoft only solution.
    Have fun paying twice as much for proprietary hardware when anyone can build a PC and boot windows, linux, or OSX.

    I'll never use a mac just because I don't want to be associated with soy-mocha-latte apple fanboys.

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