[olug] Attack WinXP with a JPEG!

[Phil Brutsche]

VHP3 wrote:

> Building security in from the ground up would make a whole bunch more
> disappear.

What, you mean like they did with NT-based systems, of which XP is the
latest incarnation?

Most of Windows' problems come from
  * lack of attention to quality control
  * sucky defaults (creating users with admin rights by default?  WTF?)
  * the ever popular buffer overflows

We're not talking about Windows 95/98/ME here (which completely lack
anything even remotely resembling security), we're talking about systems
with security facilities that 99% of the time *don't get used*.

The basic best practices MacOS X and Linux/*BSD users follow, when
applied to a Windows 2000 or Windows XP system (don't run services you
don't need, log in with minimum privileges, firewall when appropriate, 
etc), will keep a *lot* of problems from happening.

-- 

Phil Brutsche
phil at brutsche.us
who maintains two "computer labs" - averaging 20 Windows 2000 computers 
each - which have had 1 (one!) virus outbreak and *no* spyware/adware 
problems in 3 years