Will Vista impact performance?

[Toytown]

windows xp was so insecure that when it was first released, you could punch in anyones ip address who was running it into any web browser and provided they didnt have a firewall (which a lot of people didnt back then) you would get access to their hard drives through your browser.

Thats simply not true, to access anybodys folders on XP you would have needed there user account and password, exactly the same as windows 2000.

If you were on about windows 95/98/me, then your correct, simply putting there ip address in, would give you access to all shared folders on there computer (unless they passworded them or hid them using the $ sign).

 

[Una]

Thats simply not true, to access anybodys folders on XP you would have needed there user account and password, exactly the same as windows 2000.

If you were on about windows 95/98/me, then your correct, simply putting there ip address in, would give you access to all shared folders on there computer (unless they passworded them or hid them using the $ sign).

Hate to tell you this but windows used to create hidden shares. C$, D$ etc..

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanserver\parameters\AutoShareWks

Users with no password for their administrator account (which was quite common) you could just access straight off.

Try \\computername\C$ for instance if your on xp pro.

 

[NathanE]

Hate to tell you this but windows used to create hidden shares. C$, D$ etc..

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanserver\parameters\AutoShareWks

Users with no password for their administrator account (which was quite common) you could just access straight off.

Try \\computername\C$ for instance if your on xp pro.

Why is that Windows' fault though? The onus, as always, is on the user to keep their system secure. One of the first steps to that is to use a secure Administrator password. This is not just Windows you're talking about either, Unix has had the longer standing policy that once the 'root' account is breached then it's game over.

 

[Una]

In vista they are still allowing fast user switching and going against NSA's security recomendations. The first used who is created on vista will have admin access rights as well wont it? (You cant compare this to sudo). Most good distro's disable login as root account and only allow you to use sudo by default.

You can't compare windows users to linux/nix* users really either, likewise with nix* programmers. Most nix* programmers know the theory of least privilege, where as dose coders seem to insist that you need admin rights to install programs. This is not just a dig as vista by the way. I know both OS's are vulnerable to "shatter attacks", and its more a design trade off.

The points you make in your previous post about the advantages running audio drivers and such as a user mode process is a good idea though.

Is there a list of technical changes anywhere? Not marketing hype - blah blah vista will be quicker etc.. im interested to see what actauly is new.

Im not anti-vista. I would like a good stable, secure os which I can take advantage of the improvements in directx 10 (A better programmable pipeline,
no instruction count limit for HLSL etc..).

However I do think microsoft go about security the wrong way and should be looking at something like selinux for inspiration.