Windows Xp Sp2

[Kazza-Matazaa]

Hay how r ya

Do u hav any idea wen WinXP SP2 is coming out?

Thnkz

[Memphis]

Im pretty much guessing this isnt a BETA forum.
But anyways it should be released very soon.

[Jaime Andrés]

Originally posted by Kazza-Matazaa@Jul 9 2004, 03:09 AM
Hay how r ya

Do u hav any idea wen WinXP SP2 is coming out?

Thnkz
¿Would it be more sensible to look on the Microsoft web-site?

[Guest]

Microsoft XP Service Pack 2 due in August
Online July 13th 2004


Microsoft will release the long awaited Service Pack 2 in August. The major update to Windows XP focuses on boosting protection against malicious intrusions, USA TODAY reports.

Microsoft, dogged for years by attacks that take advantage of vulnerabilities in its dominant Windows operating system, is hoping the free upgrade will reduce disruptive and costly interruptions.

Microsoft is urging home users to turn on a function that allows Microsoft to automatically download security updates, so they are set to receive SP2 as soon as it becomes available.

Users also can go to Microsoft's security Web site to get the download once it is available, and Microsoft will send out SP2 CDs to consumers who request them.

SP2 is expected to be between 80MB and 120MB in size.

[locustfurnace]

Originally posted by Guest+Jul 18 2004, 07:36 AM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Guest @ Jul 18 2004, 07:36 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Microsoft,* is hoping....[/b]
Hoping?? they aren&#39;t sure themselves of their own security?


Originally posted by -Guest@Jul 18 2004, 07:36 AM
Microsoft is urging home users to turn on a function that allows....
Turning it on.., isn&#39;t that how alot of Microsoft&#39;s problems come about, due to turning on Microsoft&#39;s services, thus exposing users to attacks

<!--QuoteBegin--Guest@Jul 18 2004, 07:36 AM
SP2 is expected to be between 80MB and 120MB in size.[/quote]
80 to 120megs? Thats again, alot of patching and poor coding on the part of the developers. How big is the baseinstall to begin with? And you then applying 120megs worth of patches to the system. and this is the second "Service Package"to come about.

A previous thread for XP service pack 1
http://www.oldversion.com/talk/index.php?a...t=ST&f=3&t=2688 (http://www.oldversion.com/talk/index.php?act=ST&f=3&t=2688)

[chester_ting]

80 to 120megs?

:huh: are you seirous?

That will take my years on my internet connection (connects at 44,000 bps)

Why is it so big? I&#39;ll have to leave it going over night, and my monthy MB price will be huge&#33;

Stupid Microsoft :angry:

I e-mailed a microsoft lad and asked when SP2 is expected.. because i was curious

He said 15th of July, and now your saying August :blink:

It will probably never end up coming.

[locustfurnace]

Originally posted by chester_ting@Jul 18 2004, 08:49 PM

80 to 120megs?

:huh: are you seirous?
XP Service Pack 1 was 113 megs. Just think, in the case of Win NT 4, it end up having 6 service packs. Just more to expect i suppose with the XP series as well.

[chester_ting]

in the case of Win NT 4, it end up having 6 service packs

:blink: How much do they need to update Xp? SP2 is going to have all the setup centre or something making sure you have firewall (ahhh yes, windows firewall) and antiviurus, what else? what can you ad? and updating all WMP and outlook express.

;) ;) ;) ;) I Hope it don&#39;t have 6 service packs ;) ;) ;) ;)

[Guest]

Originally posted by chester_ting@Jul 18 2004, 08:49 PM

80 to 120megs?

:huh: are you seirous?

That will take my years on my internet connection (connects at 44,000 bps)

Why is it so big? I&#39;ll have to leave it going over night, and my monthy MB price will be huge&#33;

Stupid Microsoft :angry:

I e-mailed a microsoft lad and asked when SP2 is expected.. because i was curious

He said 15th of July, and now your saying August :blink:

It will probably never end up coming.
available online for download from july i guess the august bit meant that it was available from microsoft from then on disc as earlier stated

[chester_ting]

available online for download from july i guess the august bit meant that it was available from microsoft from then on disc as earlier stated

so your saying its officially released? wouldnt it be avaliable through windows update?

But your saying July, and its not the end of july yet, we still about 11 days left in July, so it could be released in that 11 day period :huh:

Ill stop with my theries now..

[Jaime Andrés]

I&#39;ve installed it and very,very quickly uninstalled it.

Bloatware personified.

If you have a reasonably fast PC and don&#39;t want to slow it down to sludge then DO NOT download this patch /OS upgrade.
If you are reasonably capable of managing your own PC security , avoid this upgrade like the plague.

[chester_ting]

Jaime Andrés..

My friends installed the latest beta on his machine (XP PRO) and he said it was as smooth as silk.
IM using pentium 4 2.00 GHz, 248 MB ram, on XP home.

Will it slow me down?

[Guest182]

What is XP Sp2 used for? And how do i install it?

[Jaime Andrés]

Originally posted by Guest182@Jul 22 2004, 11:30 PM
What is XP Sp2 used for? And how do i install it?
1 To patch Win XP
2 Download it from Microsoft
3 As if you didn&#39;t know
4 Sorry no Troll points

[locustfurnace]

Originally posted by Guest182@Jul 22 2004, 05:30 PM
What is XP Sp2 used for? And how do i install it?
You use the Microsoft patented "double-click" procedure, as if there is any other way to install software on Windows.

[Kazza-Matazaa]

I hope its very soon

[bob thwe slovb]

2006 or 2007

[Guest]

What XP Service Pack 2 will mean for you

Last week we told you that Service Pack 2 for Windows XP will be released in August. Many of you may rightly have asked yourself: why is that important? And: What will it do for me? In this week’s Newsletter we go through the highlights in Service Pack 2 and explain what it will do for you and the security of your computer.


XP taking security seriously.......?

Service packs are usually simply compilations of past updates, making the process of bringing an OS up-to-date faster and more transparent. Service Pack 2 for Windows XP is going to offer much, much more than that. The SP will completely overhaul the way XP manages security threats and in many ways constitutes something closer to a completely new Operating System than a Service Pack.

So why was it necessary? Following the Blaster worm in mid-2003 the top brass at Microsoft decided that something out of the ordinary had to be done about the security problems in XP. Central to the improvements in the resulting Service Pack is the Windows Security Center(WSC).


The Windows Security Center

The Security Center was not intended for use in XP at all – but was to have been included in the next generation Windows Operating System- Longhorn. The purpose of the Security Center is not, as the name suggests, to provide security as such, but to give an overview of the security systems on a pc and inform the user whether these a) exist B) are updated, and c) enabled.

The XP intrusion firewall, which is included in all XP Operating Systems already, will be changed to be enabled by default, as very few seem to have realised that it is there and even fewer actually use it.

Further changes are implemented in Internet Explorer. There will be a popup killer and an information bar informing users of security concerns as they arise and an add-on manager to provide an overview of the plug-inns which have been downloaded and installed.


Blocking pop-ups

Lastly, the Service Pack will put further emphasis on certificates and digital signatures - a long running battle between those who believe that this is the way ahead and the puzzled consumer who does not have the time/can&#39;t be bothered, to read and verify such information for every download made.

Security Warning

Digital Signature


So how do you get hold of it? Like all other Windows updates it will be be available, when released, through "Automatic Updates". As it is a 100Mb update the download can be stopped and resumed at any time so it doesn&#39;t completely hog slower connections for hours on end.

online @ 7/23/2004 1:38:00 PM

[locustfurnace]

Originally posted by Guest+Jul 24 2004, 08:12 AM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Guest @ Jul 24 2004, 08:12 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>The Windows Security Center

The Security Center was not intended for use in XP at all – but was to have been included in the next generation Windows Operating System- Longhorn. The purpose of the Security Center is not, as the name suggests, to provide security as such, but to give an overview of the security systems on a pc and inform the user whether these a) exist B) are updated, and c) enabled.

The XP intrusion firewall, which is included in all XP Operating Systems already, will be changed to be enabled by default, as very few seem to have realised that it is there and even fewer actually use it.
[/b]
Microsoft&#39;s "firewall" has been included in the NT systems for a long time, this is nothing new. If you look on Windows 2000, it is included. Might have been included in NT4 as well. But since home XP is a combination of 9x & NT, and all those who ran 9x series never had their hands on Microsoft&#39;s packet filtering, it appears as something "innovative."
It is NOT a replacement for a strong firewall. Alot of the tools MS includes are basic to say the least. This is because MS is really walking a thin-line when including certain items in their OS. If they would create a strong packet filtering app, they could face accusations of trying to monopolizes once more. Even years ago, MS stated that the included disk defragmenter was not a replacement for a "good" defrag too, such as Norton&#39;s Speed Disk. It was just packed for those people who need a basic tool. Nothing too fancy or powerful.

So now its referred to as an "intrusion firewall"? Who sad that? What intrusion detection system are in place? How does this intrusion notify when a break-in does occur? Does it email you? Does it write a error message to the console? No...it can&#39;t do that. It must pop-up some blue screen or a widgeted box.
When did it graduate from being a packet filter to an IDS? I&#39;d suspect the original writer (not the poster) of the article was just tossing words around, as if they apply to all things called &#39;firewall&#39;. IDS is not the same thing as a &#39;firewall&#39;. They are used side by side with firewalls.


Originally posted by -Guest@Jul 24 2004, 08:12 AM
Further changes are implemented in Internet Explorer. There will be a popup killer and an information bar informing users of security concerns as they arise and an add-on manager to provide an overview of the plug-inns which have been downloaded and installed.
Blocking pop-ups

Blocking pop-ups is simple in IE, just disable javascripting, or use the much overlooked rating system of IE, it works well.
<!--QuoteBegin--Guest@Jul 24 2004, 08:12 AM
Lastly, the Service Pack will put further emphasis on certificates and digital signatures - a long running battle between those who believe that this is the way ahead and the puzzled consumer who does not have the time/can&#39;t be bothered, to read and verify such information for every download made.
[/quote]
Certificates and digitial signatures? Thats fine for business transactions, which has already been used for sometime now, with Verisign.
But where the problems occur, are not on those sites already established using these, the problems come from the small sites people frequent less often. This would really be only useful if you never stray off the "business" side of the internet. and will be absolutely usless when surfing homepages, smaller websites.
After a while, each site people view, with a pop-up asking you if you trust the site and wish to examin the certificate, this will become annoying for the average home surfer, and will become nothing useful and just something people wish to disable. If every time you opened a webpage you got a notice about a certificate, you&#39;d eventually just click OK/ACCEPT, without actually examining the contents. This does nothing for the masses, just the few people who visit a single page a day.
Besides, faking a certifcate is really simple. And for the most part. most homeusers do not understand what all the MD5 digest, CN, SSL, TLS, Ciphers....etc. means.
How does one know if the certifcate is valid, just because the certificate passes validation does not mean it is trustworthy. It still depends on what the user believes to be trustworthy. And if you trust the certificates validity and signers.

Lastly, if this becomes the Microsoft IE norm, what will become of smaller sites or home personal webpages, of people who wont/ can&#39;t afford to buy a certificate. It&#39;s difficult enough to have users pay for the software they like and download, now each site would need to pay for a certificate?

The biggest threat to Microsoft&#39;s &#39;security&#39; is Microsofts itself. Apple OS, *BSD, Gnu/LINUX users do not have any of these issues, such as viruses. The problem comes from Microsofts zeel in wanting everything in the world to have an email account, to be reachable by IM, to share, or &#39;collaborate&#39; with each other & to make their programs talk to other programs and do each other&#39;s bidding. (see the article about Microsoft wanting to be the developers of your cars braking system, with the ability to email? and updates the braking software automatically&#33;))
There is no structure of security in these programs, no way to ask for passwords BEFORE running code from an email. How about using something like PAM (password authentication modules) before running a MS doc&#39;s embedded script on a users system. Or keeping Outloook from always parsing emails; looking for email address and web address and launching them once discovered without asking.

[Guest]

Originally posted by Guest@Jul 24 2004, 08:12 AM
What XP Service Pack 2 will mean for you

Last week we told you that Service Pack 2 for Windows XP will be released in August. Many of you may rightly have asked yourself: why is that important? And: What will it do for me? In this week’s Newsletter we go through the highlights in Service Pack 2 and explain what it will do for you and the security of your computer.


XP taking security seriously.......?

Service packs are usually simply compilations of past updates, making the process of bringing an OS up-to-date faster and more transparent. Service Pack 2 for Windows XP is going to offer much, much more than that. The SP will completely overhaul the way XP manages security threats and in many ways constitutes something closer to a completely new Operating System than a Service Pack.

So why was it necessary? Following the Blaster worm in mid-2003 the top brass at Microsoft decided that something out of the ordinary had to be done about the security problems in XP. Central to the improvements in the resulting Service Pack is the Windows Security Center(WSC).


The Windows Security Center

The Security Center was not intended for use in XP at all – but was to have been included in the next generation Windows Operating System- Longhorn. The purpose of the Security Center is not, as the name suggests, to provide security as such, but to give an overview of the security systems on a pc and inform the user whether these a) exist B) are updated, and c) enabled.

The XP intrusion firewall, which is included in all XP Operating Systems already, will be changed to be enabled by default, as very few seem to have realised that it is there and even fewer actually use it.

Further changes are implemented in Internet Explorer. There will be a popup killer and an information bar informing users of security concerns as they arise and an add-on manager to provide an overview of the plug-inns which have been downloaded and installed.


Blocking pop-ups

Lastly, the Service Pack will put further emphasis on certificates and digital signatures - a long running battle between those who believe that this is the way ahead and the puzzled consumer who does not have the time/can&#39;t be bothered, to read and verify such information for every download made.

Security Warning

Digital Signature


So how do you get hold of it? Like all other Windows updates it will be be available, when released, through "Automatic Updates". As it is a 100Mb update the download can be stopped and resumed at any time so it doesn&#39;t completely hog slower connections for hours on end.

online @ 7/23/2004 1:38:00 PM
this information was taken from a bullguard correspondence relating to the xp sp2

[guest!!!!!&#]

sound exciting.. not

XP sucks

[hildred241]

A few things.....

A) If it&#39;s expected at 80MB-120MB, then why is the 2nd release candidate 277MB?
B) It *should* have been out ages ago, but they delayed it. Instead of releasing it early, and getting loads of errors, and having to launch loads of patches, they&#39;re going to get it right first time apparently.

[hildred241]

What does it do?

Like most MS products, it crashes a lot

It turns on the Windows Firewall by default, and if you start with it turned off, it&#39;ll prompt you to turn it on. If anyones serius about having a firewall, they&#39;d use Norton, not some rubishy Microsoft thing.

It adds tabbed browsing and a popup blocker to IE, like their rivals did ages ago.

It adds a security center to Windows, which alerts you if your anti-virus is out of date, besides, most anti-viruses update automatically.

So, it is utterly useless, apart from wasting 250 odd MB of my 2GB monthly dfata transfer limit.

Jeez, I&#39;m glad I have broadband for the big download. :P

[hildred241]

Maybe not 250MB.

You were right, it&#39;s about 80MB, why is the RC2 sooooo big&#33;?

I was basing on SP2 RC2 off the MS website.

[Jaime Andrés]

Originally posted by hildred241@Aug 20 2004, 10:16 PM
Maybe not 250MB.

You were right, it&#39;s about 80MB, why is the RC2 sooooo big&#33;?

I was basing on SP2 RC2 off the MS website.
I think you&#39;ll find that this particular version was a re-usable download for networks. For individual PC&#39;s the use once throwaway download was much smaller.

[Guest]

c/net news , perhaps ms should sell tea strainers. Security researchers say they&#39;re starting to find flaws in Microsoft&#39;s latest major update for Windows XP.

Last week, German company Heise Security announced that two flaws could be used to circumvent the new warnings that Windows XP Service Pack 2, or SP2, normally would display about running untrusted programs, potentially giving a leg up to a would-be intruder&#39;s attempts to execute code on a victim&#39;s PC.

And more revelations about vulnerabilities are on the way, Thor Larholm, senior security researcher with vulnerability-assessment company PivX Solutions, said Wednesday. Larholm has been looking for holes in the security of SP2 since the update was released and has notified Microsoft about several issues, but he would not discuss the details.

"I&#39;m positive that we will see critical flaws over the next few weeks, and worms that will circumvent SP2 features over the next few months," he said.

Larholm has found dozens of flaws in Windows XP and Internet Explorer over the past few years and had previously maintained a Web page of unpatched vulnerabilities in the software giant&#39;s browser.

Microsoft would not discuss whether it had received reports of new vulnerabilities in Windows XP Service Pack 2 but did say that the company&#39;s researchers had investigated the Heise issues and found them wanting.

"The security response center is investigating those reports," said a representative of the company. "This feature is one that is supposed to protect users against executable files from an unknown source or untrusted locations. At this time, (Microsoft&#39;s security response center is) not aware of any instance that attackers could specifically bypass the service through e-mail or a browser."

Security researchers also point out that Microsoft has not solved some well-known issues with a few of the security technologies incorporated into SP2. Though the firewall is improved, it can be circumvented by any locally running program, a problem with most personal firewall programs, said Marc Maiffret, chief hacking officer for security software maker eEye Digital Security. Maiffret and his staff are analyzing the security update as well.

"We have seen some interesting things, but it is only about a week into it," Maiffret said.

The flaw reports could cause companies to hesitate even more before installing Microsoft&#39;s latest step to secure Windows. Many companies have said they will hold off on the update until it has been thoroughly vetted.

SP2 is designed to add better security to the operating system&#39;s handling of network data, program memory, browsing activity and e-mail messages by changing the system&#39;s code and configuration. For example, a revamped firewall is intended to keep attackers out and attempts to prevent malicious applications from connecting to the Internet by requiring that the user give specific permission to each application.

The major software update, which took almost a year to create, came to life after the MSBlast worm hit the Internet on Aug. 11. Almost 26 days before, Microsoft had issued a patch for the security hole the worm exploited, but many people did not install the fix even though there was widespread expectation that a virus would be created to take advantage of the flaw.

Microsoft Chair Bill Gates has described SP2 as the most extensive free update to Windows ever, and executives have acknowledged that work on the update has delayed other projects, including Longhorn, the next major version of Windows.

In addition to making the software available via automatic update, Microsoft will allow information-technology managers to download an upgrade that companies can use to update their machines.

As for flaws in XP itself, eEye&#39;s Maiffret points out that the update is about making Windows XP more secure by adding new protection features and better configuration, not about finding all the vulnerabilities in the operating system.

"Microsoft never claimed that SP2 would close all the security holes," he said.

[chester_ting]

They keep delaying it

Release it already

[Jerry]

If you install the new windows xp service pack it has a pop up blocker built in to IE. It seems to be working fine. Haven&#39;t had a pop up in 3 weeks scince I installed it.
It also has a firewall built in now too but I havent enabled it. I like Zone Alarm.