05.11.09
Eye on Microsoft: Lessons of Windows
Summary: Some Windows failures for the day
According to PA, about 100 stores are affected, and the problems are being rectified by rebooting the checkouts.
• My thoughts on “Virtual XP Mode” nonsense and the future for XP users.
Microsoft has obviously utterly failed to get 63% of Windows users (as of April 2009’s stats) to “upgrade to Windows Vista from XP.
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If Microsoft wasn’t so damned insistent on this DRM nonsense, then they would have just had a library where they exported XP and WIndows 2000 functions and registry entries, and used a compatibility shim to redirect API calls and registry ops. That would have been less than 1% performance penalty, and they have everything they need to do that with WOW64 anyway.
AGGGGGHH!!!!!
• ZeusTracker and the Nuclear Option
In early April, Hüssy began tracking a Zeus control server used to receive data stolen from a botnet of more than 100,000 infected systems, mostly located in Poland and Spain. While investigating this newfound Zeus control server, he noticed something unusual: the “kill operating system” had just been issued to all 100,000 infected systems.
• A Zeus botnet self-destructs
According to information which only recently came to light, in early April a botnet consisting of an estimated 100,000 PCs apparently destroyed itself – as its control server send out a command that made Windows inoperable. The botnet was based on the Zeus botnet tool kit, which allows criminals to infect and subsequently remotely control users’ PCs. The Zeus tool kit can be purchased for only a few hundred dollars
