10.26.09
Vista 7 Student Edition Broken on Arrival, All Vista 7 Editions Open to Hijackers Upon Installation
Summary: The “Ow” starts now because Vista 7 fails miserably to install on many people’s computers and those who install it are instantly left exposed
THE reality behind Vista 7 is a lot worse than anyone in the press dares to admit. Almost no-one, except Gizmodo perhaps, actually wrote about Microsoft’s own admission that Vista 7 Student Edition is messed up.
Apparently Microsoft decided to release the upgrade as an installer instead of an ISO file, and it’s causing all kinds of headaches. Users are reporting that after the installer goes through the “Unloading the BOx” step, an error occurs and the installation fails.
Wow. So Vista 7 is not so perfect after all. Who would have guessed?
In more important news, installing Vista 7 would leave the user/s exposed to hijackers immediately after the installation is complete. Yes, that’s right. We wrote about this before [1, 2] and there is new coverage of that in IDG News Service, e.g.:
i. Microsoft issues first Windows 7 patches
Microsoft’s massive security update last week included patches for nine Windows 7 vulnerabilities, far fewer than were issued for Windows Vista and Windows XP.
ii. Windows 7 roundup: Patches, parties, predictions
Microsoft proved to be a party pooper even before its Windows 7 launch parties took place. A few days in advance of the parties, the company said it had patched 9 vulnerabilities, including five critical ones.
The ‘Microsoft press’ is trying to play down these serious security issues and from Microsoft we are now learning that an estimated figure of 320,000,000 Windows zombie PCs out there is not far fetched.
One-third of Security Essentials users infected: Microsoft
Almost a third of the customers who have installed Microsoft’s free Security Essentials software have been found to be suffering from major malware infections.
Also from the news: “Giant Zbot Botnet Trying To Trick Microsoft OWA Users”
Security experts have discovered a massive spam campaign going on this week, attempting to distribute the password-stealing Zeus Trojan application across the internet.
The Trojan has reportedly afflicting a large number of PCs across the globe and has created a massive botnet of zombie machines for circulating malicious spam attacks.
Security-wise, Microsoft has resolved nothing. █
“Spam will be a thing of the past in two years’ time.”
–Bill Gates, 2004
Yuhong Bao said,
October 28, 2009 at 11:49 am
Well, even XP was out-of-date upon release and had to be patched using Windows Update:
http://forums.windrivers.com/archive/index.php/t-39574.html
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
October 28th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Of course. But XP is no gold standard. Compare that to GNU/Linux distributions, which are released within hours/days after ‘RTM’ (just need to be put on mirrors).
Yuhong Bao Reply:
October 28th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
And even they often release updates soon after RTM, for example, Ubuntu 8.10 was released with a workaround for this bug in Linux 2.6.27 due to need to meet schedule and the real fix for this kernel bug came soon after release:
http://lwn.net/Articles/304791/
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
October 28th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
There are also X.1 releases, especially for LTS versions.