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March 9th, 2008

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Unlock Windows without password - Winlockpwn

A security consultant based in New Zealand has released a tool that can unlock Windows computers in seconds without the need for a password. Adam Boileau first demonstrated the hack, which affects Windows XP computers but has not yet been tested with Windows Vista, at a security conference in Sydney in 2006, but Microsoft has yet to develop a fix. Interviewed in ITRadio’s Risky Business podcast, Boileau said the tool, released to the public today, could “unlock locked Windows machines or login without a password … merely by plugging in your Firewire cable and running a command”. Boileau, a consultant with Immunity Inc., said he did not release the tool publicly in 2006 because “Microsoft was a little cagey about exactly whether Firewire memory access was a real security issue or not and we didn’t want to cause any real trouble”.

But now that a couple of years have passed and the issue has not resolved, Boileau decided to release the tool on his website. To use the tool, hackers must connect a Linux-based computer to a Firewire port on the target machine. The machine is then tricked into allowing the attacking computer to have read and write access to its memory. With full access to the memory, the tool can then modify Windows’ password protection code, which is stored there, and render it ineffective. Paul Ducklin, head of technology for security firm Sophos, said the security hole found by Boileau was not a vulnerability or bug in the traditional sense, because the ability to use the Firewire port to access a computer’s memory was actually a feature of Firewire.

Source: The Age

Written by ShaDow on March 9th, 2008 with 1 comment.
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Windows Vista (In)capable

What went wrong? I’ll tell you what went wrong: Microsoft execs - starting with Steve Ballmer - don’t care enough about their customers.




Which is too bad for the thousands of smart, hard working ’softies who do. 

I went through the Vista Capable lawsuit Exhibit A emails. Lots of warnings that Vista was a train wreck, that its requirements exceeded the market, that the continual changes and slips were killing OEMs and that many peripheral vendors had simply given up trying to stay in sync. 

Where was Steve?
Even execs get shafted If you were confused and/or burnt by the “Windows Vista Capable” logo, you have good company. Mike Nash, now Microsoft Corporate VP, Windows Product management, said in an email: 

I personally got burned by the Intel 915 chipset issue on a laptop that PERSONALLY (eg with my own $$$). . . . I now have a $2100 email machine.” 

Board member and former Microsoft President/COO Jon Shirley also had Vista woes: 

I upgraded one of the two machines I use a lot to Vista. The most persistent and so far hardest to fix issues are both MSN products, Portfolio in MSN Money and Music (downloads I had bought in the past). 

. . . there are no drivers yet for my Epson printer (top of the line and in production today but no driver yet), Epson scanner (older but also top of the line and they say thwy not do a driver for) and a Nikon film scanner that will get a driver one day . . . . I cannot understand with a product this long in creation why there is a such a shortage of drivers. I suppose the vendors did not trust us . . . enough to use the beta for driver testing? 

Good question, Jon. Ballmer replied: “You are right that people did not trust us . . . “. 

Was it Intel’s fault?
Intel clearly put pressure on Microsoft to ease the graphics requirements for the “Vista Capable” designation. Intel VP, Software and Solutions Group Renee J. James got a lot of attention from William Poole, a Microsoft VP. 

Mr. Poole seems to have been Microsoft’s primary contact to Intel’s James. Mr. Poole played an key role in strangling Netscape - based on his testimony in the antitrust trial. He knows how to play rough. 

Thus John Kalkman’s email statement doesn’t quite add up: 

In the end we lowered the requirement to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with 915 graphics embedded. 

If Intel couldn’t sell motherboards, could Microsoft sell Windows? Further, Intel’s 915 graphics performance wasn’t bad. In a November, 2004 ExtremeTech review, the 915 could do 73 fps on Halo and 60 on UT2004 - not bad for integrated graphics 3 years ago. 

My reading: Vista’s hardware requirements exceeded what most consumers were buying. Microsoft bloatware overshot the market and they had a choice: lower requirements or hose the available market for Vista. 

They lowered requirements. The “Intel made us do it” claim is an excuse, not a reason. The emails also show that HP had worked hard to meet the original requirements. If Microsoft cared about consumer requirements they would have supported HP over Intel - even at the cost of initial Vista sales.

Written by Madhukar on March 9th, 2008 with no comments.
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Vista SP1 up to 86% faster

Is Vista SP1 really the shot in the arm your Vista system needs? We've spent many hours strapped to our benchmarking system in a caffeine and pizza fuelled haze to uncover these very interesting results.




We tested Vista: 

* as it comes out of the box (RTM -- or "release to manufacturing")
* as it comes out of the box, with all Windows Update patches applied ("RTM patched)
* with the final SP1 service pack applied 

Testing Setup 

Although Vista SP1 has many documented improvements, we aimed to test a particular scenario which has proved to be a major problem for pre-SP1 users: file copy speed, particularly over a network. 

Our scenario was a home user running Vista Home Premium on a fast, low-latency network with decent PC hardware. All file copy tests were initiated from the main machine. 

Our test machines were: 

* Main machine - an Acer Veriton 7900 Pro (Intel Core 2 Duo 6700/4GB RAM/ATI RADEON X1950/2xSATA-II HDD) running Windows Vista Home Premium
* A second machine running Windows Vista Home Premium (connected via gigabit Ethernet for file copy tests)
* A third machine running a fully-patched Windows XP SP2 installation (connected via a dedicated gigabit network to two remote systems). 

Each system used the latest available vendor (non-Microsoft) drivers and the November release of DirectX. No modifications were made to the operating system, so as to represent as closely as possible the configuration of an OEM machine. 

We uses two test file batches – the first was a single 2.5 GB ISO, and the second was 2.5GB of small files (over 300 MP3s). Each file batch was copied to a remote destination (write), and then written back across the wire to the test system (read/write). 

The file copy destinations were: 

* the second hard drive in the main testing system
* a SanDisk Cruzer Micro 8GB USB flash drive
* the remote Vista system
* the remote XP system. 

File copies were timed from the time “Copy” was clicked to the time the copy shell disappeared. 

We also ran PCMark Vantage across the test systems to get an overall impression of system performance. 

The aim of the tests was to see how changes in the test machine’s patch level affected performance. 

We therefore ran the tests three times – once with Vista Home Premium RTM, once with all the available patches applied from Windows Update, and once with SP1 RTM applied. 

The secondary Vista system was also patched to maintain consistency between it and the test machine. 

The XP system was unchanged throughout the tests, running fully patched XP SP2. 

Hard drives on all the three systems were defragmented before each file copy test.

Written by Madhukar on March 9th, 2008 with 1 comment.
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