Why do you use Windows Vista vs. sticking with Windows XP?

[evilghost]

Originally Posted by radekhulan

If you want to write a rootkit or keylogger, you must code this as a device driver, not a simple EXE you put in StartUp folder. However, as Vista x64 will not install / use 32-bit device drivers at all, these (old) rootkits will simply not work. Also, if you have UAC on, you cannot install any device without explicit admin approval. Also (by default, you can change this) all device drivers and vxd modules must be properly signed, which rootkits are not.

Of course this will change, we will see some x64 rootkits. But they never will be properly signed and never will install if UAC is on anyway. Vista x64 *is* very secure..

Why does one have to code a device driver for a key-logger instead of using the existing GetAsyncKeyState() API from User32.dll? I've written keyloggers for Win32 and I did not need to write a device driver for it. Wrap some socket communication in there and you've got a connect-back key-logger.

[flukester]

Originally Posted by radekhulan

Yes, it does. Firewall in Vista is very good, in fact, better than competition, because it works also when computer boots. It allows to filter inbound and outbound communication, per application, per hours specified, per user groups, etc.

Are you sure it blocks ping by default? Hmm, after my Vista was installed it wasn't blocking ping, just like it didn't in XP which I had to laugh at. As for filtering inbound outbound during 'bootup', I really see little sense in that. I have to log onto my ISP either way and why would you have that for your LAN? I see you mention 'per hours specified and per user groups'. Honestly, would you ever use that for a Home PC? For the office ok but typically people don't share 1 pc except at home so I see little sense in those options. The rest XP already does with it's built in firewall. The firewall in XP was/is really good too if you know what you are doing. You can filter both inbound and outbound setting up your own rules. If I went to any 'test your security' pages, I was always stealthed and no holes were/have been found.

Again, I'd switch to Vista but the drivers stink and relying on nVidia for decent drivers right now is a stretch, to say the least.

[evilghost]

BITS bypasses the firewall, malware is starting to use BITS. For example, Win32/Jowspry used BITS to load additional malware and bypass the policy restrctions of the firewall.

Originally Posted by radekhulan

Yes, it does. Firewall in Vista is very good, in fact, better than competition, because it works also when computer boots. It allows to filter inbound and outbound communication, per application, per hours specified, per user groups, etc.

Are there any tips you would recommend adding to the default configuration?

I do work from home, no VPN needed atm though, and I don't visit questionable sites.

Thanks for replies..

[Rakeesh]

Originally Posted by flukester

Spyware comes in all forms, tracking cookies included.

No, spyware implies software that spies on you, and phones home to report all of your activity, e.g. what programs you run, etc. Spy-ware. Cookies aren't software; they aren't even programs. It's just a little text file that contains information about a website you visited. Most anti-spyware software will identify it as a "threat" as an attempt at making you think it is actually doing something useful, thus making you happy with the software, when in reality it isn't really doing anything other than deleting a few text files. All that tracking cookies can really "track" is which websites who are partnered with that particular firm that you may have visited.

Originally Posted by evilghost

Why does one have to code a device driver for a key-logger instead of using the existing GetAsyncKeyState() API from User32.dll? I've written keyloggers for Win32 and I did not need to write a device driver for it. Wrap some socket communication in there and you've got a connect-back key-logger.

AFAIK in vista that particular hook requires superuser access. If a program tries to use it, you'll get that UAC prompt.

[hell_of_doom227]

Blah

[hell_of_doom227]

Originally Posted by Redeemed

Not quite. It played comparably well to XP for me. That is, untill my hard drive crashed. Up until then Vista was superior to XP in every way possible, save for SLi scaling. That is nearly non-existant and SLi typically causes Vista to become unstable.



Coming from somebody that owns an 8800. Why did you purchase that 8800GTX? Why buy an 8800GTX over two 7900GTXs? Or two 7950GX2's? Why have 4GB of RAM compared to 2? Why use SATA300 instead of SATA150? Why use SATA 150 instead of PATA133? Why use PCI-e instead of AGP 3.0?



No, Vista is not a memory hog. In fact, it has superb memory management in comparison to XP. What Vista does is actually utilise all the available RAM. When you fire up an application that makes use of RAM (i.e. a video game) everything currently stored in RAM gets dumped into the page file, therefore devoting the majority of performance-critical resources to that game.

I wish people would educate themselves before they posted such nonesense. *sigh*

Give me an example where Vista is superior over XP. What Vista can do and XP can't? Where XP is lacking performance compared to Vista?

I agree. You can't compare hardware and software. Vista is a software, and it doesn't mean that if it's newer then XP is better in every aspect.

Really...hm performance is still behind XP. Superfetch is useless nonesense. It doesn't speed up computer and it won't give you more FPS neither computer will do faster app processing. The only thing which it does is speeds up program/game execution. Well, from my experience i haven't seen a damn difference between XP and Vista (using Raid configuration) as far as execution time. The bottom line is. Computer has to load up software from harddrive to memory either way. Is it gonna do it upon computer boot or when i click on it doesn't mean a ****. Superfetch is insufficient because it can't know what are you going to run...so we have wasted CPU/Disk processing time and yeah it affects performance if you're dealing with 2GB or less memory. Oficially Microsoft says it has low priority I-O. I don't think so...
Windows XP equipped with 2GB of Ram runs fine Visual Studio 2005. Vista is choking...it needs more memory.
Vista need 4GB of RAM to overcome poor memory management...better to say wrong design. Basically it does constant swapping of the files between memory and hard drive. It's like hard drive paging from the worst nightmare Windows 98 days where the system runs on 8Mb of RAM.

I wish you stop to believe anything you read or hear just because a source has a "name".

[evilghost]

Originally Posted by AlphaWolf_HK

AFAIK in vista that particular hook requires superuser access. If a program tries to use it, you'll get that UAC prompt.

I actually had to look it up, appears UAC doesn't protect it.

http://www.symantec.com/enterprise/s...us_code_o.html

I added emphasis

Other security concerns exist, however they are not explicitly said to be prohibited by Vista, for example by default, UAC allows a standard user to call the following functions, which may allow an attack to perform keylogger and sniffer-like operations.

SetWindowsHookEx, made available in earlier versions of Windows, allows applications to hook other API calls at runtime by injecting a user-specified call into a hook chain. Thus, allowing an attacker to hijack sensitive information from a user’s active desktop session. However, an attacker may only infect processes running under the UAC environment.

GetAsyncKeyState, when used in conjunction with DLL injection methods, may allow an attacker to monitor keystrokes and other interactive activity on a desktop. Again, the same restriction applies to this method where an attacker can only infect the current user.

[flukester]

Originally Posted by AlphaWolf_HK

No, spyware implies software that spies on you, and phones home to report all of your activity, e.g. what programs you run, etc. Spy-ware. Cookies aren't software; they aren't even programs. It's just a little text file that contains information about a website you visited. Most anti-spyware software will identify it as a "threat" as an attempt at making you think it is actually doing something useful, thus making you happy with the software, when in reality it isn't really doing anything other than deleting a few text files. All that tracking cookies can really "track" is which websites who are partnered with that particular firm that you may have visited.

Still tracks you and keeps stats on your visits and when you hook up to the right site it takes all that information. That to me is still considered spying. It's spying on what I do infringing on my personal privacy. You are right, it's obviously not software but none the less any and all anti-spyware insists on removing these tracking cookies.

For example it is easy to probe through the browser and other program’s data to get a general idea of what a user is doing online or where they are shopping. Likewise it will show if a user’s machine has been connected to a URL that serves adult content. This is a case of a benign technology being abused for covert purposes. Historically some developers have been known to use cookies to gather information without the surfer's knowledge.

Be it XP or Vista, nobody is safe from tracking cookies unless you manually control cookies and who'd be sitting there clicking yes no yes no yes no...I purge my cookies basically once a week.

[evilghost]

Originally Posted by flukester

Still tracks you and keeps stats on your visits and when you hook up to the right site it takes all that information. That to me is still considered spying. It's spying on what I do infringing on my personal privacy. You are right, it's obviously not software but none the less any and all anti-spyware insists on removing these tracking cookies.

For example it is easy to probe through the browser and other program’s data to get a general idea of what a user is doing online or where they are shopping. Likewise it will show if a user’s machine has been connected to a URL that serves adult content. This is a case of a benign technology being abused for covert purposes. Historically some developers have been known to use cookies to gather information without the surfer's knowledge.

Be it XP or Vista, nobody is safe from tracking cookies unless you manually control cookies and who'd be sitting there clicking yes no yes no yes no...I purge my cookies basically once a week.

Only the parent domain issuing the cookie can access the cookie unless XSS or CSRF is used. Yahoo doesn't see what I do on Google, and vice versa. Most of your tracking is done via the use of HTTP_REFERRER when a banner ad is accessed.