BenoitRen

The windows desktop 'update' should never be applied. It will only slow down and clutter your system, plus integrate IE.

I'd like to add a couple things. Not if the rootkit is part of the Master Boot Record. This is part of the integrated IE webby desktop that ships with Win98 and with IE4. Without it, this 'logging' doesn't exist.

The distinction isn't as clear-cut as that...

If you live in the US, you can easily buy new gear that was made a couple years ago at NewEgg.

I consider 2 Ghz to be enough for that, really. What most people forget when it comes to 3D rendering is optimisation, so for them it'll always be slow.

Windows 95 supports WDM drivers with the USB updates.

I can't see why hardware from a couple years ago isn't enough to upgrade to, except if you want to run recent games (which won't work on Win9x).

Note that I am offering my help. Also, being a Windows 95 user, I'm barely fed here.

If he found it in Win98 SE's user.exe, it wouldn't be too hard to find in the other versions, no? After all, they're all built on their previous versions instead of rewritten code. I'd like to help looking, but I don't know what to look for, or even how to do it.

I know, and that wasn't my concern. You provide me with a unique identifier. You're not just some anonymous person among the dozens of other anonymous people. You also post here and are a moderator. I can check your posting history for one thing, and look at your reputation. Actually, it is my real name, sort of. It's my first name plus part of my last name. Usually I would post as just "Benoit", but I had to find something else when I wanted a screen name for AIM. Since then I'm BenoitRen on most message boards. I never cared for nicknames, I wanted to have only one name.

Firefox (and other Gecko-based browsers) doesn't support ANI files. However, there's an undisclosed exploit that tricks Firefox into making Windows load it.

You mean the CD won't boot? What distribution have you chosen?

Illegal or not, you'd still be using a recent operating system of theirs, and they like that. The real way to take revenge would be to install and use Linux.

There are machines that do work well with Windows ME, it seems. Solaris. ReactOS. BeOS. I don't recommend installing that heavy-weight. I recommend Puppy Linux! It's a LiveCD, and can be installed to the hard drive if you want to. Works great. What do you mean with "alter the OS"?

How about an actual patch of user32.dll, instead of this work-around?

By the way, you know how M$ fixed it? By patching user32.dll

I have an additional concern. How are we to trust this patch if the author doesn't even want to give us his name, and wants to remain anonymous?

If you disable the file and printer sharing (which would disable NetBIOS), then yes, I guess you'd be pretty safe. Though there are still those IE shell extensions... I think it was someone in this forum that mentioned it, but he/she wasn't more specific.

The only way it can be fixed? I don't think so. You have to patch whatever file/function handles the ANI header to check if its size will fit, according to the PDF that documents how this works.

I hate it how this is less of a Win9x forum and more of a Win98/ME forum! WHAT ABOUT WINDOWS 95?! Looking at the .inf file of the patch, I don't dare install this thing. It also sounds like this will just add an extra process instead of fixing the vulnerability once and for all.

Apparently ZERT has a patch that also applies to Windows 98. I wonder if the same one can be used for Windows 95.

I actually tested this myself. I figured all that was needed was opening the .ani file with a program. So I saved it to my desktop. As soon as I had minimised all my Windows, a window came up that told me Explorer had caused an error and had to close. I clicked close, which restarted Explorer, and let the message reappear. Repeat ad infinitum. Now, I didn't want to lose the cache of my SeaMonkey, so I tried to find another way of getting out of this mess than pushing the reset button. However, I couldn't do anything while that error window was on the screen. Pressing Ctrl+Esc didn't work. I tried pressing it repeatedly while closing the window, which brought up the Task Manager. The window was still there, though, and other than select the tasks, I couldn't do anything. I closed the window again, and this time it didn't come back. I opened the Start menu, and deleted the file through the DOS prompt, and all was well again. In contrary to many reports, Firefox (and hence other Mozilla browsers) is vulnerable. This Flash movie explains how. This PDF explains how the exploit works.

EDIT: I felt it was better to make a new topic with all the information concerning this, and to remove my earlier (ignorant) reply from here.

I can't elaborate on the IE shell extensions, though it makes sense since IE is integrated to the system and desktop, with all the webby stuff. As for NetBIOS, well, what's there to elaborate? It's installed by default, as far as I know, and listens for connections, which is known to be a big security risk. NetBIOS is that protocol that allows you to share files and printers. To get back on the subject of AJAX on IE for a moment, I remembered something that support my argument. To have AJAX on IE, you have to write IE-specific code. Hence, you can't say that IE supports AJAX. Proprietary features don't count. If you didn't have to write IE-specific code, but it would use ActiveX behind the scenes, then we'd have something to disagree about.

Considering that other security groups have released several patches that fix the problem in a short time since the announcement, I'd say M$' claims are bogus. Not entirely true. There are a couple IE shell extensions, and of course NetBIOS is installed by default. I've heard that if you look harder, you can get laptops with a version of Linux on them. For desktop computers, you can let a hobby store assemble one for you, or assemble it yourself, with the OS (and parts, of course) of your choice.