PsYcHoLoGiCaL

Rumors are flying around all over the internet that a portion or all of the windows 2000 and windows NT source code has leaked onto the internet, if this is true, and that is a big if, but if it is then there could be huge security concerns. After all, MS has always been about secuirty though obscurity, but what happens when they those their obsurity? It will be interesting to see how this pans out over the next few days.

Here is an article by www.neowin.net (A bunch of high profile sites just linked to them because of this story so it apears the server has been blinded, try again later if you can't get though.) Another article is here http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news...le.php/3312451 .

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"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." -- Thomas A. Edison

BloodNOil

Big Deal.

Linux is a million times worse! The source code gets leaked EVERY DAY to
almost EVERY hacker in the world!

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It's like a koala bear crapped a rainbow in my brain!!

CheebaMonkey

Couldn't somebody decompile the Windows files and look at the source code that way?

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BloodNOil

Sure. If you had enough assembly language skill to write an operating system on your own.

PsYcHoLoGiCaL

There is a big difference between open source apps and closed source apps. Windows is riddled with security problems, and if the source is exposed it will be hundreds of times if easier to discover them. OSS is designed so that anyone can fix a problem and submit it. Windows does EVERYTHING themselves sometimes it takes them 200 days to fix a problem, their track record, to say the least isn't good.

Plus Microsoft has never really had good secure programing practices, with OSS secure programing is strongly enforced because the source is... well, open and anyone can look at it. As it is now without the source exposed exploits are coming in at a rate that Microsoft's can't handle, i mean come on 200 days to fix a security flaw is rediculas. Just imagine the rate that exploits would be coming in if the source was exposed.

You have to realize that with OSS the public has time to scrutinized the source from the very beginning of the development to find any security flaws, its an on going process. Imagine a 50 million line application that has never been scrutinized by the public for security flaws just being tossed into the public domain, well needless to say they will get their scrutiny but it wont be distrubted over a long period of time like with OSS.

Simply put the ONLY security windows gets is though obscurity, and if the source is revealed they no long have have that luxury.


You can try and decompile it, but it just isnt the same has having the orginal code. You just can't get the same detail from decompiling than you can with the actual source. Having the source and having hex isnt even close to the same thing.

CheebaMonkey

They couldn't convert the decompiled information into a different language format, such as C++ (or whichever one is used to write OSs)?

And that's some interesting thoughts there Psy, never thought of it like that.