Bonum Certa Men Certa

Is Microsoft Making Windows XP Illegal for Use on the Internet?

Windows XP wallpaper style
Bad firewall



Summary: As ISPs may prepare to require full patching as a precondition to connecting, what does Microsoft's refusal to patch actually mean?

THE PREVIOUS post showed that Windows is now at risk of being kicked off the Internet if it cannot be properly secured (it hardly can). This gets worse though.



Mentioned the other day was the fact that Microsoft is leaving Windows XP vulnerable with no intention of patching known security bugs. That, by definition, may render Windows XP unsuitable for use on the Internet; it cannot ever be made fully patched and since there is no access to the source code, only one company rules on the matter. As the debate carries on, Slashdot reveals that Microsoft is indeed saying "no" to patching of XP.

Microsoft says it won't patch Windows XP for a pair of bugs it quashed Sept. 8 in Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. The news adds Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and SP3 to the no-patch list that previously included only Windows 2000 Server SP4. 'We're talking about code that is 12 to 15 years old in its origin, so backporting that level of code is essentially not feasible,' said security program manager Adrian Stone during Microsoft's monthly post-patch Webcast, referring to Windows 2000 and XP.


Here is the newly-cited report.

Microsoft late last week said it won't patch Windows XP for a pair of bugs it quashed Sept. 8 in Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008.

The news adds Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and SP3 to the no-patch list that previously included only Windows 2000 Server SP4.

[...]

The bugs in question are in Windows' implementation of TCP/IP, the Web's default suite of connection protocols. All three of the vulnerabilities highlighted in the MS09-048 update were patched in Vista and Server 2008. Only two of the trio affect Windows Server 2000 and Windows XP, Microsoft said in the accompanying advisory, which was refreshed on Thursday.

[...]

During the Q&A, however, Windows users repeatedly asked Microsoft's security team to explain why it wasn't patching XP, or if, in certain scenarios, their machines might be at risk. "We still use Windows XP and we do not use Windows Firewall," read one of the user questions. "We use a third-party vendor firewall product. Even assuming that we use the Windows Firewall, if there are services listening, such as remote desktop, wouldn't then Windows XP be vulnerable to this?"


Amazing!

Does that mean that Microsoft intends to stop sales of XP on all machines? What about the fact that Vista 7's principal feature is virtualisation of XP? How can that be secured? What about the many existing users?

“What about the many existing users?”"Since Linux is faster and easier to use on the netbooks," tells us a reader, "Microsoft is still shipping XP in order to hang on to the OEM monopoly. Yet at the same time the official party line is that there will be no patches for XP.

"Do you suppose Microsoft employees managed to lose or erase the source code for that part of XP?"

Could Microsoft be trying to urge people to abandon XP? If so, Vista 7 sure seems like a problem because not only does it rely on XP but it is already a problematic downgrade/upgrade (no genuine consensus or verdict on whether it's an "upgrade" yet). Ars Technica claims that it can take an entire day just to move to this operating system, even on a fast machine. The source of the claim is Microsoft Corporation.

Microsoft: Windows 7 upgrade can take nearly a day



[...]

The biggest thing that stands out about this chart is the very broad range of the upgrade time: from 30 minutes to 1,220 minutes. That second extreme is not a typo: Microsoft really did time an upgrade that took 20 hours and 20 minutes. That's with 650GB of data, 40 applications, on mid-end hardware, and during a 32-bit upgrade. We don't even want to know how long it would take if Microsoft had bothered doing the same test with low-end hardware.


Assuming a wage of roughly $100 per day, the price of Vista 7 sure is higher than the price tag suggests. And what about the cost of insecurity?

Recent Techrights' Posts

Linux and the Freedom Paradox
Linux is losing freedom if some external actors who only use Microsoft tools for development wrest control
Watch the FSF Party Live (via Livestream)
It's in WebM format, which is widely supported by now
Advocacy of Software Freedom Changed, LUGs Became Less Relevant
The way we see it, support groups like LUGs sort of outlived their usefulness when it became easier to install GNU/Linux
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims or says can be trusted
Compromised by NVIDIA Proprietary Library
Meanwhile in Boston there are "[r]oundtable talk with FSF volunteers (both in-person and online)"
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
 
The Free Software Foundation's Livestream Has Ended, Video/s Might be Online Next
I've asked whether they'll upload video of some of the event; I still wait for an answer
The Register MS Does Not Know the Difference Between Microsoft GitHub and GitLab
At the time of writing (October 5) the article from "Thu 2 Oct 2025" remains uncorrected
"Bullshit Generators" (What RMS Calls LLMs) and Fake Images Already Target the FSF
Why does Google News promote fake articles about the FSF while omitting all the real ones?
Software Patents as a Bubble
Don't invest resources in hype; if you detect a bubble, run away from it
Links 05/10/2025: Political Leftovers, Climate Change, and Security Incidents
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 04, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, October 04, 2025
When Microsoft "Integrates" Something With "AI" It Means It's Losing Money and Is Generally Hopeless
how did Bing fare after 36 months of LLM slop being hyped up as "replacement" for search?
Most Certificates Don't Improve Security, They Mostly Increase Downtime (for No Good Reason)
The 'Gemini sites' (capsules) are a growing force
The statCounter Site Has Data Integrity Problems
Maybe we'll get back to statCounter when its data becomes more "stable" again
10 Ways to Combat Software Patents
software patents are loathed also by proprietary software developers
"Just a Little Bit of Meat..."
Free software "absolutism" is not a radical stance, more so if the only "radical" belief the user possesses is that he or she must be in control of his or her software, and by extension his or her computer
Red Hat is Ignoring the Free Software Community, It's a "Fortune 1000" Vendor
Red Hat's blog also participates a lot in promoting of Wall Street's latest pump-and-dump "AI" scheme
Free Software Foundation Party Has Begun
We shall be focusing a lot on software patents today
Former Head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Lina Khan Knows Whatever Microsoft Touches Will Die
Just like Skype (as recently as months ago) [...] When Microsoft grabs things, or when it buys things, it almost never ends well
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About LibreOffice in Austria and Wine 10.16
very short
Links 04/10/2025: "attempted Coup" Noted in Facebook, Russia Kills Journalists via Drones
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Anesthesia and Baudpunk
Links for the day
Links 04/10/2025: "Privacy Harm Is Harm", Criticism Outlawed in US
Links for the day
Garmin Uses Linux for Some of the Garmin Products, Now It's Sued by Strava Using Software Patents
Software patents should never have been granted in the first place
Richard Stallman Will Give a Talk in Sweden in 6 Days
Dr. Stallman, despite his battle with cancer is still alive and mentally sharp
FSF Turns 40
We'll be focusing on patent-related topics this weekend
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 03, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 03, 2025
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Distro Hopping and "Part Time"
Links for the day
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day