Microsoft prepares largest ever software upgrade

Found on New Scientist on Tuesday, 10 August 2004
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"Microsoft is starting to make deep strategic changes to increase security in the OS and not just fix a security bug here and there," says Chris Wysopal, a security expert with US company @Stake. "Some of the improvements have been a long time coming."

Other enhancements are aimed at preventing "buffer overflow" attacks, which involve breaking into supposedly protected regions of a computer's memory by inputting excess data.

HTML content in received emails will also be switched off. This is because spammers can use HTML to detect when a recipient has viewed an email to identify the most responsive targets.

Although the software will be free to authorised users, Microsoft plans to stop those running unauthorised copies of its software from receiving the new upgrade. Those using serial codes associated with pirated versions of the operating system will be unable to download the new software.

The decision to block these versions of Windows from receiving the update has alarmed some experts who worry that they will remain vulnerable to computer viruses, worms and other forms of attack and will therefore be a threat to other computers.

The network kit has about 270MB. Although the user release will "only" have about 90MB, it makes you wonder how much they update. Even if custom installions vary in size, this should be around 10% (disregarding the compression). Plus, it will absolutely not help if pirated versions cannot update. Infected pirated machines will continue to be abused, what makes this SP more or less useless in a global view.