As technology marches on, some people get trapped using decades-old software and devices. Here's a look inside the strange, stubborn world of obsolete Windows machines.
People keep saying to keep these XP machines off the internet. I seriously doubt there’s much threat, especially for even older OS’s like 98 and 95. It’s the very devil just trying to browse with them, nothing much out there is going to be able to attack them. Security through obscurity indeed!
In any case, we’re no longer in the Wild West days when people had machines hooked directly to the internet and a firewall was a third-party addon. LOL, ZoneAlarm anyone!
We all have a basic firewall built into our routers so unless you deliberately expose services you’re fairly bulletproof to scanners. I remember scanning for Win2000 machines in blocks of IPs, long after it was defunct. Plenty were out there!
You are forgetting targeted attacks. A blind attack would pretty much not have much of an effect indeed, however if the attacker knows the machine, then it’s easy for the attackers to exploit these vulnerability if left “out in the open”, and cause havoc, possibly create a lot of damages or leech informations pumped into those machines via old Windows installations.
People keep saying to keep these XP machines off the internet. I seriously doubt there’s much threat, especially for even older OS’s like 98 and 95. It’s the very devil just trying to browse with them, nothing much out there is going to be able to attack them. Security through obscurity indeed!
In any case, we’re no longer in the Wild West days when people had machines hooked directly to the internet and a firewall was a third-party addon. LOL, ZoneAlarm anyone!
We all have a basic firewall built into our routers so unless you deliberately expose services you’re fairly bulletproof to scanners. I remember scanning for Win2000 machines in blocks of IPs, long after it was defunct. Plenty were out there!
You are forgetting targeted attacks. A blind attack would pretty much not have much of an effect indeed, however if the attacker knows the machine, then it’s easy for the attackers to exploit these vulnerability if left “out in the open”, and cause havoc, possibly create a lot of damages or leech informations pumped into those machines via old Windows installations.