[nylug-talk] [Full-disclosure] Vista Reduced Function mode triggered (fwd)

[Jay Sulzberger]

On Mon, 1 Jan 2007, Kevin Mark wrote:

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> On Mon, Jan 01, 2007 at 02:41:05PM -0500, Jay Sulzberger wrote:
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>   Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2007 14:26:52 -0500
>>   From: Geo. <geoincidents at nls.net>
>>   To: full-disclosure at lists.grok.org.uk
>>   Subject: [Full-disclosure] Vista Reduced Function mode triggered
>>
>>   The other day I used my router to limit my Vista laptop from talking to
>>   anything but one subnet on the internet. 3 days later suddenly some things
>>   would not work.
>>
>>   Solitaire failed to start, click on it and you get the magic donut showing
>>   it's starting up then nothing.
>>
>>   Right click on network and pick properties you get the magic donut showing
>>   it's starting up then nothing.
>>
>>   So I removed the routes so Vista could once again phone home and within a
>>   minute or two both solitaire and network properties worked just fine.
>>
>>   Now this Vista system is less than 30 days old and has already been
>>   activated. So the claims that Reduced Function mode only kicks in if you
>>   don't activate within 30 days is bunk if this is Reduced Function mode.
>>
>>   So I decided to trigger RF mode on purpose to see how it responds. I stopped
>>   the Software License service which claims that doing so will trigger RF
>>   mode. 24 hours later solitaire, network properties, and control panel all
>>   show the same behavior, the magic donut showing they are starting up then
>>   nothing. No events in event log, nothing.
>>
>>   I then started the Software License service and presto like magic these
>>   functions work again. So I'm convinced that the machine being routed so it
>>   can't talk to MS triggered RF mode within a few days. Now to me this seems
>>   pretty clear even though it wasn't a real scientific method of testing. And
>>   further, this looks to me like an accident waiting to happen. I mean imagine
>>   if MS fell off the planet we would have a pretty major problem as the bulk
>>   of the worlds computers started shutting down, talk about a security issue?
>>
>>   So anyone here with a bit more technical expertise want to pick up this ball
>>   and run with it?
>>
>>   Geo.
> Hi *,
> if this is indeed the scenario, then in essence there is single point of
> failure for all vista servers. Any concerted effort to DDOS this magic
> vista IP address will make billions of computers become useless. Works
> for me(tm).
> Cheers,
> Kev

;)

oo--JS.