Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11
From: Michal Zalewski <lcamtuf () ghettot org>
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 20:32:21 +0200 (CEST)
On Fri, 24 Sep 2004, ASB wrote:
"The servers are timed to shut down after 49.7 days of use in order to prevent a data overload, a union official told the LA Times." How you managed to read "OS failure" into this is rather astounding...
The statement above, even though either cleverly disguised by the authorities, or mangled by the press, does ring a bell. It is not about applications eating up too much memory, hence requiring an occassional reboot, oh no. Windows 9x had a problem (fixed by Microsoft, by the way) that caused them to hang or crash after a jiffie counter in the kernel overflowed: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q216/6/41.asp It would happen precisely after 49.7 days. Coincidence? Not very likely. It seems that the system was running on unpatched Windows 95 or 98, and rather than deploying a patch, they came up with a maintenance procedure requiring a scheduled reboot every 30 days. This is one hell of a ridiculous idea, and any attempt to blame a failure on a technician who failed to reboot the box is really pushing it. It is not uncommon for telecommunications, medical, flight control, banking and other mission-critical applications to run on terribly ancient software (and with a clause that requires them NOT to be updated, because the software is not certified against those patches). In the end, the OS and decision-makers that implemented the system and established ill-conceived workarounds should split the blame. /mz _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html
Current thread:
- Re: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11, (continued)
- Re: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 Barry Fitzgerald (Sep 24)
- Re: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 Frank Knobbe (Sep 24)
- Re: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 Barry Fitzgerald (Sep 24)
- RE: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 joe (Sep 24)
- Re: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 Nancy Kramer (Sep 24)
- RE: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 joe (Sep 24)
- Re: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 Ron DuFresne (Sep 24)
- Re: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 Frank Knobbe (Sep 24)
- RE: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 joe (Sep 24)
- Re: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 ASB (Sep 24)
- Re: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 Michal Zalewski (Sep 24)
- RE: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 joe (Sep 24)
- RE: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 Michal Zalewski (Sep 24)
- RE: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 joe (Sep 24)
- Re: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 devis (Sep 25)
- Re: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 Barry Fitzgerald (Sep 24)
- Re: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 ASB (Sep 26)
- RE: [inbox] Re: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 Exibar (Sep 26)
- RE: [inbox] Re: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 Ron DuFresne (Sep 26)
- Re: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 Barry Fitzgerald (Sep 26)
- Re: Windoze almost managed to 200x repeat 9/11 Vince Able (Sep 26)