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Slashdot: What Happens If You Connect Windows XP To the Internet In 2024?

What Happens If You Connect Windows XP To the Internet In 2024?
Published on July 29, 2024 at 03:09AM
Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger writes: Have you ever wondered if it's true you can instantly get malware? In this video, a person connects an XP instance directly to the internet with no firewall to see just how fast it gets compromised by malware, rootkits, malicious services and new user accounts. The answer — fast! Malwarebytes eventually finds eight different viruses/Trojan horses -- and a DNS changer. (One IP address leads back to the Russian federation.) Itâ(TM)s fun to watch -- within just a few hours a new Windows user has even added themself. And for good measure, he also opens up Internet Explorer... âoeWindows XP -- very insecure,â they conclude at the end of the video. âoeVery easy for random software from the internet to get more privileges than you, and it is very hard to solve that. âoeAlso, just out of curiosity I tried this on Windows 7. And even with all of the same settings, nothing happened. I let it run for 10 hours. So it seems like this may be a problem in historical Windows.â

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