Since this recent info about Windows Explorer in SE being vulnerable I was wondering if I have activeX and IE disabled and also locked behind a firewall would the listed vulnerability theory still be possible?

It seems like most of the Problems SE users suffer from come from these two uh ... (exploits?).

Thanks for any input.

I wouldn't worry about it. According to M$, there hasn't even been any "proof-of-concept" code that has been written to take advantage of this exploit.

Oh great, that's like losing your Mastercard, telling everyone you lost it and not cancelling it.......gee thanks Bill.......

In topic "W98 Vulnrerability"... No matter what you do to secure your PC, there are always those wizard hackers who can send nasties straight through your Router, AVS, FireWall, and various other securities, like they weren't even there, like a hot knife through warm butter, destroying your PC's OS faster than you can say "oops"...
Pulling the AC-plug while the HD is going ballisatic, is like praying while your jet airliner's wing is fluttering in the winds, and its nose is pointing to the ground, and its tail pointing at the clouds... "not a prayer"...

Spybot helps a little bit... A good registry backup sometimes helps... But if a super hacker bully has your number, it's most likely that you will be soon formatting-C again soon...
Upset a psychotic religious group, or a government Intel division, and your PC's OS is toast within 24 hours...

If you are connected to the Internet your PC is vulnerable, no matter what you've got in it... Just learn to pick your friends well...

The fact is that a default install of w98; however relatively unsafe, is still WAY LESS vulnerable than XP with all the armor of firewalls, security tweaks, updates and antiviruses available.

Practicaly nobody used a firewall until XP came out.

A default install of 98se is only unsafe if the attacker has physical access, or if file-sharing is installed (don't install it! use a better way of networking). With XP, remote access is enough to exploit vulnerabilities in services that always listen to the network.

I didn't know that the bigger newer OS's were so screwy...

I was dreaming of one day stumbling on a newer PC with a newer OS.. but more and more it seems that W98se is the way to go...

What is W98se like in a new fast big state of the art computer?..

Maybe by adding the new tweaks, and various aftermarket updates.. it's not so much W98se, as it is W98te...

Fast. Very responsive and excellent startup/shutdown times. (4.17GHz P4 user here )

Ok I don't believe it's so easy to get through a hardware firewall and a software firewall without being noticed. Even if someone did, who cares ? Maybe you can activate my cam and watch as i pick my nose........

If I kill the Juice on my system, it don't hurt a thing.

It's recommended when things go south, it's safer than hitting reset.

I just hit the main switch on my back ups and everything is off, even the adsl and router.

98se is tough man, REAL TOUGH. Way tougher than XP, XP is a joke.

It's like cooking old grand-ma cakes in a new oven. Only taste better.

I call my PC the "Hal 9000".
It was as close to a Super Computer as I'll ever get, before I was forced to install Winders XP-Pro.

It ran like the proverbial "Scalded Dog" and I never had any BSOD problems, and all with Win-98/SE with all the tweaks and upgrades, service packs, etc.

I still have the Ghost Image of that setup, just as it was the morning I installed XP.

In short, Win-98/SE runs very good on a new, fast, modern PC. You just may have troubles finding hardware drivers for 98/SE for some of the new vid cards, etc.

The day I installed xp, I also had to replace my sound card, modem and scanner. There were NO XP drivers for any of them.

Ce la vie

Impossible, unless you're running some exploitable services on your box there's nothing remotely exploitable in 98se. Unlike XP, which comes by default with many (exploitable, like RPC) services listening. Portscan your IP and see what you find open on XP, then compare with 98.

In W98 it's the aftermarket music softwares that be your worst vulnerable holes, unless you have installed All the security patches... But even then, don't be fooled into a false sense of security... An expert computer-wiz can still get in like a fly through an open window... There are holes that only a few know about.. their aces, against your two's... No matter what you do for armor, upset the big boys, and your OS is toast...
In my scheme of things, trying to wake people up to opening their minds to a little more reality, to stop us from destroying the planet so hard, I bump into and upset those bully experts way too often.. and I'm formatting the OS at least every three months... I know they got me when the HD suddenly starts going ballistic, and all my controls are suddenly locked out... Pulling the plug doesn't help in the least... Sometimes I'm lucky, when a registry backup saves the day.. but most the times that doesn't do diddly, because included in their hit, my AVS, Spybot, and the firewall have already been jumbled or disabled, and the registry backup locked out... All I can do then is either listen to the HD destroy itself/or pull the plug, and switch on the old iMac.. and connect it to the router, while the PC is formatting...

If I look at it in the positive.. at least they leave me enough working OS for me to get my files and pix to floppy, and it keeps my OS fresh... so maybe there's still a tiny spark of love in those hateful mindless gorillas...

Thing is: In 1978 I was on a "Go west or bust" trip, driving west, with all my possessions in the truck, not knowing where I would settle... just driving in that direction... Something super clicked in my mind when I saw two huge meteorites cross a fiery "X" in the sky... In the next three hours, at the side of the road, I wrote and sketched the bench manual for a liquid electricity emitter, which later I figured would open the bonds of the inert elements, and would give us engines for floating/flying cars, and planetary defense weaponry... I tried three times to build it in the garage, but had a little accident, when my dad shone a penlight into the 3/4" crude barrel, and out came a goldish liquidish light ("fire-light"),which burned a couple holes clean through the back of his eye... He was lucky it wasn't completed...
For safety concerns I had to shelf the project till I get use of a safe-lab... Since then I've contacted All the world's science majors, in an attempt to peg down use of a state of the art laser lab and lapidary lab, with absolutely no success... All I got was hundreds of remote viewers trying to suck the data from my mind while I slept.. and hundreds of hack attacks to my computers, from corporate pirates desperately trying to find and rob the data from my PC's... The data is Only on paper, in the 75000-pages so far...
They even destroyed four PC's in their efforts to rob it... Seems that it's not worth anything to them unless they can steal it...
I would have given it all to them freely, just for use of a lab, just to make this world a better place to live in...
With the new inert element chemistry, we get the new plastics needed to grow our PC's, to be worn as skin grafts on our fore arms... The world refuses to join with me in this project... Seems I am being forced to take it to the grave.. means you don't get flying cars and skin-graft PC's in your lifetime...

__________________


Seems that some anti-technology nutcase has decided that my "extremesciences webwork" must be stopped... by them destroying my PC's OS at every opportunity... It's like being in the northern wilderness, without repellent, nor screen, being hounded by a thousand blood thirsty four-inch long northern Canada Acadia-mosquitoes.. that cuss in four letter words.. wear studded black leather jackets, of bee-skin.. carry tiny switch-blades.. and spit on butterflies...

Who ever from hell it is.. they send me two virus-emails per day, with fake names, and touching "hellos", or "hi friend", or "ebay workers needed", or "why the h haven't you contacted me about your ebay auction sale item that I won?".. They never mention what the item is.. and I don't have anything forsale on ebay anyway..., or they send come-on gimmicks to make lots of quick money...
If I copy their emails without opening them, and place them on the desktop, then set them in trash, I get a popup, "Are you sure you want to delete this program?"...

Now only if we had a security software that added that test to links, as we open them, and before they get into the OS...
I'm guessing that it needs to be a router with its own CPU... a Super Router... a Super Dooper Router... a Magic Router...
a killer router...

Too bad we can't give the gorillas their own Battle-Internet... Then they could have their WW3&4 on their own battleground Internet, instead of perpetually feeding their evils to us unrelentingous, slow and steady... Heck! I could design e-weaponry for them... They could do all their lovely hate stuff electronically... and we could switch them off on sundays, if we dare enter-fear...

Is anyone out there in h on earth, working on a super CPU-based router..? I might have a few good ideas to make your project succeed...

LLXX,

Well, in the department of better being safe than sorry, I fiigure that sooner or later someone will write code to take advantage and there I'll be without a bugfix for Windows Explorer. I would really hate having to load up something like LiteShell to replace Windows Explorer. Wonder if anybody (other than MR BILL) is looking to patch Windows Explorer or something similar.

N

The only time I remember having problems with Windows 98, was when I used
Internet Explorer, as my primary browser.

Now I use Opera, and, don't find my computer going haywire for no particular
reason.

I agree on Windows 98 being too old for anyone considering to create harm to
it.

They're having more fun with XP, and & Vista to worry about Windows 98.

Dude I never had no harddrive thrashing, registry locking virus in 3 years I've owned a computer, and I p*** people off, alot.

What'd you do?

QUOTE: "The only time I remember having problems with Windows 98, was when I used
Internet Explorer, as my primary browser.

Now I use Opera, and, don't find my computer going haywire for no particular
reason."



I tried Opera, but didn't like it... I'm running SeaMonkey.. it's full of features you don't see with any other browser.. and it's FAST... http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=2173248&
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Or if you are a little gutsy and experimental in nature, try http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/sea...y/latest-trunk/

Agreed, IE is like a screen-door with big holes in it... I never use IE unless I have-to, for certain MSN downloads, which only work with IE.. otherwise I have "Tiny Personal Firewall" set to block all IE traffic, and pop up when something wants to connect to the Net, when the rule is bumped... I set TPF's rules as I go... Every PC in the world shouldn't be without TPF...

I tried the two little softwares that claim to delete IE & OE from your machine.. but quickly found that deleting those integral softwares is deleting some of the needed integral portions of the Windows operating system.. and had to format and reload... You can't run Windows without IE & OE intact, but you can seal them up in Tiny Personal Firewall's little security box.. then nothing gets to contact the Net through TPF's blocking settings, unless you give your permission... TPF is the first to load after the desktop has started to load... I keep a copy of TPF on a floppy for reloads, and it's the first thing I install and config after the OS CD's... I even set TPF to block itself from contacting the Net.. and use BlackIce as my main firewall...

____________________________



QUOTE: "Dude I never had no harddrive thrashing, registry locking virus in 3 years I've owned a computer, and I pizz people off, a lot.

What'd you do?"



That's easy... I'm one hell of an outspoken antagonist.. battling this Species' growing mass mindlessness, and I really hate bullies... All my life I was super bullied.. and now I'm fighting back... I hit flamers so hard, that they have to run to mummy to get their diapers changed.. and they always run to the mods, whinning and sobbing...
Surf "cosmicbrat" & "occultrush" to answer "What do I do"...
The human intellect is devolving.. as if we are using teevee and the Media to do our thinking, and give us our opinions... I'm trying to wake the mindless Numbs to opening a little of their minds, so they'll realize what they are doing is gonna result in the planet running out of life.. so they will wake up, and stop destroying the planet, for future human generations to have their birthright... In this activity I bump into a lot of mindless gorillas out there in their hell on earth.. usually nutcase christians defending the faith by trying to destroy my PC's OS, to give me the 15 to 20 hours grief of reloading my software environment... I'm pushing for serious Change, while religion fears change, and stifles change, because they believe change doesn't include them... Surf: "cosmicbrat leo engel", and "occultrush", and http://www.hobartwelders.com/mboard/showth...28&page=2...

I don't hold back anything when an apehead-bully starts flaming me... I get banned a lot for defending myself from kiddies and forum guard AH attack spiders... Seems it's ok for them to pizz in my face, but not ok for me to expose them for the AH's they are...

The second last time my PC got big time slammed, I was in the MSN Hotmail login page, and had clicked on their "three thousand dollars a week easy money scam link", and form-posted to the guy that his piramid-scheme looked like a piramid-scam... Suddenly my HD went ballistic, and all my controls locked out... Pulling the plug didn't help in the slightest... I had to format-C to do anything... All he left me was my files to floppy feature... I lost all my cherrished edited pix... He had locked out Spybot, Regedit, BlackIce, Norton AVS, and pretty much everything else... That was what's called a "Slam"... Whomever it was, I'd like to go on a hunting trip with him, deep in the bush, where no one could hear his dying screams...

The last time my PC's OS got slammed, I challenged a nasty mouthy mindless computer-wizard hacker, and sho-nuf my PC got hit way over the top.. but my provider who reads my emails as I post, arbitrarily reset my IP for highspeed Internet for a day, and the job of reloading went a lot faster and smoother... I haven't thanked them yet, so "Thanks folks"...
It was worth it.. I taught the bully a very important lesson.. and maybe even put the kibosh on his attacking innocents, but at my time expense... Seems sometimes I have-to throw myself into the lion's arena to get something good done...

_______________________

Quote KingAuther "I tried the two little softwares that claim to delete IE & OE from your machine.. but quickly found that deleting those integral softwares is deleting some of the needed integral portions of the Windows operating system.. and had to format and reload... You can't run Windows without IE & OE intact".
The computer this message is being written on has no i.e or o.e on it at all, none ,nada. It sends receives email, browses the web,burns cds,runs p2p,plays encodes movies music etc etc
It does nearly everything that my other pcs do, those run with the 98shell and only 1 of them has i.e or o.e on it. That purely because the software writers were being to lazy to create their own interface.
Replying to Question about 98SE vulnerability, get behind a nat firewall, do not use bugged software for messaging ,browsing the web and finally run from a cd or purely in ram, first way cannot be altered and the second ignores any changes made on the next system boot

Sounds like you are a computer wizard... I bet you could write your own OS...

Please post any links that detail your system...

Hey KingAuther,

Thanks for the link!

I'll add this with my other collection of browsers on a CD.

EDIT:

Would you believe I installed Windows XP Professional on my Internet computer this morning!


Surprise, Surprise. It works on my 8 year old AMD K6 400 Hz Computer.

Unfortunately, I've grown so accustomed to having my Internet PC shutdown in 2 seconds on Windows 98 First Edition, I couldn't deal with the timely shutdown which is the standard with XP Pro.

I have XP Professional on my Dell, so no big deal.