Pirated Version of Windows 7 Has Malware Built-in

[seacue]

Posted on the Washington Post Web site:

Security Fix - Brian Krebs on computer and Internet security (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/?hpid=news-col-blog)

[Jofm5]

Not sure why anyone would want the pirated version when you can download the real one from microsoft just using your Live ID. It gives you till June 1st next year to decide if you like it or not.

[green granite]

Not sure why anyone would want the pirated version

These I suspect were more likely to be the so called RC (ie build 7100) touted about on various warez sites some weeks before MS released it. Most of them were not genuine and in fact were the pre-release beta with the version number changed to 7100.

[Jofm5]

Ahhhhh,

When it comes to pre-release software one should only go to the source or your just asking for trouble.

On a slight thread drift - I dont understand why people use the torrents for software - just about all decent software has a near good enough open source equivalent (sometimes better e.g. WireShark).

I can confess years ago to having the odd bits of software that were dubious but I now take the view that if I use it, I buy it - if I am only going to use once then I download the evaluation or search for some open source equivalent.

I do think on the whole software can be way over priced for some of the more mainstream applications e.g. it was claimed that if microsoft gave away everything they developed free apart from office it would still turn a profit.

[P.Pilcher]

What is so infuriating about Microsoft's poilcy is that they don't believe that "if it ain't bust, don't fix it.
When I moved over to XP in about 2002, I acquired a copy of Office XP. It worked perfectly and continues to do so today. But now, they are fed up with this and want Office 2007 to be used instead. To assist in this, all new laptops seem to come with Office 2007 installd and the new purchasers use this software to generate .docx files. These of course are unreadable by earlier versions of Office, but now Microsoft have been obliged to release a large update which permits older versions of Office to read these files.
Office XP installs and works perfectly in XP if it is unmodified, but this software does not work properly in XP with the latest modifications unless Office itself is also updated. This is no doubt to make it more secure. I can forsee this software not working at all in Win 7 (even in "XP" mode) because Microsoft insists on trying to get more money out of us. "Open Office", here I come!

P.P.

[Jofm5]

You could always download the free extension to office xp to read/write docx files.

[hellsbrink]

But you shouldn't have to do that, Jofm, surely backwards compatibility should have been included.

Oops, silly me. Microshaft wouldn't be able to get people to spend an absolute fortune to "upgrade" then, would they....

[al446]

I only use Open Office and have done so for a couple of years, the MS offerings are bloatware.

[Jofm5]

hellsbrink:

But you shouldn't have to do that, Jofm, surely backwards compatibility should have been included.

Oops, silly me. Microshaft wouldn't be able to get people to spend an absolute fortune to "upgrade" then, would they....


Sorry hellsbrink - but you got it the wrong way round.....

P.Pilcher is saying that he cannot open .docx's within office XP because they are created with a Newer version of Word - so that would be building in forward compatibility not backward compatibility - they offer a free add on converter to Office XP for the new file formats so you can read and save in that format. It would be pretty impressive to build in compatibility into office XP for software they had not written yet.

So why the change to .docx when existing docs were fine - well what Microsoft has done is they have generated an Open Document standard which is based upon XML. A .docx file is a compressed XML document, if you use winzip or similar you can uncompress this document file and have access to the XML inside - the XML Schema is published so essentially anyone can read/write docx files without having Word altogether - it also makes pulling document contents into applications easier.

I guess with Microsoft they are damned if they do and damned if they dont - everyone complained that the DOC format was proprietry and guarded but when they change it to open and available people complain it has changed.

Incidently the backward compatibility is within Office 2007 - you can save to any of the previous native formats and edit in those formats for compatibility with users of previous Word versions.

[jimtherev]

.....
So why the change to .docx when existing docs were fine - well what Microsoft has done is they have generated an Open Document standard which is based upon XML. A .docx file is a compressed XML document, if you use winzip or similar you can uncompress this document file and have access to the XML inside - the XML Schema is published so essentially anyone can read/write docx files without having Word altogether - it also makes pulling document contents into applications easier.


Incidently the backward compatibility is within Office 2007 - you can save to any of the previous native formats and edit in those formats for compatibility with users of previous Word versions.

... but then there's the dozy factor "Whaddyer mean you can't read it? It's a word document isn't it?... Well, I'm using Word. Nobody told me they'd changed it"

As for 'anyone can read/write docx files...' No they can't - not without plugins. And not many people will bother. At present, nearly all the world can read .doc's - force majeure has seen to that. and 'you can save to any of the previous formats...' Yes, of course, but the dozies referred to above prob. will never remember...

hey-ho! just another aggravation.
Ned Ludd

[frostbite]

More here

Pirated Windows 7 RC builds botnet - ZDNet.co.uk (http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39651457,00.htm)