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Windows XP leak confirmed after user compiles the leaked code into a working OS
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ramshanker 6y agoI got "Sorry, you don't have permission for that!"
- iso8859-1 6y agoIt's basically just blogspam reporting that a YouTuber named NTDEV posted two videos. His build of Win2003 was successful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO0daYbti5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO0daYbti5g I hope your company firewall does not block YouTube.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- duskwuff 6y agoThis is an ongoing, infuriating Twitter bug. Reload the page and it'll show up properly.
- whyfy 6y ago"Video unavailable This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Microsoft Corporation."
- space_ghost 6y agoThe Windows build environment uses Perl?
- user5994461 6y agoMakes sense. XP was released in 2002 and took years of work before the release. A good chunk of languages we take for granted today did not exist at that time, or were in the very first release. Perl came out in 1987, it was quite the thing in the late 90s.
- muterad_murilax 6y ago> XP was released in 2002 2001, actually.
- rchaud 6y agoIndeed. There is an episode of the sitcom Frasier (set in Seattle) featuring Bill Gates, that aired in Nov 2001. Gates appears on Frasier's call-in radio show, but all the calls end up being tech support related. Gates comments on whether Windows XP needs a boot disk or not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpRiDl48ERA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpRiDl48ERA
- INTPenis 6y agoYes it makes sense from a technical standpoint but I was amused by this fact because Microsoft is supposed to be a vendor of programming languages and operating systems. And to build their own OS they go to the world of open source. So it's a neat confirmation of the power of open source over proprietary software.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoDoesn't the Linux build system use perl as well?
- movaps 6y agoNope, it's a combo of makefiles (GNU flavour I think) and C called Kconfig.
- rkeene2 6y agoNot really. I created and maintained a Linux distribution, and while Perl was sometimes used it was almost never strictly required (i.e., it was for documentation or something that really would have been better if the release maintainer had already generated....). This covers a few hundred packages, like gcc, binutils, glibc, linux, core-utils, util-linux, flex, ... Notable, also, is that I didn't compile perl for my Linux distribution because perl's configuration system is terrible (there's an out-of-tree patch to make it less terrible, though).
- h2odragon 6y agoAt this point, a "free to use" license for XP or better yet win2k up to win7, would be worth it for m$ for the PR and goodwill. "you can get it if you want it" is just lame. m$ should, ideally, bite the bullet and do a (stripped if need be) source release of what they can, explain what they can't release. Everyone will then benefit from the relief from worry and lack of friction things like emulation and software archeology and etc will gain.
- vb6sp6 6y agosounds like a security nightmare
- beervirus 6y agoPlenty of that code is still (one assumes) in use in Windows 10. Why make it easier for someone to find a zero-day?
- vbrandl 6y agoBy that logic, you can't use any open source software...
- Bancakes 6y agoYou can, but it's your problem if you don't stringently configure SELinux and have clear policies for yourself. If you use Linux like Windows thinking it's more secure, and run everything with 'sudo' "Just to make sure it doesn't crash or pop an annoying prompt.", you're worse off.
- Someone1234 6y agoThey should release software with known security problems, that they have said they won't be fixing? Please no... Botnets are large enough as-is. Plus a lot of people under-estimate the cost and difficulty in releasing the source code of previously proprietary software. You don't just slap it onto Github and everyone goes home, you often need a team of lawyers to look at third party licensing and go through the code file by file looking for potential liabilities. Code that started out open source software has to narrow third parties to only specific licenses/waivers. Code that has for tens of years been closed source may contain licensed source code (e.g. decoder libraries) that they don't own the license to publish for just one example.
- 1023bytes 6y agoI wonder what impact this will have on ReactOS
- ironmagma 6y agoReactOS has always taken a "we will rebuild anything from complete ignorance of the source" approach, precisely because of the legal liabilities. They are so good at it though, that people at Microsoft have actually claimed that the developers must have source code access.
- ed_elliott_asc 6y agoI had windows source code access (read) about 2005 but because of that I am not allowed to contribute to ReactOS even today.
- debian_lover 6y agoContribute anonymously
- akerro 6y agoIs that part of your NDA?
- saagarjha 6y agoNo, this is something ReactOS does themselves: https://reactos.org/project-news/reset-reboot-restart-legal-issues-and-long-road-03/ https://reactos.org/project-news/reset-reboot-restart-legal-...
- kizer 6y agoIs anyone who’s worked for MS barred?
- userbinator 6y agoTwo words: plausible deniability. Incidentally, this is also why you should separate your work and personal life.
- blibble 6y agomaybe someone will finally port Pinball to X64, given MS didn't seem capable (at least in the time allotted) https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=5803 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=58...
- Fabricio20 6y ago3D Pinball can at least run on modern windows, literally just copy-paste from Windows XP and it will run. They don't make software like they used to! /s
- wang_li 6y agoThe glquake binary from id runs on 64 bit Windows 10. Microsoft has done a admirable job of maintaining compatibility.
- carabiner 6y agoI keep thinking about this.
- soylentcola 6y agoAre you talking about "3D Pinball"? Looking around it seems to be available for later versions of Windows (but I didn't look into the details of whether it's a port or something else).
- sebazzz 6y agoSurely it can be run in compatibility mode on modern Windows?
- GranPC 6y agoI think the Pinball source code was not included in the leaks, possibly because it was developed by an external company.
- EamonnMR 6y agoIt was developed by Maxis I believe.
- gjsman-1000 6y agoWhoa. I thought when that was leaked, that there would be no way it would be able to compile or, well, run without Microsoft's extensive and extremely complicated build setup. What an accomplishment.
- derefr 6y agoI believe Microsoft's internal build toolchain was part of the leak. Looks like the particular tool used wasn't part of the centralized CI system, but rather one intended to be used to time how long builds take (guessing: intended to be run on the developer's workstation as a pre-checkin checklist step, in order to avoid committing code that bloats CI build-time?)
- mdriley 6y agoHeh, nope, `timebuild.pl` is the canonical entrypoint for an "official" Windows build, and has been for a very long time. It's a hideously elaborate dependency resolver and task runner that is responsible for tying together all the various build steps necessary to create an installable OS. refs: https://web.itu.edu.tr/~dalyanda/mssecrets/other/Startup.htm https://web.itu.edu.tr/~dalyanda/mssecrets/other/Startup.htm In order to perform these operations, execute the following command from within a razzle window, whose current directory is %sdxroot%. · perl tools\timebuild.pl https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/job/869511 https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/job/869511 Experience with “Timebuild”, razzle, and the Windows build system
- saagarjha 6y agoThat job description is strange to me–how could they ask for experience with an internal tool? Is it just a filtering mechanism to hire ex-Microsoft employees? This seems like an Apple job posting asking for experience with XBS, or an Amazon one asking for Brazil familiarity–unless this has been published in some form to the public, like Google and Facebook have done? > #gamingjobs Heh. Someone needs to tell Microsoft recruiting to dial back the "fellow kids" :P
- thrownaway954 6y agoeveryone working on ReactOS must be drooling right now, though they can't even peek at the source without risk of going through another audit.
- google234123 6y agoThe windows research kernel has been leaked for more than a decade. It's actually quite clear that ReactOS has been taking a look.
- EvanAnderson 6y agoI have nothing to do with ReactOS, but I've heard this allegation made many times on HN, but I have yet to see anyone point to a hard example. Some of the allegations relate to symbol names, but Microsoft has leaked private symbol names in the past[1]. [1] https://kobyk.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/oops-microsoft-private-symbols-accidently-leaked-in-visual-studio-2010-ctp-vm-image/ https://kobyk.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/oops-microsoft-privat...
- temac 6y agoSo just because some internal symbols have been leaked (or even have been published by MS in symbols tables) you can copy them legally ? But somehow you can't copy the source code ? But however you can copy a hand (or tool assisted) disassembly and even copy the symbols on top of that ??? Why ? What kind of crazy interpretation of copyright law is that ? (And this is tremendously clear at least something like that has been done for some key parts, and some of the people even told the world they believe this was OK because they did it basically like that...). And oh, maybe in some jurisdiction you actually can, but I would like to have the list. And in the US, especially after Oracle vs. Google I would be astonished to learn that this is actually legal, and I would actually already have been astonished to learn this is legal even before Oracle vs. Google. Win 2k and NT4 sources have had a very very wide circulation for a long time. Probably there was no source copy directly at source level because they magically audited their codebase, somehow, and told us that this did not happen, BUT it at least means that it's easy for anybody not wanting to take the handwaving at face value to directly do a comparison themselves. And no magical process is going to produce virtually the same functions, including the internals, suddenly not a copyright violation, because of some random wishful thinking about how if you copy with some crazy extra steps and a cute little magical dance in the middle it becomes suddenly ok in the eye of the law. Maybe that idea would make lawyers laugh hysterically while randomly saying "AFC test", but I'm not it would have any other effect. Just take the two trees and diff key functions and see by yourself. There is no way to justify it can't be reimplemented differently to implement even the same specification. Would MS want to destroy that project, I believe they would be able to do it, effortlessly, in a court. But I suspect it is not worth the potential PR backslash given how the narrative is already set that it is "clean", and the high number of free software enthusiasts believing it blindly for years without even checking by themselves.
- znpy 6y agoIt's a pity no one has leaked the msn server and client source code yet. I loved it so much when I was a teenager.
- rzzzt 6y agoMichael MJD has a video on Escargot, which hosts a server instance that knows how to talk to clients using the MSN protocol (official clients need to be modified, however, so connection attempts don't go to the now defunct servers): https://youtu.be/yrvNyvFwCJg https://youtu.be/yrvNyvFwCJg Source code is available at https://gitlab.com/escargot-chat https://gitlab.com/escargot-chat .
- derefr 6y ago> official clients need to be modified, however, so connection attempts don't go to the now defunct servers Presuming they don't use any form of encryption (and I think that's a safe assumption for that era), one could keep the clients official, while routing the packets themselves using a virtual Ethernet driver (or via software-defined routing, if the relevant copy of Windows is running in a VM.)
- boardwaalk 6y agoUsing hosts.txt or a local DNS server seems simpler.
- parliament32 6y agoYou just need a destination NAT. One liner in iptables, not sure what the MS equivalent would be.
- Fabricio20 6y agoThis just made my day, I was having some nostalgia on windows xp last week and was pretty sad MSN wouldn't open. Thanks for sharing, will look into it!
- znpy 6y agothis is unbelievable, thank you!!
- qwerty456127 6y agoHopefully this is going to boost ReactOS and Wine development.
- dang 6y agoWe changed the url from https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-xp-and-server-2003-compiled-from-leaked-source-code/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-xp-a... to what appears to be the original source.
- tus88 6y agoBut not the original sauce.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- umvi 6y agoSomeone should take the source for the old xp mspaint and spruce it up a bit to support for transparency and zooming with scrollwheel.
- joombaga 6y agoFun fact about the zoom in old mspaint: It gave you the options for 1x, 2x, 6x, and 8x zoom. But if you clicked one of the pixels directly below 8x you get a hidden 10x zoom. I miss easter eggs.
- deelly 6y agoHonestly, I don't want to be that guy, but Paint.NET is quite good. And free.
- umvi 6y agoAnd complicated. Mspaint is dirt simple.
- niutech 6y agoSomebody uploaded it here: https://gitee.com/windows-xp/shell/tree/master/osshell/accesory/mspaint https://gitee.com/windows-xp/shell/tree/master/osshell/acces...
- Kuraj 6y agoI'm very tempted to look up and download that bundle, but it sounds like something that could potentially cause me a lot of legal problems.
- akerro 6y agoOverall it's 46Gb, a few thousands of IPs were downloading it the day it was released.
- duskwuff 6y agoThe majority of that torrent was junk -- something like 20 GB of Microsoft's (freely available) patents downloaded from the USPTO, a couple of DVD rips of documentaries tangentially related to Microsoft (like Revolution OS), and a bunch of wacky conspiracy videos downloaded from YouTube (Bill Gates 5G nanoprobe vaccines, etc). All of the actual content was available elsewhere as much smaller downloads. In particular, the Windows 2000 and XP leaks are distributed as a single 3 GB archive ("nt5src.7z").
- cookiengineer 6y ago> single 3 GB archive The nt5src.7z src file can also be found on anonfiles and 4chan which was the actual source. It's around 7ish GB unpacked.
- crakenzak 6y agoboot up a VPN and download the torrent.
- tus88 6y agoI wonder what percent of Win10 matches this code...I am guessing about 90%.
- sschueller 6y agoI thought Windows 7 was a significant rewrite.
- monocasa 6y agoVista was, yeah. 7 was mainly cleaning up Visa.
- ohgreatwtf 6y agoall we need now is a neural network that generates code that does the same thing but looks different
- ohgreatwtf 6y agoall we need now is a neural network that can look at source and generate new code that does the same thing but differently
- 1MachineElf 6y agoXP compiled but would not run due to missing programs. Server 2003 would run because it's source was complete. Am wondering now if the XP code could be made to run by using parts of the Server 2003 code.
- Lammy 6y agoSeems likely. Someone who has seen the actual source would have to confirm, but my understanding from back in “the day” was that Server 2003 was based on the XP SP0 tree, but that XP SP2 and later were re-based on the Server 2003 tree as part of the security focus of SP2.
- kasabali 6y agoWindows XP 64 bit edition was based on Server 2003, as it was released after it. You can even say it was 64 bit, client edition of server 2003. Windows XP service packs were based on, well, Windows XP. Because that's what service packs were. Lot s of new features have been developed for SP2 (and possibly some backporting from 2003 happened, too) but XP is still XP.
- gjsman-1000 6y agoActually, only somewhat. One of the "tricks" to get the whole thing to build was to replace some of the missing files with production, already-compiled versions from Windows. Thus, even though a few files are missing, you just need to include the few official missing ones, and the thing boots.
- monksy 6y agoSo when will we start getting pull requests against it?
- gjsman-1000 6y agoIf it was ever put on GitHub, Microsoft would take it down instantly. I don't think anyone would get away with filing a PR. At the same time though, that would be hilarious. Someone is going to do it just so they can claim that they were the first person unauthorized by Microsoft to ever file a PR on Windows...
- monksy 6y agoIt's probably already in github ;) (MS owns github)
- LockAndLol 6y agoIt doesn't have to be hosted on Github. Gitlab can run in I2P so it's possible to do all the development in the darknet. Not sure how big the repo would be though...
- prepex 6y agoWe’re allowed to talk about this now? As soon as the leak happened last week I posted a torrent and the HN mods took it down in less than 15 minutes.
- gjsman-1000 6y agoSharing the Torrent Link puts HN at legal risk. You are only allowed to share commentary, not original torrent links.
- lostgame 6y agoThere is a massive difference between discussion and posting of direct links to torrents of said materials.
- holidayacct 6y agoThe Russian government compromised Microsoft in early 2000 and the source code for windows 2K XP and 2003 were all leaked on usenet over a decade ago. Why is this news?
- fourseventy 6y agoI came here to say that as well...
- muterad_murilax 6y agoI am not aware of any earlier publicly documented attempts to build XP from leaked sources.
- SSLy 6y ago>Why is this news? Because the more general public (for a certain degree of generality) apparently didn't know about this until this week. Usenet is now seen mostly as a device for good ol' piracy.
- dilyevsky 6y agoI suspect msft provides sources (for audit) to governments all over the world if they want the contract.
- toyg 6y agoProbably because it's now marginally less likely that MS will pursue any hobbyist attempt to work with the codebase, considering all those versions are long dead.
- mindfulhack 6y agoDo you have a link (or links) that corroborates this?
- niutech 6y agoHere is a mention of the leak of some Windows source code (in Russian): https://www.securitylab.ru/forum/messages/forum18/topic18684/message199343/#message199343 https://www.securitylab.ru/forum/messages/forum18/topic18684...
- gjsman-1000 6y agoNow's your chance everybody: Someone has uploaded the source code to GitHub, no torrent needed now. If you want to be the first unauthorized person to ever file a PR against Windows, you have the opportunity.
- TomJansen 6y agoNot really true, there was a Windows XP repo on the darkweb already
- ColanR 6y agoSource?
- russh 6y agoYes, I believe it was the source.
- vmception 6y agoso so much doesnt have articles written about it and evidence only exists for a limited time I’ve seen a ton of stuff on Empire that wouldn’t have a direct link and Empire is gone now
- heavyset_go 6y agoI've heard for years that it was floating around, and saw some torrents that claimed to be the XP source, but I've never downloaded it myself to find out.
- INTPenis 6y agoI also remember Windows source code leaking in the early 2000s. I even downloaded it myself back then but that was many computers ago. And afaik it was not buildable. It was a large chunk of the source code that iirc had leaked from a 3rd party who was tasked with making some component, perhaps related to the image library.
- CodeArtisan 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- unixhero 6y agoI am far from a Microsoft zealot. But this is damn awesome.
- Causality1 6y agoFascinating. I would love for there to exist a fully-patched version of XP to run on classic computers.
- EamonnMR 6y agoShame I can't look at this if I ever want to work on WINE of another legit workaround.
- Shared404 6y agoIndeed. I'm torn between whether or not to take a look due to this.
- debian_lover 6y agoLol, after all the thievery and conniving that microshaft has done, and people are still worried about their IP
- effie 6y agoCould you explain? How would looking on something now prevent you doing something related (WINE) later?
- donedeals 6y agoHe would be “dirty” ie has knowledge of Stolen IP.
- vilifiedtwin 6y agoCode doesn't seem to have any tests... o.O
- steveballmerexe 6y agoHow soon before the source referenced is partly a direct cause of further strife to U.S. allies and neighbors?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- steveballmerexe 6y agoWhat I _meant_ to ask is, how soon might it be--as far as We're aware--before the leak bites US, our neighbors, and our allies in the ass, like--say--a "virus" based on broadcast audio and the way that people psychologically perceive it----so that we can prevent it or at least stave off human extinction through mitigation(s)? I realize that the idea is weird. Though, maybe we could start (or improve awareness of) a dialogue that concerns such kinds of questions?
- mkl 6y agoWhat on Earth does that science fiction scenario have to do with Windows source code?
- userbinator 6y agoPersonally, I'd be far more interested if 9x leaked, because its architecture is definitely quite different from more "traditional" OSs --- it's actually more like a hypervisor. Or, given that MS has already released the source code to earlier DOS, maybe they may open-source it in the future... That, and the NT series has already been extensively documented both publicly in various papers and by people like Mark Russinovich and leaked in the form of WRK, 2ksrc, etc.
- studius 6y ago...then someone could clean up all of the swearing in the comments in the 9x source. I'd like all past and current Windows OSes to be open-source. I'd also like macOS and iOS to be open-source. Eventually, all source may be leaked anyway, so they could just do it.
- nonesuchluck 6y agoMy personal favorite counterfactual/alternate history is the idea of MS keeping their Xenix product and shipping Windows for it. Windows 386 Enhanced Mode was effectively a hyper visor, as you say, and mostly avoids BIOS calls. Unix software like Merge or Simultask allowed running multiple DOS tasks using Virtual 86 mode. Windows apps as Unix processes in a real memory protected OS would have made the 90s so much more bearable.
- phendrenad2 6y agoI'm also interested in how win9x/ME worked. For the same reason - NT seems a lot like Unix, and Win9x was an unredeemable security nightmare, but somehow was wildly successful. Has anyone written about it's inner workings as compared to NT? Edit: This goes into some detail on the security aspect: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/107546/old-os-memory-space-protection-was-it-really-that-bad https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/107546/old-os-m...
- userbinator 6y agoThat's because the hypervisor allows full access to the hardware by default, with "virtual device drivers" to hook accesses and virtualise the hardware where sharing is needed. IMHO perfectly fine for a single-user OS. Has anyone written about it's inner workings as compared to NT? There were a few books about it in the early 90s by Matt Pietrek and Andrew Schulman.
- m0dest 6y agoHere’s something that I don’t understand: Why isn’t there more interest in compiling the Windows Embedded 7 source code that was included in the same leak? It seems like that would have a much more recent kernel and have fewer dependencies on missing components.
- mappu 6y agoI think it was the CE 7 operating system, not "7" (NT 6.1).
- phist_mcgee 6y agoNo nostalgia factor
- whoopdedo 6y agoDoes this leak give any new insight into the activation process? Could a XP keygen be made someday?
- sterlind 6y agoI've heard someone speculate that winlogon is missing because it contains part of the activation mechanism. maybe whoever leaked it didn't want the activation stuff included for some reason?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- normanmatrix 6y agoOh so they're finally preparing for the Linux switch. Good guy Satya