A rumor has been growing on the network and is now widespread and seems to be confirmed. And it seems that it has leaked source code of Microsoft Windows XP operating system and other Redmond company systems. This could have quite positive consequences for projects such as Wine or ReactOS, which could use it to improve these systems and even the occasional project derived from all this ...
El origin of the leak has been the well-known 4chan forums, providing the code of these systems. And it seems that things are serious, since some cybersecurity experts have given the go-ahead to the reality of the matter and that has caused alarms to go off in many sectors due to the consequences that this implies, since it also has its negative things as you will see ...
The problem
Windows XP It is an operating system that may seem outdated, but it is the one used in many applications such as ATMs, train stations, some mechanical workshops and industries for machine control, hospitals, certain administrative and government systems, and many users who have not been updated, etc. Therefore, all of them could be compromised by this leak.
If this code is scrutinized and detected vulnerabilities not known so far, with the lack of security patches as support has been abandoned, it could lead to attacks against those critical systems. Therefore, work should be done to secure them in some way and to anticipate cybercriminals.
And not only that, a lot of Windows NT code that is used in Windows XP is also inherited in the kernel of current systems such as Vista, 8.x and Windows 10. So some of those vulnerabilities could also be valid for these others ...
The code leak
The filtration are nothing less than 43GB that can be downloaded by torrent and in which there is more than the source code of Windows XP, also that of other systems and very succulent PDFs ...
What has been published is
- Code of MS-DOS 3.30 y MS-DOS 6.0
- Code of Windows CE 3, 4, and 5
- Code of Windows Embedded 7 and CE
- Code of Windows 2000
- Code of Windows NT 3.5
- Code of Windows NT 4
Besides that, another additional torrent file with 2.97GB is offered which is a ZIP with the source code of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. And apparently, it is not something from now, but it had been shared between cirbercriminals for some time, but it was something hidden from the rest of the mortals ... until now.
From the company itself Microsoft are somewhat restless and they assure «be investigating to take appropriate actions to help keep your customers protected«. Therefore, that means that those publications are valid.
Not everything is bad
Not everything was going to be bad news, besides that this code can be studied, since no matter how well they take care of eliminating it, it will always remain on a server ... or some user will upload it again ..., it can also serve to nurture other projects What ReactOS and Wine.
These projects could gain valuable information to improve their systems, making compatibility with native software Windows better. Therefore, it could have a positive impact on users of * nix systems.
Beyond that, who knows if that code could arise new projects to improve compatibility or certain services that until now did not have such information or had to use reverse engineering ...