You have succumbed to Steve's clever writing.
He is basically asking Microsoft to deliberately cripple Windows XP, because a feature
that already exists in Windows2000 might be exploitable in the new "consumer" version
of the OS. Overlooking that the security model of Windows2000 is much better
at handling such exploits if neccesary, and that security will be carried over to
the WXP Home version. That feature also exists in Linux, BSD, Unix and any other
modern networking OS; so it would be more silly for MS to not want to keep up
with current standards.
What he is not doing is paying attention to his own hype.
He makes a bunch of claims about what might happen, but has not actually
sat down with a beta of WindowsXP to find out if it can happen the way
he claims.
He claims that this exploit will be more dangerous in WXP, because current versions
of Windows 9x/ME cannot spoof IP. Which is not true, as there are cracker tools
which can add that functionality to the Windows 9x TCP/IP stack.
In fact it is surprising that the current Trojan Horse programs don't already do that.
He seems to be trying to make some valid points about OS security, but seems to be missing
some basic concepts of user and ISP security that make what he proposes a little harder
to accomplish in reality. As much as I like Steve, the tabloid style of his site doesn't
help his credibility in this either.
