A Windows XP machine's life expectancy in 2024 seems to be about 10 minutes before even just an idle net connection renders it a trojan-riddled zombie PC

https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/a-windows-xp-machines-life-expectancy-in-2024-seems-to-be-about-10-minutes-before-even-just-an-idle-net-connection-renders-it-a-trojan-riddled-zombie-pc/

That's all without clicking a single hot link.

A Windows XP machine's life expectancy in 2024 seems to be about 10 minutes before even just an idle net connection renders it a trojan-riddled zombie PC

Just a fun, somewhat terrifying read

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extracheese

•

Such an exploit would not get wasted on some random xp honeypot

slazer2au

•

It's XP, there are likely several unpatched escaping bugs with free POC out there. You don't need anything new.

Zagorath

•

Surely breaking out of a VM requires exploiting a vulnerability of the VM, not of the OS running in it?

slazer2au

•

I would assume it requires both a hypervisor and guest OS bug to be tripped.

yggdar

•

It's pure speculation, but I assume you'll need

Enough access to the guest OS so that you can interact directly with the virtual hardware. That would probably require root access, so you'll probably need to exploit some bug in the guest OS to get there.
To break out of the vm, you'll then need to exploit a bug in the virtual hardware. You would want to get the hypervisor to execute arbitrary code.
If you want to infect the host OS, then you'll need sufficient access on the host. If the hypervisor doesn't run with sufficient privileges, you'll have to exploit a bug in the host as well to perform a privilege escalation. But I'm guessing the hypervisor will usually have sufficient privileges, so exploiting the host is probably not necessary.

Sounds like quite a bit of work, but I don't see why malware couldn't automate it. An up-to-date hypervisor should help reduce the risk though.

extracheese

•

Theres no way an hypervisor zero day gets implemented in some random Malware. Those are worth millions and are used in coordinated manual attacks against VIP targets

yggdar

•

Yeah a zero-day would be very unlikely, but a months-old, publically known and patched vulnerability could always be attempted. One of the reasons why the hypervisor should definitely be kept up-to-date. There is always someone who forgets to patch their software, why not give it a try? We're talking about a Windows XP scenario after all!

pivot_root

•

It's XP. There's guaranteed to be a way to go from userland to ring 0 code execution.

A Windows XP machine's life expectancy in 2024 seems to be about 10 minutes before even just an idle net connection renders it a trojan-riddled zombie PC

A Windows XP machine's life expectancy in 2024 seems to be about 10 minutes before even just an idle net connection renders it a trojan-riddled zombie PC

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