Stop Microsoft

All Things Microsoft => Microsoft as a Company => Topic started by: voidmain on 13 June 2002, 02:39

Title: Stick a garden hose down that gopher hole!
Post by: voidmain on 13 June 2002, 02:39
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-935363.html (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-935363.html)

What comedy!
Title: Stick a garden hose down that gopher hole!
Post by: choasforages on 13 June 2002, 02:44
gophor, i used that in the second grade, along with the robotic legos or something like that, there were like only a few different gopher sites out there, i remeber it as being quite odd
Title: Stick a garden hose down that gopher hole!
Post by: sporkme on 13 June 2002, 02:50
quote:
but the company said it didn't do any testing "because previous versions are no longer supported."


mmm hmm
Title: Stick a garden hose down that gopher hole!
Post by: Heru on 13 June 2002, 02:56
quote:
In the service bulletin, issued late Tuesday, Microsoft noted that older versions of its server products could be vulnerable, but the company said it didn't do any testing "because previous versions are no longer supported." Likewise, older Internet Explorer versions could be vulnerable. Microsoft does not offer fixes for these older versions.


Well well well....  MS is forcing people to upgrade when they don't want to.
Basically if you don't want to be vulnerable to this hole and you must use Windows, you either have to upgrade to IE6 and get the patch or use a diferent browser.
Title: Stick a garden hose down that gopher hole!
Post by: iustitia on 13 June 2002, 10:03
quote:
Originally posted by choasforages:
gophor, i used that in the second grade, along with the robotic legos or something like that, there were like only a few different gopher sites out there, i remeber it as being quite odd


I was devestated when the local library shut down it's gopher server.  It made it all but impossible to find books w/o starting X.

Question.  is gopher Telnet?
Title: Stick a garden hose down that gopher hole!
Post by: voidmain on 13 June 2002, 10:16
No, gopher was the precursor to the web browser.  The gopher protocol was the precursor to HTTP.  It used hyperlinks similar to the way todays browsers use them. I guess you could say it was what started the world wide web (even though telnet/ftp were around long before it, they don't have browsing capability). I used gopher before NCSA Mosaic web browser came out (which was later stolen by M$ to make IE). telnet is a terminal program that allows you to log into a machine and run commands as if you are on a local machine.

P.S. And I was LONG out of school when gopher was the only web browser...

P.S.S. If you want to get a feeling for what gopher was like, use "lynx" as your web browser and it'll be pretty close...

[ June 13, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

Title: Stick a garden hose down that gopher hole!
Post by: Calum on 13 June 2002, 13:43
quote:
Microsoft issued a "critical" security alert about a hole in its Internet Explorer browser that could allow hackers to use an outdated Internet protocol to seize control of people's computers.

As previously reported, the exploit uses Gopher, an all-but-obsolete Internet protocol for fetching data from remote computers. Finnish security company Online Solutions uncovered the vulnerability May 20 and alerted the public last week.

But the threat is much worse than first revealed by Online Solutions. The hole also exists in some Microsoft server products. Microsoft deemed the threat critical for client computers running Internet Explorer 5.01, 5.5 and 6.0 and for Internet or intranet servers running Proxy Server 2.0 or ISA Server 2000.

In the service bulletin, issued late Tuesday, Microsoft noted that older versions of its server products could be vulnerable, but the company said it didn't do any testing "because previous versions are no longer supported." Likewise, older Internet Explorer versions could be vulnerable. Microsoft does not offer fixes for these older versions.

The problem results from an "unchecked buffer in the code which handles information returned from a Gopher server," Microsoft explained in the security bulletin.
This is utterly pathetic and totally laughable!

If this code had been open source, how long do you think it would have taken before somebody had checked it and patched it? Microsoft only offers fixes for newer versions of the products, why? no good reason except marketing, how difficult could it be if they have a fix for some versions, to make one for other versions?

Plus, it's gopher for gods' sake! it's hardly some new vulnerability that has just hit the computer world! ridiculous.

And because they have no shame they'll still bleat on about how corporate closed source bug fixes come reliably quickly, and how you really need a company to know the code, but keep it from the users since that's the best security model.

BALDERDASH i say.
Title: Stick a garden hose down that gopher hole!
Post by: Nobber on 13 June 2002, 14:09
quote:
Originally posted by VoidMain:
No, gopher was the precursor to the web browser.  The gopher protocol was the precursor to HTTP.


Not true, if I remember correctly. The web slightly predates gopher, but didn't become really popular until graphical browsers (the first being Mosaic) became the norm. Then gopher fizzled out.

Who remembers Veronica (http://www.ou.edu/research/electron/internet/veronica.htm)?
Title: Stick a garden hose down that gopher hole!
Post by: Nobber on 13 June 2002, 14:33
Here's a challenge: Find a gopher server that's still running today!

This page (http://www.oberlin.edu/~lzimmerm/js1.html) lists some that were supposedly still active in Nov 2001, but I can't get any of them to respond
Title: Stick a garden hose down that gopher hole!
Post by: voidmain on 13 June 2002, 20:02
quote:
Originally posted by Nobber:


Not true, if I remember correctly. The web slightly predates gopher, but didn't become really popular until graphical browsers (the first being Mosaic) became the norm. Then gopher fizzled out.

Who remembers Veronica (http://www.ou.edu/research/electron/internet/veronica.htm)?


I think technically you are correct, however, gopher was much more popular from around 1991-1993 but it wasn't until Mosaic came out when HTTP started to become popular.

http://www.infomotions.com/waves/history.html (http://www.infomotions.com/waves/history.html)
http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?GopherProtocol (http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?GopherProtocol)

And do you remember using Archie and Veronica?  Ahhh, the good ol' days...
Title: Stick a garden hose down that gopher hole!
Post by: Calum on 13 June 2002, 20:48
archie and veronica? you computer guys really had a sense of humour back in the good ole days didn't you?  ;)
Title: Stick a garden hose down that gopher hole!
Post by: Nobber on 13 June 2002, 20:56
We mustn't forget Jughead (http://www.ensta.fr/internet/unix/gopher/jughead.html), either!

[ June 13, 2002: Message edited by: Nobber ]

Title: Stick a garden hose down that gopher hole!
Post by: iustitia on 14 June 2002, 02:54
quote:
Originally posted by VoidMain:
I guess you could say it was what started the world wide web (even though telnet/ftp were around long before it, they don't have browsing capability)... telnet is a terminal program that allows you to log into a machine and run commands as if you are on a local machine.


I accessed a gopher server using telnet.  Were there other clients for the protocall?
Title: Stick a garden hose down that gopher hole!
Post by: Nobber on 14 June 2002, 03:25
I always used xgopher (http://www.neosoft.com/neosoft/man/xgopher.1.html).