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AOL closes a Windows service | |
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| Time: 06:01 EST/11:01 GMT | News Source: News.com | Posted By: Byron Hinson | ||
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America Online's gated Internet community may just have gotten a bit more secure. On Friday, the company said it had turned off Microsoft's flawed Windows Messenger service--a data exchange mechanism for networked computers that shouldn't be confused with the software giant's instant-messaging application--for nearly 15 million of its users over the last two weeks. | ||
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| #1 By 6859 (12.219.23.70) at 10/25/2003 10:29:14 AM |
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I consider this to be a trojan. It closes a service that (presumably) you want open, it does so without your permission; making changes without permission is bad, really bad.
AOL needs to NOT do this. Seriously. Not cool. |
| #2 By 3653 (209.149.57.116) at 10/25/2003 6:27:46 PM |
| if msft lets this stand, it will hurt them later. Other posters are correct is asking "what if". What if this is allowed by MSFT and later aol decides to stop other OS services. MSFT cant really speak too loud later if it doesnt speak against this now. |
| #3 By 6859 (12.219.23.70) at 10/25/2003 7:54:05 PM |
| Question: isn't this, technically, "hacking/cracking"? If so, there are lots of laws against that, of course your state laws may vary... |
| #4 By 61 (24.92.223.181) at 10/25/2003 11:47:49 PM |
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Cthuhlu: Not really, as you are the one who installed the software, and I'm sure, somewhere, AOL has put in that they are disabling a service when the app is installed, and by installing the app, you are agreeing to allow them do said operations. This post was edited by CPUGuy on Saturday, October 25, 2003 at 23:52. |
| #5 By 6253 (12.237.219.240) at 10/25/2003 11:48:15 PM |
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I think a much better compromise would have been for AOL to block port 18 (both tcp and udp) traffic coming over the AOL interface.
This would have allowed machines with multiple network interfaces to receive Messenger traffic on other interfaces. Also, users accessing a VPN through the AOL interface would still have been able to receive Messenger traffic coming through the VPN tunnel. Instead, they felt it necessary to stop and disable a service. I'm not going to sign up for AOL to find out, but I wonder how carefully they check the Messenger service to make sure it's Microsoft's Messenger service. After all, Windows File Protection would stop me from replacing svchost.exe, but there's nothing preventing me from registering my own Windows Service in the HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Messenger key. Sure, AOL can get away with disabling Microsoft's code, but what if they disable mine? |
| #6 By 2332 (65.221.182.2) at 10/26/2003 1:12:18 AM |
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Come on guys. I hate AOL as much as the next guy, but this isn't a trojan, and it's not a "bad thing".
In fact, the messenger service should be turned off by default anyway. It's pretty much useless, aside from print server notifacations, and certain admin messages. Both of which are more or less non-existant in a home environment. If a Microsoft patch did this (which it likely will in the near future), would you guys be complaining? |
| #7 By 7797 (64.244.109.161) at 10/26/2003 1:23:14 AM |
| The sad thing is that AOL has to do this. Why is this service running on home user's pc's to begin with! I don't agree with AOL taking this measure but MS should have killed off this service for home users a long time ago. |
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