A Windows XP machine's life expectancy in 2024

[Dead2009]

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

That's all without clicking a single hot link.

www.pcgamer.com

How long do you think it takes an unprotected Windows XP box to fall foul to malware? To be clear, this is a machine sitting idle, no internet browsing required, just connected to the internet.

One YouTuber, Eric Parker, decided to find out (via XDA). Using a virtual machine, Parker set up a Windows XP instance and configured it to be fully exposed with no firewall and no anti-virus software, just like the good old days. So, how long exactly does it take for malicious software to appear on the PC?

Parker returns to the PC 10 minutes later and, sure enough, there's something nasty running in Task Manager named conhoz.exe, a known trojan.

He shuts that process down and leaves the machine running. Within just a few more minutes, a new user has been added, plus a number of new processes, including an FTP server.

So, yeah, within 15 minutes that's multiple malware processes and an entirely compromised machine with the bad guys having already created a new admin account and an FTP server running locally. Jaysus!

Parker then traces the malware's communication to, yup you guessed, the Russian Federation. He speculates that the bad guys might be trying to set up a botnet or spam email server from his compromised machine.

Further investigation reveals even more malware, including another Trojan and a rootkit. A Malwarebytes scan then reveals the full horror, with eight nasties actually running including four trojans, two backdoors, and a couple of adware apps.

 

[Nebulous]

Calling @DrLeftover

 

[DrLeftover]

Calling @DrLeftover

I've got a working XP machine that is used online, and in fact was on this board last night, the anti-virus software has aged out and will not update, there is no firewall, and not even CCleaner will work any more.....

and it's fine.

However.

When I'm not actively using it, it is powered down.

 

[Raidarr]

Network security (routers especially are baked in with some sanitary defaults) + local firewall can buffer XP pretty well, turning down all protections including the ones baked into XP is a rather unfair test. It's no trouble offline especially, which is where I'd justify it for retro software/gaming.

However just because it doesn't blow up when you're online with it doesn't mean it's particularly safe at all. A dedicated attacker will almost certainly get in if they get their mind to it. I don't see why you'd want to risk it in the first place, and at any rate the effort to hack it into compliance with modern software is effort you could use to prop up newer windows, or just learn linux.

 

[MrDawn]

I've got a working XP machine that is used online, and in fact was on this board last night, the anti-virus software has aged out and will not update, there is no firewall, and not even CCleaner will work any more.....

So it's useless to run updated programs?