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Keeping XP Secure

posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday March 05 2014, @07:30AM   
from the unplugging-the-network-cable dept.

Appalbarry writes:

"Microsoft is about to abandon Windows XP to the wolves. Fair enough it's ancient. However, there are still going to be a lot of XP boxes out there, and a fair number of them are unlikely to ever get upgraded until the hardware dies.

My question is: what's available to help make this old OS stay reasonably secure and safe for the people who can't or won't abandon it?

Over the years I've been through Central Point Antivirus, Norton, McAfee, AVG, stuff like Zone Alarm, and of course the various Microsoft anti-malware offerings. But since moving over to Linux I really haven't kept up on the wild and wonderful world of Windows security tools.

Suggestions?"

• Powershell? Powershell? (Score: 2) by jt on Wednesday March 05 2014, @11:38PM

  by jt (2890) on Wednesday March 05 2014, @11:38PM (#11593)

  Agreed - the longer you leave it, the bigger the job. Might as well get on with it.

  Three paths to consider.
  1. Stick with Windows but move to Win7 and port your scripts to Powershell. It's a world away from command.com and surprisingly powerful.
  2. Move over to the free world and port your scripts to ksh/bash/whatever. I don't know what your scripts do, but the old Windows batch language is not exactly awash with advanced features unavailable in *nix shells.
  3. Start transitioning to a shell or scripting language like Python, one script at a time, in your current working environment. Do one at a time to keep confidence that the ecosystem still works. Before long you'll find you've ported the whole lot, and are now platform independent.

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• Re:Powershell? (Score: 2) by martyb on Thursday March 06 2014, @02:07PM

  by martyb (76) on Thursday March 06 2014, @02:07PM (#11933) Journal

  jt (2890) wrote:

  Agreed - the longer you leave it, the bigger the job. Might as well get on with it.

  I'm in agreement with that.

  
  Three paths to consider.
  1. Stick with Windows but move to Win7 and port your scripts to Powershell. It's a world away from command.com and surprisingly powerful.
  

  Have considered this but when last I looked, the powershell I found available for what I have (XP-home/SP3) is limited, and I'd rather not add further entanglements to the windows environment... would make it even harder to transition away in the future.

  
  2. Move over to the free world and port your scripts to ksh/bash/whatever. I don't know what your scripts do, but the old Windows batch language is not exactly awash with advanced features unavailable in *nix shells.
  

  That would be ideal. I'm familiar with the Unix command environment and have experience with bash, so I like that idea. Several years ago I found a bash implementation that ran under windows: win-bash [sourceforge.net] but it looks like it has not been maintained???

  Does anyone here have experience with this? I'm curious as to how stable, solid, and compatible it is with what I'd find under the various distros out there.

  
  3. Start transitioning to a shell or scripting language like Python, one script at a time, in your current working environment. Do one at a time to keep confidence that the ecosystem still works. Before long you'll find you've ported the whole lot, and are now platform independent.
  

  I agree that would be the idea solution. I just re-downloaded win-bash and will play around with it a bit.

  If anyone here has experience with other compatible shells they could recommend, I'd love to hear about it!

  Thanks for the suggestions!

  --
  Wit is intellect, dancing.

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