Alleged source codes for various versions of Windows were leaked, including XP and Server 2003

Several days ago the news of the alleged source codes of various versions of Windows was released, which were disclosed during the week.

In the case of its authenticity, the availability of these source codes paves the way for the creation of exploitsas well as surveillance for people and companies that continue to use these old operating systems.

In fact, more than 1% of computers worldwide are still running Windows XP, according to Netmarketshare.

The file contains the supposed source codes of Older versions of Microsoft operating systems: Windows 2000, Windows Embedded (CE 3, CE 4, CE 5, CE 7), Windows NT (3.5 and 4), Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, MS DOS (3.30 and 6).

Also included the alleged source codes of some components of Windows 10.

Many of the files that were leaked through a file that had been leaked years before.

For example, the source code for some Windows 10 components leaked online in 2017, those related to Xbox and Windows NT earlier this year. Other, even older leaks can be traced back to discussions on mailing lists and forums. dating back to the early 2010s. The current leak is therefore a compilation. However,

Microsoft provides access to the source code of its operating systems to governments for security audits and to academic research teams for scientific research.

It is from these environments that these leaks could come from. In any case, the creator of the torrent publishes and gives instructions on the use that can be made of it:

“This is my torrent. The XP / W2k3 leak happened today (24th) on g and other channels on 4chan.

Hackers had apparently transmitted the file privately for years. I think it was shared because the guy saw that we were trying to decrypt a RAR file (from 2007 or 2008) that would contain the Windows XP source code. I managed to relaunch this old torrent to verify that we had the same file that was released so many years ago.

In any case, although I have extracted files that have been compressed using other compression formats and then compressed them using 7zip, I have not modified the actual source files of this torrent at all. They are all intact, so any potential changes to the original Microsoft source code were there from the start.

Usually these leaks float through many different files that are still being extracted into identical directories. The script I included in the torrent allows you to test these leaks in case anyone has any doubts about the integrity of the files.  «

Well, many of the readers they will wonder and this in what benefits. For this we will use pastry as a metaphor of this case. The source code is like a recipe to bake a cake. When you buy a cake, you only get the finished product and not the recipe (that is, the source code). In the same way that you can't just look at a cake and figure out how to bake it, reverse engineering the source code just because you have the software is super complex, if not impossible.

For various reasons, most software is like black boxes- You know what it does and roughly how it does it, but the specifics are often hidden. Open source software is the exception to this rule, but Microsoft is in the business of proprietary or closed source software.

There are several reasons why the source code of these operating systems It would be interesting. First of all, having them will allow everyone to create their own variants of these operating systems.

You just have to refer to the metaphor of pastry again to understand how to achieve it. Also, it allows people to understand how these systems work. And it could be used for good reasons like: to create Windows emulation software on Linux or Mac, for example (although officially it cannot be used due to licensing reasons).

However, this knowledge could also be used for malicious purposes. In fact, if these old versions of operating systems are no longer used much, the fact is that they can share large chunks of code with Windows 10.

Source: 4chan