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Windows 7 and XP Mode (XPM)

May 5th, 2009 admin Leave a comment Go to comments

An interesting thought came to mind while reading the Windows Incident Response blog yesterday. A link provided by Claus brings up an interesting concept, XPM.  Windows XP Mode (XPM) is a “Virtual PC-based virtual environment and a fully licensed copy of Windows XP with Service Pack 3 (SP3). It will be made available, for free, to users of Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions via a download from the Microsoft web site.”  Sound cool, but what happens with the security patches that come out after SP3?  With so many people who don’t bother to patch their systems, would this just create a bigger problem with 2 possibly unpatched operating systems available as a target to exploit?  There seems to be some kinks that need to be worked out on the security end as I have not heard any talk of how this will be patched and what will happen once XP is no longer supported.  I will be curious to see how this pans out in the near future.

EDIT: Some more interesting news has been coming out about XPM (via Slashdot):

Microsoft, Intel goof up Windows 7′s “XP Mode”

Windows 7′s ‘XP mode’: Right idea, wrong technology

Windows 7′s ‘XP Mode’: A Great Idea, on Paper

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  • Thanks you for information.
  • Hey Tim,

    Thanks for the comment. I think the difference between this and boot camp is that Boot Camp boots Windows XP itself and does not run within an operating system. However, I guess you have the same type of thing when you run VMware fusion on your mac, you still need to patch the machine.

    However, what I can see from this is that it will always be running in the background. From the Within Windows link it says "XPM does not require you to run the virtual environment as a separate Windows desktop. Instead, as you install applications inside the virtual XP environment, they are published to the host (Windows 7) OS as well. (With shortcuts placed in the Start Menu.)" So this might be an out of sight, out of mind type of mentality. Will the virtual XP be annoying and yell patch me! patch me! like a regular installation?

    Thanks Tim for the intriguing comment,
    Ed
  • Bugbear
    Ed

    It is a very good point and is something I've been questioning about Mac Boot Camp for a while (this sounds like the equivalent to me).

    At the Enterprise level I would just lean towards turning the functionality off. But I wonder if one decides to try and leverage it in an Enterprise environment what sort of havoc it would cause on existing patch management systems that track hosts by MAC, Domain Name, Agent (duplicate records for each OS?) etc...

    Tim
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