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Windows XP Service Pack 2 to Activate NX bit on AMD chips

Xion   on 26 February 2004 - 13:50 · 12 comments & 1795 views

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Microsoft Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices announced on Wednesday, the 25th of February, 2004, that the Service Pack 2 update for Microsoft Windows XP operating system will enable AMD’s Enhanced Virus Protection technology available in AMD64 microprocessors. AMD’s enhanced virus protection security technology in combination with Microsoft’s Data Execution Prevention in the upcoming Windows XP SP2 is designed to help render some viruses, specifically buffer overrun exploits, inoperable and prevent them from replicating and spreading to other systems.

The core of AMD’s Enhanced Virus Protection is the so-called NX bit in the page-translation tables that specifies whether instructions can be executed from the page. The capability is also available on Intel’s Itanium and Itanium 2 microprocessors, but is not present in IA32e chips, such as Intel Pentium 4 E also known as Prescott, unlike suggested by certain sources last year.

“With multiple avenues for attackers to compromise a network through the discovery and exploitation of vulnerable systems, a multi-layered defense has become more essential than ever before,” said Robin Matlock, vice president of product marketing for Network Associates McAfee System Protection Solutions Group. “As one of the first security companies to provide system protection for the AMD Athlon 64 processors, Network Associates is pleased to support AMD and Microsoft in their efforts to provide enhanced security technologies against malicious threats. The enhanced technology will mean greater protection for our mutual customers against both known and unknown attacks,” Matlock said.

View: The full story
News source: X-bit Labs


Changelog:

  • Almost all components starting from some 0.7 beta SDK still work, though recompilation with new SDK is recommended to take advantage of new features
  • "Open" dialog now lists supported file types
  • File modification time tracking, goodbye "reload file info"
  • File size tracking
  • New menu item config, massively improved menu system
  • Improved matroska component (fully extendable through third-party components, improved speed, etc)
  • Fixed UI glitch in masstagger
  • Masstagger scripts can be now exported to files
  • New diskwriter
  • New albumlist
  • Replaygain shows total progress
  • Toolbar menu now completely fakes regular menu behaviors
  • Found a way to get rid of dreaded beep when pressing alt+key
  • Various minor UI tweaks, improved playlist tabs
  • Fixed multimedia keys displayed in shortcuts page
  • AIFF input fixes
  • FLAC input fixes
  • SDK side change: all uppercase/lowercase character conversion had to be moved to utf8api, some string8 methods are missing (replaced with utf8api functions)
  • New icons, thanks to picmixer
  • Improved drag&drop support, thanks to foosion
  • Improved commandline handling (wildcards, relative paths, etc)
  • Integrated commandline tagger in foo_masstag.dll, run foobar2000 /tag:help for info

  • Post a comment · Send to friend Comments · There are 12 additional comments
    #1 stezo2k on 26 Feb 2004 - 14:02
    question is, will it lag the system much?
    #2 Emon on 26 Feb 2004 - 14:07
    its about time .... /me saves money for his AMD 64bit chip
    #3 RobertH on 26 Feb 2004 - 14:24
    Sounds great news, something extra for early adopters i am assuming also that this is going to be added to Windows Server 2003 SP1?? Activation of the NX bit that is.
    #4 mihir on 26 Feb 2004 - 14:58
    (2 replies) #5 darksoul on 26 Feb 2004 - 15:32
    which chips contain the NX bit?
    #5.1 rogerroger on 26 Feb 2004 - 21:22
    um, did you read the article or just the tag line buddy!
    RTFA.... (Read the F**king Article!) LOL
    #5.2 Fally on 26 Feb 2004 - 21:39
    It even says it in the tag line... AMD Chip...

    He either has a strange sence of humor or is numb as @#%&.
    #6 xStainDx on 26 Feb 2004 - 16:25
    (1 reply) #7 rogerroger on 26 Feb 2004 - 21:22
    Yet another reason to buy an AMD chip! GO AMD.
    #7.1 THEGAMEultra on 26 Feb 2004 - 22:55
    INTEL blows
    #8 THEGAMEultra on 26 Feb 2004 - 22:56
    I want to see this amd 64 virus thing.
    #9 naap51stang on 27 Feb 2004 - 00:54
    they should just put a bit of C4 in the CPU's and when a virus attacks it blows up the CPU,
    stopping the spread of the virus. Would do two things, stop the spread of virii, and make
    people keep their computers up to date.


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