In the demonstration, one officer named Mick performed the hacking operation as he connected his computer to the unsecured wireless network and broke into his fellow officer's computer that did not have patches installed. Macobserver published McGrath's statement on November 13, 2007. But this PC had freshly arrived that was neither updated nor patched, McGrath said. It would therefore be intelligent to have the system loaded with SP2 and also the current patches installed and to run it on a wireless network that is secured.ĭuring the event, Head of platform strategy, Nick McGrath for Microsoft, said the demonstration was both frightening and enlightening that showed how easy it was to attack a Windows PC. The e-crime specialist officers of the Serious Organized Crime Agency said the demonstration purely tried to show that a system that is un-patched is relatively easy to hack. The planned attack took just 6 minutes to happen and 11 minutes to download the password file. The challenge involved connecting to a local server and retrieving a word file containing passwords. The Windows PC neither had anti-spyware software, anti-virus software, nor a firewall deployed. Officers at an event named Get Safe Online on November 12, 2007, in attempts to increase computer security awareness among small and medium businesses connected a Windows XP system with Service Pack 1 to a wireless network that was not secured.

Hacking Easy on Un-patched Windows XP with SP1Ī security professional in London took just six minutes to hack a system running Windows XP that had Service Pack 1 loaded but was devoid of subsequent patches.

Windows xp service pack 1