Comment on Is it safe to connect a Windows XP machine to my wi-fi network?
CameronDev@programming.dev 4 days agoYeah, its pretty safe. XP on the open internet is bad, but behind a NAT is mostly fine. Just be very careful not to port forward or UPnP any ports to the XP box. The other concern would be ie6 reaching out to the internet, ideally you’d want to restrict that, as there are probably ie6 exploits around, but even this is fairly low risk.
What do plan on doing with the box? That may increase your risk level.
fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com 4 days ago
Ehhhh, bots are constantly crawling for vulns these days. I wouldn’t trust in security through obscurity anymore.
CameronDev@programming.dev 4 days ago
A NAT/Firewall isn’t obscurity, its actual protection. Any scanning bot would need to breach the firewall/NAT first before it could ever see the XP box. And if the bot can do that, it doesn’t need the XP box.
Making sure the XP box doesn’t poke holes in the NAT is important, so depends what OP is planning on doing.
black0ut@pawb.social 4 days ago
XP has background services that automatically connect to the outside for stuff. Most of those remain inside your network, but not all. It only takes a hardcoded expired domain to get instant infection without any user action.
I would never consider connecting a winXP machine to the internet safe.
CameronDev@programming.dev 4 days ago
Other than windows update, what other background services call out?