Is it safe to connect a Windows XP machine to my wi-fi network?

Comments

• PP_BOY_@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Absolutely not lol

  source

  • daggermoon@piefed.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Wouldn’t any attackers need to penetrate the firewall first though?

    source

    • CameronDev@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Yeah, 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.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      The risk is your computer reaching out to something on the internet (either by you browsing, or some automatic background activity) and whatever it finds infects it.

      This could be something like an ad on an otherwise trustworthy website.

      source
    • NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Yeah but why risk it?

      This is like asking “Is it alright if I leave my garage door open while I’m at work today? It’s detached from the rest of the house and I just store junk in there I don’t care to lose.” Yeah, I mean it’s detached from the house and let’s even say for argument’s sake, you live in a gated community. The risk is very low of someone actually breaking in and getting your valuable stuff inside your home. But by doing this, you’ve kind of invited people to come take a closer look at your house too. Someone decided to see what’s in your garage and didn’t see anything, but hey, looks like a bathroom window on the side of the house is cracked a bit. Could easily slide into the main house and take a peak in there. I would’ve never seen this from the sidewalk/city street until I got into the open garage.

      Best case of a bad situation is that something gets into your XP computer and infects it. You don’t do much with it, so trashing it isn’t the worst possible thing to fix this issue. Worst case of a bad situation is you’ve infected that computer and now an infection is checking out the rest of your network and other devices on it including stuff you didn’t think of or stuff you thought couldn’t reach the web. You blocked your smart TV from accessing the web but left it connected to the router so it is still discoverable on the private network. Or you have a cheap Temu camera you got a while back and forget is still active and it’s sitting on your network with really poor security, easily vulnerable to attack.

      I guess if you have that much faith in your network and devices, go for it, but probably not a good idea if you want the best possible defense.

      If you really need something off the web to that XP machine, better to find a way to get it there by a patched, up to date machine and share it that way instead or on a separate VLAN.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• Toes@ani.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Any particular reason it needs to be XP?

  Last time I checked there was over 40 open exploits that are fairly easy to trigger. (Mostly related to web browsing or gpu acceleration)

  I’d imagine something like Debian or Alpine would run on it?

  source

  • daggermoon@piefed.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I wanted XP to play old games but now i’m thinking that’s a waste of time. I might try AntiX on it. This thing has 512MB or RAM and 32MB of VRAM I think. It can’t even run Windows 7 lol. I gotta wait for the laptop charger to come though as I haven’t even been able to verify the thing will power on. Let’s hope for the best. Also, the CPU is 32 bit and Debian is dropping support for it. We’ll see how that affects AntiX.

    source

    • IWW4@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      If all you are going to do is play old stand alone games why are you attaching it to a network?

      Just sneakernet the install.

      I would not attach an XP machine to a network.

      source
• fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Are you starting fresh with XP or using an old crusty install. If you start fresh you should be fine. Just don’t browse the internet on it, or run sketchy ass software on it. And turn it off when you’re done. Behind NAT the only way for your device to get infected is for something else on the network infect it.

  Also FYI it’s probably not going to work with your WiFi. You’re probably going to need to be hard wired. Most built in network cards from windows XP era machines don’t understand WPA2, and WPA3 is allegedly backwards compatible, but it REALLY hates older devices that barely speak WPA 2.

  I have an old router that I installed DD-WRT on that I use for my old devices. I have the WiFi power dropped down to the bare minimum, and it barely leaves the room. Then I have an open WiFi network with MAC address filtering, that automatically turns off after a few hours of no devices. I can turn it on with the WPS button. That gets me a relatively not entirely insecure wireless network that I can use on devices all the way back on my iBook G3 or earlier.

  Just remember, you are the biggest threat to your network.

  source

  • LedgeDrop@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    If you start fresh you should be fine. Just don’t browse the internet on it, or run sketchy ass software on it. And turn it off when you’re done. Behind NAT the only way for your device to get infected is for something else on the network infect it.

    There is a lot of wisdom here, but be cautious…

    “Back in the day” (when xp was still relevant), I installed a VM with xp on the cooperate LAN. …as it took eons to install all the patches and updates, this turned into a multi-day task. I didn’t browse the internet or do anything (because the patches were still installing/rebooting/ect).

    When I came back to the office, the next day, the networking on the VM was disabled and I got a message from the local IT guy saying that my VM was part of a botnet and was spreading worms, so they had to quarantine it (by disabling the networking).

    I literally did nothing with it, other than install updates. I assume someone in the office had a worm and it infected my VM during the night.

    …so if you’re playing with xp (or any unsupported version of windows) - be careful.

    source

    • Blemgo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      My guess was that it was the updates that did the thing. I think I remember there being an issue up to Win 7 where malicious parties could advertise malware as available updates (under win7 this was only a problem if you didn’t let it select and download manually).

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  No.

  source
• Janx@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Unless it’s built into something and can’t be changed, what possible benefit could there be to connecting an old, unsupported OS to the internet!?

  source
• BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  The XP device is a major security risk because its got known security vulnerabilities that are not patched and actively targetted. Its targetted because hackefs know there are bad businesses and users still running xp.

  The issue is less your firewall and instead your whole network. If XP has internet access and is on your home network, it gives hackers and malware a route through to your other devices.

  If you want to connect XP to the internet then there are two realistic options.

  One is give the XP machine its own isolated network within your home network - a VLAN for example. One easy was of doing that is to see if your router has a Guest Wifi set up, and if so ensure that is configured to be entirely separate from your main network. But this is still risky because if you dont know what youre doing you could accidentally leave your network ezposed.

  A better option is get a second router, create a wifi with that (or ethernet conenction ideally) and connect that router to the internet via an always on vpn. The second router and network would completely isolates the XP machine from your home network.

  The XP machine itself will always be vulnerable whatever you do. Obviously configure a firewall and antivirus on it, and be safe in how you use it, to minimize the risk.

  Whatever you do, do not connect rhe XP machine directly to your home network if you’re giving it access out onto the internet.

  source

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Haven't there been videos showing either XP or 98 or both connected as fresh installs and within minutes having all sorts of issues?

    source

    • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Nobody is targeting XP these days, and you have to be trying to get infected within minutes. Can it happen? Yes.

      But behind your firewall with NAT it cannot magically get infected from the internet unless you do something.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• VitoRobles@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  You probably wouldn’t even be able to visit websites/have them work correctly, because the browser is so outdated.

  source

  • Scrollone@feddit.it ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    There are forks of Firefox that work with XP

    source
• purplemonkeymad@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I would avoid giving it internet access. You could probably get away with network access, but id still mainly restrict it to a disconnected network and just download anything you need for it from a modern machine. (Probably a shared nas for transfer.) If you’ve got a good router (ie not a isp or home router) you could give it access to specific items on a whitelisting basis.

  source
• alternategait@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Since this is an already open topic. How would anyone suggest getting files of an XP machine to anything else (but preferably to a modern mac)?

  source

  • daggermoon@piefed.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    USB floppy drive, DVD-ROM, or a Flash drive.

    source
  • heartSagan5@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    macOS can read FAT32 and NTFS just fine. I’d put the drive in an external case and copy it over.

    source
• hexagonwin@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  well realistically its not dangerous unless you have some very open/unrestricted network setup

  source
• Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Yes, bad idea.

  source
• heartSagan5@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  If you can, I’d just block connections from this WinXP box to the Internet completely, then it should be fine.

  source
• Adulated_Aspersion@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Install Linux Mint.

  Lighter than it ought to be.

  Runs on potato.

  source

  • daggermoon@piefed.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    This potato only has 512MB of RAM.

    source

    • heartSagan5@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      And you can’t boost it to 2g or 4g? Probably time to let it go, unless you want to run Damn Small Linux?

      I have Fedora 6 disc set, if you need to get started with an older kernel?

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• Berttheduck@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Could you just put Linux on the old machine instead? I suspect that would be safer.

  source

  • daggermoon@piefed.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I mean yeah, safer and better but I wouldn’t be able to game on it though. It’s bot like the thing supports Vulkan.

    source

    • Berttheduck@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Steam OS? Or emulators? It’s not like an old laptop is going to be running modern games

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• JigglySackles@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Only if it’s an air gapped network with no internet access.

  source
• BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I’d say no. I have a separate router with no internet access for my XP LAN gaming.

  source