Chapter 16: Windows Vulnerabilities
1. What Windows operating systems are supported with security patches?
2. List and describe three Windows 2000 vulnerabilities. (Short essay, no more than two pages,
please.)
3. Why is any Windows installation “insecure by default”?
4. What was the original design philosophy of Windows?
5. What is the largest difference between Windows 2000 and Windows XP?
6. What year was Windows 2000 released?
7. What year was Windows XP released?
8. What year was Windows Vista released?
9. Where is the default location of the SAM file?
10. What Windows utility encrypts passwords with a 128-bit algorithm?
11. What is wrong with having known default account names?
12. What is the default password of the Windows Administrator user?
13. The Event Viewer buffer overflow exploit affects which Windows operating system?
14. What day is Microsoft’s patch release day?
15. Which Windows release has a “speech recognition” feature which can be used to force a PC into
executing some commands?
16. Who may adjust the access privileges of shared folders on a Windows machine?
17. Windows Server 2003 was developed and released for what purpose?
18. The easiest way to break password security on a Windows machine is to use a password burning
program which can set the administrator password to a blank. It is not necessary to decipher the
password if you can just replace it. What is the downside to using a tool such as this?
19. What are the five versions of Vista?
20. What are the versions of Windows 2000?