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Comment by axelriet

7 years ago

I’d love that you point to an instance where the private symbols of the kernel actually shipped?

It is very possible that some private symbols were part of some leak, but stolen data does not qualify as “shipping” :)

Again, I stand behind my opinion. I eyeballed some of the code side-by-side and there was portions where I could literally see a line-by-line correlation, which I can hardly explain.

Then if reversing the kernel is so doable using legitimate means, why ReactOS is still largely stuck in the early 2000’s, coincidentally where the major leaks happened?

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axelriet

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tiraniddo  7 years ago

The private symbols have in the past ended up on the public symbol server (and quickly taken down), they have ending up "shipping" in public symbol packs. I can't point to specific incidents as the links to them no longer exist. This is why I said accidentally as they were not released as a conscious effort on MS's part.

However you seem to want to claim the only place those symbols can come from is being stolen. Of course in this case you use leak as a synonym for stolen, bit leak can just as much mean they were released accidentally by the owner, MS can't steal their own private symbols and release them on the web. I'm sure there's some symbol files traded in private scenarios which are actually taken through non public means but there have been actual incidences of public release of private symbols.

I'm not trying to claim that ReactOS is clean, I have no skin in the game from a project or user perspective. For all I know it might have lifted significant portions of its code from stolen source code or the WRK (which isn't stolen in so much as used without permission, which I'd regard as a totally different thing). I do however take exception to the typical software engineer's view there are somethings which cannot be reverse engineered into a almost similar form.

As to why ReactOS is stuck in the early 2000s, it could be because of all the source code which was stolen and put wholesale into the project. Although if that was the case I'd have expect MS would have sued the living shit of the project by now. It could also be because Windows was and is a very complex OS with many layers which if you're trying to re-implement with a team of 10s to 100s versus 1000s it's going to take a lot of time. It's seems unlikely that the project would spend the millions of man hours to create the abomination that is UWP.

Perhaps the best way to determine if ReactOS is unclean is for MS to open source the Windows Kernel, hell why would you even need ReactOS then :-)

edit: Cleanup.

teddyuk  7 years ago

Often hotfixes came with private symbols, Microsoft has traditionally been very slack on this.

I’ve seen private symbols for sql server with the guid to switch editions published on the public symbol server for at least 6 months before they were pulled.

Full releases and service packs typically are stripped very well but if you are saying that no private symbols have been published to the public symbol servers then you are incorrect.

The only product that has been effective at stripping symbols traditionally has been office, they were always stripped if you could even get hold of them which was unlikely.

Don’t forget also you could download the checked windows builds which were very open.

realusername  7 years ago

> Then if reversing the kernel is so doable using legitimate means, why ReactOS is still largely stuck in the early 2000’s, coincidentally where the major leaks happened?

Because they don't care or need about the newer MS stuff and also don't have the resources either.

Also they can exploit Microsoft good record of backward compatibility, once you have a good enough lower API compatibility, you can just install a lot of newer MS tech directly on top of it.