ug, i can't believ i'm about to go through this, but here goes:

Originally posted here by Wickdgin


It has everything to do with the file system, FAT has practicly no file permissions.
no, as i explained: 9x/me have no default c$ shares so it has nothing to do whith the file system loaded, it has to do with the ms defaults. and who the hell is going to create one for no reason WITH NO PASSWORD anyway?

thats what i thought.

NT, 2k and XP pro all use the NTFS file system which does use file permissions based on users & groups. It is not the "file sharining system", but the file system itself that is responsible for permisiions.
erm, lets get this straight: windows file and print sharing can be set up in several ways on any system. even on a 9x box you can set up passwords and permissions based on that password(ie one password for read access and annother for read/write access).

Let's use this as an example though. Lets say someone exploited a hole in IE that allowed read/write access to the users file system.
but we aren't talking about an IE exploit, we are talking about a guy who suggested trying to "hack" a 98 box using a c$ share.

If they were using FAT32 that person would have full read/write access to anywhere on the file system
yep.

if they were using NTFS that same person would be limited to the permissions of that user (unless of course the victom had admin privleges).
they would also be unrestrected if IE was for some reason running as system(like if it was a scheduled task for some odd reason)

[edit: fixed a quote i forgot to close]