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Microsoft's Goal, Security Through Obscurity?
dave cutler writes "Salon has an amusing little wire article claiming that Microsoft argues that were
they to provide any greater technical detail about protocols and APIs, it would make computers running their operating system far more vulnerable to cracking attacks." Update: 05/09 13:59 GMT by M : The benefit to customers of Microsoft integrating internet services into the operating system, as well as Microsoft's commitment to security, are exemplified in this article which notes yet another remote root hole in Microsoft's code.
TRILLIAN CONTAINS NO MICROSOFT CODE. THIS IS A FLAW IN MICROSOFT'S CODE, NOT THE PROTOCOL.
WTF was the author on?? HTF can he say this? It's blatantly wrong.
p.s. I'm a Trillian user.
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
Yes, its true that the security through obscurity claims of MS seem like blowing smoke, but obscurity is an accepted security paradigm. Any CS course in security outta mention it, and you can read about it in "Security in Computing" by Pfleeger. Its always been my stance, however, that MS is taking the obscurity stance to propagate their business model and NOT to better security.
Salon has an amusing little wire article claiming that Microsoft argues that were they to provide any greater technical detail about protocols and APIs, it would make computers running their operating system far more vulnerable to cracking attacks.
It would. It's not a good excuse, but it is true. In the short term, Microsoft cracks would increase.
...that they are partially correct and justified in hiding certain secret keys as ways of preventing unauthorized use of products.
But that's an oversimplification that I'm afraid the lawyers and the court won't be able to clearly pick apart. Even the Microsoft VP testimony about the issue was sprinkled with constant reminders that this was "a confusing" technology. It is confusing. But it's essential for everyone to understand what it's purpose is and how it can be misused, too.
The part that rubs the wrong way, of course, is that the exact same arguments could be used to prevent a competitive implementation of an interface that Microsoft wants to own for themselves.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
*pauses to wipe coffee off monitor*
Three arguments against Microsoft's position: .Net was released to the wild before the "official" .Net specification.
Nimda.
Code Red.
The fact that a virus framework for
No, I don't believe them, not for a second. I'd sooner trust an armada of politicians and their attendant [strike]lackeys[/strike] lawyers.
'Nuff said.
All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
Microsoft is clearly ignoring history here. They should learn from the example of one of the oldest open-source programs out there. Clearly if there are lessons to be learned, we should learn from this piece of brilliantly designed software.
Of course, I am speaking of Sendmail.
Oops...
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Yeah they have the concept of root, it is just implemented for every user.
Bill Gates can't be a borg. Nothing that is part machine could tolerate such inconsistency. Only humans can say that 1=0 and believe it.
In an advisory today, Eeye warned that the flaw in the "MSN Chat OCX control" enables an attacker to "supply and execute code on any machine on which MSN Messenger with the ActiveX is installed."
In other words, if those components are installed, even if you don't use them, you are at risk. You're right, it has nothing to do with Trillian.
The author is right, completely right. Try reading next time.
If these security vulnerabilities are so easy and obvious from reading the APIs, then why can't Microsoft's programmers find and close the security holes before someone finds them? Don't they read and adhere to their own APIs?
If releasing the APIs means someone is going to easily figure out a way to damage the system, that just demonstrates that Microsoft isnt even trying to secure their products.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
"....frequent security flaws in Linux and Apache. To continue the analogy, there are so many holes, it looks like a golf course."
I'd rather have a golf course (18 holes per 40 hectares) than swiss cheese (18 holes per pound).
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
Microsoft Reveals Anti-Disclosure Plan
(emphasis in original)
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
"For one thing, it doesn't explain the frequent security flaws in Linux and Apache. To continue the analogy, there are so many holes, it looks like a golf course."
From the SecurityFocus vulnerability db:
IIS since 5.0 - 56 entries
Apache since 1.3.17 - 7 entries
Your argument is flawed at best, outright FUD at worst.
LEXX
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
I firmly believe that software should be held accountable to liability laws and consumer rights laws.
That would kill all free software. People could personally sue Linus for bugs in the Linux kernel that caused them problems: "I'm seeking $10,000 in damages because your stupid bottom handler for my POS Promise IDE controller caused me to lose all my data!". The listings on freshmeat would be a pool of future clients for lawyers, and not software projects. Amateurs wouldn't release code for any use whatsoever.
In short: that's a realy, realy, really, really bad idea.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
"I guess it's a matter of how hard you make it," Allchin replied. "We have to work on our reputation for security in the marketplace." from Jim Allchin, who oversees the Windows operating system.
This perfectly demonstrates the M$ sekurity mindset - they approach security problems as a PR problem NOT an actual usage or safety issue. What he SHOULD be saying is, "As the dominant OS in the consumer space we need to work to make our OS the most secure for our users because they are the biggest target and the least aware of the threat."Instead he's blathering about their "reputation" instead of actual security.
Bottomline is that M$ doesn't care about security - they only care about there reputation for security. Hence to them obscurity IS security to them and it becomes policy and is encouraged.
=tkk
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
And Microsoft still crashes a lot.
You are running some program and do something interesting, like accidently pasting a text document onto a URL and something crashes. Ah. Try it again. OK, if it is over 4800 or so bytes it crashes, bring up the debugger. Ah, at 4894 is the stack where the IP...
Here is the specific difference between closed and open models.
If I find it on Microsoft, about the only thing I can do is write a sploit for the skript kiddiez. Of course I can contact Microsoft, but they won't respond for the shorter of 4 months, or when the skript kiddiez get going. Even then it usually takes two weeks for a hotfix that breaks half the software on the server, and then another two weeks for a fix for the fix that I can apply. [Don't worry, I haven't run anything from Microsoft for several months and hope to stay Microsoft Free as much as possible].
If I find it on GNU/BSD/Linux, I pull up the source, add a test or whatever I deem appropriate and send a patch with a description of the problem and fix to the maintainer along with a little chiding about how embarrassing it should be to have such a hole. And the minor version is incremented the next day, so everyone doing apt-get regularly won't be affected, and in a few days every distribution will have it added to the security update section.
Even if I had the source to Micros... I probably wouldn't have enough to recompile or fix things. I could find the line of code causing the problem, but anyone who can write a sploit can read disassembly.
Microsoft's integration makes the problem worse since any problem with what should be middleware runs in the OS. A Netscape flaw on Linux wouldn't get you root (at least not directly - you would have to find a suid flawed program). But any problem with Outlook and/or IE gives you more than enough to cause problems.
Again, and to summarize, any software defect has a good potential to be exploited, without the source, so simply running something until it crashes (at least on MS) is a much more productive way to mine for exploitable security holes than reading through the source. The integration within MS software (the browser is part of the OS) makes the OS vulnerable because it includes the middleware, making it much larger and more complex (a flaw in IE thus *IS* a flaw in the OS), and as such cannot be sand-boxed easily.