UCSB Bans Windows NT/2000 in the Dorms

nick58b writes "The people in charge of the networks for all of the on-campus dorms at UCSB banned the use of Windows NT and 2000 on their networks citing security and network problems associated with them. While there are problems with NT/2000, Windows 98 and ME computers are still permitted. Students using these are "recommended" to upgrade to XP Home Edition. In other news, sales of Windows XP are way up at the campus bookstore."

Comments

What a scam

[jameslore]

Permitting Win98 and denying Win2k? For all it's faults, it's not as bad as the 9x series of exploits. Plus with Win2k up to SP3, it's likely more secure than XP.

Methinks someone wants to make some money...

Re:What a scam

[MtViewGuy]

You're right about that!

Windows 2000 Professional with its Service Pack 3 and McAfee AntiVirus 7.0 (antivirus + firewall) is actually a reasonably secure OS setup.

Re:What a scam

[octalgirl]

From a public school perspective, Win2k was a nightmare. Forget security, we didn't even get that far. If someone so much as tried to 'install on first use' the equation editor, administrator password was required. Or configuring their own Outlook (after they had been doing it themselves for years)- impossible - and they called that zero-admin? Sure, make everyone else the administrator and you won't have to do anything anymore.

Norton corporate script wouldn't run (admin pass again); trying to install one single lab printer so every student who sat at that computer would always see the same printer, impossible without scripts or pushing profiles. This increases the amount of training required for students to use the equipment, or takes a net admin away from LAN/WAN support and puts them in script/profile land. An english teacher just wants to bring a class in without any hassle or setup. Our legacy or propriety software apps - most wouldn't run without admin pass. And why the hell would we want to teach a bunch of students about CTRL-ALT-DEL to logon? I remember when Microsoft used to brag that was a great security feature. Do they really think everyone is ready to handle their own server? Just crazy. We stayed with 98 on desktops and used Win2K on servers. We are finally moving into XP, which is much easier to handle, and much easier to train 5000 users on.

Re:What a scam

[Corrado]

Nah, it's more like:

"UCSB will require students to use ONLY textbooks published in 2003 which you can conviently purchase at the UCSB bookstore." :)

Re:What a scam

[delta407]

From a private school perspective, Win2k is great. I don't know how you deployed software, but I don't leave anything to "install on first use" -- it's on the hard drive, on the network, or not available. (Microsoft makes tools that let you customize, say, the Office install; no serial number needed, no I Agree on the license agreement, and no Clippy if you so desire.) As far as configuring Outlook 2000, it can be done as a normal user, with the exception of "mode" (Internet or Corporate) which has to be done as administrator but can be done in the base system image. (You do image your clients, right?)

I don't know what product you're talking about, but Norton AntiVirus Corporate deploys cleanly (via Group Policy) without issues to speak of. The lab printer scenario is a little more complicated, but if you don't want roaming profiles, you can set a mandatory profile and give users a network home. The mandatory profile can include the printer. As far as legacy or proprietary apps go -- open regedt32 or Windows Explorer and change the permissions until it's happy. Then, change your deployment system to do that automatically: problem solved. Don't like Ctrl-Alt-Del? Disable it via Group Policy.

I don't like Microsoft, but things are far more usable under Windows 2000 than most people would think. Get some network imaging software, reasonably standard desktop hardware, and a Windows 2000 domain with appropriate Group Policy entries. It's really not that bad.

good ol' campus LANs

[dotgod]

I remember when I lived on campus I used to get a kick out of busting out with a "NET SEND ALL blah blah" command. Good way to annoy everyone with an NT box. Of course I'm sure this isn't the reason they banned NT/2k since it'll automatically pop up on XP boxes too. The funniest thing I did with NET SEND was to send out a message asking all the single ladies to IM my roommate.

Re:good ol' campus LANs

[Dynedain]

because I'm betting there were a lot of single ladies running winNT/2K

I'll be the first to say it...

[dalutong]

Why did they not suggest GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc? Everyone is almost certainly more secure than any out-of-the-box windows install (i say almost because i don't know if i'd trust a lindows install to be secure...)

I just don't get it. I was just at UMBC and they prohibit internet connections from anyone who doesn't have anti-virus software installed.

(you can still get on if you don't, but if they find out you lose your right to get online)

why not just suggest installing a more virus-resistant OS?

Re:I'll be the first to say it...

[kmellis]

They don't suggest those OSs because they would be even less secure in these student's hands than NT/2K was. The issue isn't one of the essential security of a particular operating system. The issue is that NT and 2K, in contrast to Win9x and XP, include some networking services, by default, that are relatively insecure, by default. It's not practical to attempt to get these relatively naive users to secure their OSs. Also, along with better security defaults on shares and IIS and other things, XP is more aggressively (naturally) supported by MS in maintaining its security via bug-fixes and patches--and they do so via a very aggressive transparent version of their auto-update mechanism. In practical terms, XP Home or Pro is going to be much more secure as installed on this campus residential network than many other OSs. Not because it's "better", and not because it's inherently more secure than other OSs, including NT/2K or a UN*X. It just is because that's how it plays out in this particular slice of the real world.

My problem with this is mostly financial. Obviously, they can restrict usage to their network any darn way they please. But there are inevitably going to be students who simply don't have the money to upgrade from NT/2K to XP. They're imposing a burden on those students that they should try to ease in some manner.

A good alternative would be a carefully crafted Linux distribution that they pre-configure and make secure according to their needs, and make it available on a CD-ROM. Again, though, even if the security issues were resolved with such a distribution (which would be relatively easy), they would still have to face the costs associated with supporting these naive users using Linux--which would probably be more trouble than it's worth. Thus, they simply say, "Use XP".

Keep in mind that in some sense, these types of administrators have less control over their networks than corporate admins do. They don't own the licenses to the OSs--they expect the students to supply their own OS. This gives them a lot less control over what's on their network. They don't have a right to lock the machine's configurations down to control security. They probably don't want to have too much involvement with the student's machines, since that would imply a corresponding degree of liability on their part for how the student is using it (meaning: doing illegal things). It's pretty easy for them to identify the OS that a student is using, so their solution (requiring XP) has the biggest benefit for the least cost.

It is completely absurd for anyone to assume that they are doing this because they have a vested interest in seeing more copies of XP sold.

Ugh.

[SlashChick]

The idiocy of some network admins never ceases to amaze me.

"Residents' computers were compromised with several well-known vulnerabilities and used for all manner of unfriendly purposes such as the installation of viruses like Code Red and Nimda on other residents' computers."

Oh, so you really meant to ban IIS, which is, after all, the software that contributed to most of these worms. Ironically, www.resnet.ucsb.edu is running IIS 5.0 on that very same evil Windows 2000 OS.

Want to know my guess at what happened? Since the admins weren't blocking web servers running on port 80 outside of ResNet, someone set up an IIS server and got nailed with Nimda, which then killed their ResNet web servers (assuming that they hadn't patched their web servers, which isn't much of a leap to make, considering they don't seem to understand the difference between Windows 2000 and IIS.)

"OpenSSL and Apache holes? Wow, let's ban Linux!" That's the same ridiculous leap they made in banning Windows 2000.

"While we understand that it is possible to run a secure Windows 2000 environment, past history has shown that this rarely happens on ResNet."

Nothing like insulting your users AND taking away their right to run a particular OS. You know, this IS an educational institution -- why don't you try educating them? Better yet, cut off ports that are spreading Nimda -- that'll make people figure it out really quickly.

This is ridiculous in every sense of the word, and I hope the students there organize and fight against this. If I lived there, I know I would be.

Re:Ugh.

[NeuroKoan]

They actually did ban linux. My freshmen year (4 years ago) my roommate and I had to petition to get a "unix-like operating system" on the network. But if they "caught us doing any of that hacking stuff" we'd be shut off and kicked out of the dorms. Funny thing is, we were hacked and we did our best to fend off the attack before we just shut off the system for a few hours (and reset all the passwds). :) We actually had the linux box up for about 3-4 weeks before they noticed.

UCSB has all sorts of stupid rules. One of my favorites was that no more then 1 IP per person per room... (which was way too easy to get around...)

When I applied for a job there, they turned me down for not having enough technical knowledge, but I didn't feel like it was a good time to tell them about how easy it was to bypass all their "safeguards".

Re:Ugh.

[York the Mysterious]

1) There are not enough PARCs (Peer Advisor for Residential Computing: the students that get ppl up on the net) to have them go around securing ppls boxes all day long

2) When schools try to educate students on how to secure their computers they tend not to listen. You might listen as a computer geek, but I can tell you right now that 99% of the people in my dorm building could care less about installing Windows 2000 SP3. I dont see this as UCSB saying that XP is more secure than 2000 because I believe that XP SP1 vs 2000 SP3, 2000 will win hands down. I believe that UCSB is realizing that 90% of students dont install patches and by having students run XP they are getting machines with 2 years less security holes plus an auto updating system to ensure that patches are regularly installed (assuming students ok the patches).

3) Why dont they just block the ports. Two things here. I was at a school with 350 machines that were regularly updated with security patches. Every box in the building had an image with the latest version of every app reimaged once a week. Even with this an a Cisco PIX firewall and NAT we still got hit by Nimda. All it took was one stupid student opening up an attachment and the thing flew by administrative shares. Blocking ports doesn't always help. Second thing I'm not sure how UCI (the UC system's ISP) works by 4C (The CA State College's ISP) is really tough about blocking ports. If the school blocks the port for Kazaa or Half Life the school loses their internet connection. Pretty tough, but they have strong feelings that the internet should not be censored. I agree with them even if it makes things difficult somethings.

Do I think this is a crazy decision: yes

Do I see why they did it: yes

It _IS_ a security/bandwidth problem

[gimlix2]

Just for the record, I work for Residential Computing at UC Berkeley (the analog of Resnet at UCSB, except it's at Berkeley :), so you know I'm not completely talking out of my ass.

This has been a topic of discussion recently at our office mainly because there have been a tremendous number of security issues relating to Windows 2000 (not so much with NT since these are students, not corporate users). I personally think that the move is a little drastic, but it will be interesting to see how this pans out at UCSB (especially how they will enforce it).

There will be people talking about how secure/insecure Win2K is. Allow me to give a common trait to all of the compromised machines:

1) Blank Administrator Password
2) Unpatched Windows (i.e. no Service Packs installed)

In nearly ALL the compromised machines, the computer is not updated and has a blank Administrator password.

The easy solution: install SP3!
An easier solution: set an Administrator Password!

All really simple solutions that would prevent 99% of the issues we have encountered thus far.

So I said it was a security problem. How is it a bandwidth problem?

Allow me to point to the DarkIRC and Nimda security bulletins we have written up by our security.

So you've got a zombie, what do you do with it? A number of things:

1) use the compromised machine in a DoS attack
2) use it as a FTP server
3) use it as a IRC bot ...

A script kiddie can just use a machine on a fat bandwidth pipe at will to his liking. It's definitely NOT fun when the pipe is already clogged as it is with folks and P2P apps.

So there you have... if you don't think it's a problem, it IS a problem. There are too many calls about this to our helpdesk to have it be a minor issue that everyone else makes it out to be.

Re:It _IS_ a security/bandwidth problem

[jsse]

We are running a 1000+ organization but our solution is much better than banning older release of windows to force students upgrade at their own expenses.

First of all, remind them of the security policies, and the consequence of failure to compliant

Second, we do not rely on individual machines in our network to ensure OUR network security. We include in risk accessment that clients machines are subjected to be exploited, and have plans to deal with it.

To minimize and control the damage, we blocks off unauthorized ports across segments. Say they could open port 80 to be access within their own segment, but outsiders cannot have access to it. Now the virus outbreak would only affect their own segment.

Of course, they could apply for the opening of ports with proper justifications and management approval.

Third and most important, install Software Access Management software on all Windows boxes. SAM enables admin to perform license management and remote controlling. Users may complain about about it, but it's your choice to use Windows, you've options to use something else.

Do not think we'd relax restrictions to Linux and Mac, policies require that each box must be tested(and challenged, on password, services and ports opened) by our tiger teams from time to time.

Just my two cents.

resnet.ucsb.edu is using IIS on W2K

[Perdo]

http://www.resnet.ucsb.edu

The site that is telling students they cannot use W2K is running IIS.

The student's machines get compromised, and resnet get's compromised so some Admin who would otherwise get fired for not installing HIS updates, scapegoats the student's.

Crap sysadmin and non technical management are the cause of this.

If they were so worried, wouldn't they be running Apache?

Blown well out of proportion

[shoemakc]

The univeristy doesn't declare certain types of machines illegal, they just refuse to support them. I'd wager that very few, if any machines destined for college shipped with w2k pre-installed. This means owners of w2k machines either were knowledgable enough to install it themselves, or knew someone who was. Chances are they'll go to their savy friend for support, and not brave the lines at IT.

This isn't nearly the same situation as computers that shipped from Dell or gateway with no admin password set. That's something that could be easily overlooked. In these cases however, chances are the same people who installed w2k knew enough to at least put in a simple password.

And I think we can all agree at this point that a properly patched W2K Pro installation is just as secure (if not more so) as even a properly patched XP one. This really just has to be the case of college IT administrators being wooed by MS hype.

The wool has been pulled over your eyes...

[SlashChick]

"I am a student at UCSB and the reason this is being done is because the average user in the dorms does not have the ability to properly secure NT or 2K from its default setup, while the default setup of XP has been deemed more secure."

Oh, boy. You just took that hook, line, and sinker, didn't you? What exploits are running around on a default version of Windows 2000 that would cause problems with your network?

Answer: NONE.

The culprit you're looking for is IIS, which is NOT installed by default on Windows NT Workstation or Windows 2000 Professional. If you install IIS from the Windows 2000 CD, you will be vulnerable until you download the patch -- but to install IIS, you must explictly insert the CD after Windows 2000 is installed, find IIS, and install it. (By the way, this problem could be eliminated other ways, such as not allowing servers on port 80.)

The IIS version that ships with the Windows XP Pro CD is not vulnerable. But to say Windows 2000 is vulnerable to a common remote root exploit out of the box is simply untrue. IIS 5.0 is the scapegoat you're looking for.

Re:The wool has been pulled over your eyes...

[htmlboy]

Oh, boy. You just took that hook, line, and sinker, didn't you? What exploits are running around on a default version of Windows 2000 that would cause problems with your network?

Answer: NONE.

The culprit you're looking for is IIS...

Having worked on dorm computers, the bigger problem with win2k and winxp is usually the presence of an administrator account with no password. There's a good number of exploits out in the wild that use the absence of an administrator password to take over machines, presumably for DDoS. I'm not certain, but I think that if you tell the installer there will be only one person using the win2k/xp system, it skips the part where it prompts you to set a password for administrator.

Re:The wool has been pulled over your eyes...

[Lord Ender]

It is easy to make a Win2K system with no password. It doesn't complain if you leave the Admin password blank. And 2K/XP *automatically* share the entire contents of the hard drive, *read/write*, to the admin account. 9X and ME don't do this.

How about requiring updated systems instead?

[cbreaker]

Throwing the book at Windows NT and 2000 is a pretty cheezy way to prevent network problems. And Windows XP won't make these problems go away.

The "problems" they mentioned were both IIS "flaws" which have been corrected for some time now. Any other flaws exploited will also most likely be present on Windows XP Home, which has IIS as well (called Personal Web Server; incidently you can install a version of it for Win9x as well.)

"But how would they be able to tell if you have the latest service pack installed," you ask? I say, "The same way that they will be checking to see what OS you're using."

This kind of thing is almost expected at a University that is dominantly Macintosh. I worked at Brown University, and it was the same way. The general idea is: Mac = Secure, easy, perfect, flawless and PC = Impossible, buggy, useless. And all this because Apple has always pushed their machines on the schools.

Then all these students get out into the workplace and say "Uhh... where's the Macs?"

Hey UCSB Linux Users Group!

[unsinged int]

That is, if you exist. Only thing I could find was this and the server was horribly slow so I couldn't get much info.

How about all of you get on over and set up a table outside the campus bookstore? I don't think I should have to explain why.

Probably lack of patching...

[Kjella]

Is XP more secure than 2000 with SP3 or Windows NT with SP6(or is it higher now, don't use it)? I'll personally ridicule whoever claims that. Is XP more secure than NT/2000 with no service packs whatsoever? Yes.

Will it be any different when XP hits service pack 3 and nobody has it installed (or actually fewer than 2k boxes due to MS anti-piracy measures in their SP updates)? No.

The message is "you're too lazy to patch, so get the latest with the most patches pre-installed"

Kjella

I know an IP block to scan to test new XP viruses

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean really, why not just announce to the world that anything from 128.111.0.1 to 128.111.255.255 is probably now running XP?

Like I said on the resnet forum

[CurbyKirby]

I'm kinda pissed that slashdot completely neglected my submission of the same story (I submitted it 3 weeks ago), but I'll reprint what I said here here. Please give your comments, but I still stand by what I said.

8/30/2002 2:49:15 AM

I'm writing this to the people in charge of Resnet policy, but also to people using Resnet. An outright ban on Windows 2000 will prove to be a costly and ineffective policy for increasing the security of Resnet.

1. Software and Bugs

Windows 2000, like any operating system, is a complex bundle of computer code. Like Windows XP, GNU/Linux, or MacOS, people find bugs in the software from time to time. Certain malicious people try to exploit the bugs to damage networks, reputations, etc. Other people develop software patches to fix the bugs.

Oftentimes, bugs are found with application software, like web browsers, web servers, e-mail clients, and the like. The operating system is generally not at fault. In this case, it just so happened that problems with some Microsoft application software were found in 2001 and combined creatively to create a series of rather devastating worldwide attacks.

2. Who is to Blame

It is important to realize that Windows 2000 was not the vulnerable software in these cases. Rather, bugs in Internet Information Server and Internet Explorer were exploited; they were the cause of the widespread effectiveness of the worms called "Code Red" and "Nimda." In other words, there are computers running Windows 2000 that are not and never were susceptible to Code Red, and there are devices not running Windows 2000 that were susceptible. Similarly, there are plenty of computers not running Windows 2000 that helped spread the problem through the Nimda worm.

Thus, these problems cannot be blamed on Windows 2000. Where does the blame lie? Programmers are bound to make mistakes, especially in an environment where a for-profit company is trying to produce and sell a modern operating system. Since few pieces of software are ever bug-free, it is ultimately up to system administrators and everyday users to make sure that their systems are as secure as possible (or practical). One of the ways to help increase the security of a computer is to apply security patches once they are released.

3. Patching Problems

A properly maintained computer is like a properly maintained car. Using a two-year-old unpatched computer on the Internet is like driving a car too fast on a twisting mountain road during an ice storm on bald tires. Using such a system or driving such a car is asking for trouble.

The bug in IIS that made it vulnerable to Code Red was announced two months before Code Red. The bug in Internet Explorer used by the Nimda worm was announced a full 5 months before Nimda. Yet even today, nearly a year after these attacks, thousands of machines worldwide are still unpatched. In other words, they are either infected with Code Red, or vulnerable to it. Unfortunately, many of these machines are likely to remain unpatched forever.

With that in mind, we turn now to the proposed ban of Windows 2000.

4. What problems does it solve?

Windows XP is not vulnerable to Code Red and Nimda. So upgrading to Windows XP does protect against certain problems.

5. What problems doesn't it solve?

It does not change the fact that improperly configured or improperly managed systems are vulnerable. It does not protect against attacks that have yet to be developed. It does not help educate users about ways to make their systems more secure. It does not help users of other operating systems running vulnerable versions of Internet Explorer. It does not protect against the thousands of other vulnerabilities that plague other operating systems. It does not stop denial of service attacks and port scans (that for some reason were blamed on Windows 2000 by the Resnet web page).

6. What problems does it cause?

Bugs that were introduced during the development of Windows XP could conceivably outweigh the bugs that were patched during that time. It would be naive to think that every bug in Windows XP is also present in older Windows operating systems.

The Products Use Rights document for Windows XP now includes a clause saying that Microsoft may access and change the operating system and its components without your agreement, and in fact without your knowledge. Suggesting that users of Resnet upgrade to Windows XP puts them in a position where they agree to relinquish control of their computers. Incidentally, versions of Windows 2000 up to service pack 2 do not contain this clause.

The ban of an operating system creates a dangerous precedent. Nowhere in the Resnet Acceptible Use Policy has there been any mention of the ban of a specific software product. The AUP does state that users cannot interfere with others, or with the proper functioning of the network. However, anyone would be hard put to prove that Windows 2000 was the sole cause of any problems by virtue of any fundamental and uncorrectable security flaws.

7. What are the costs of the upgrades?

As always, these costs are generally borne by the end users. They must acquire and install the software and learn to use it. This costs time and money and doesn't appreciably increase the security of the network.

8. What are the alternatives?

Requiring that users patch Windows 2000 systems would take less time and money. Verifying that a system was patched by probing the computer for the Red Alert vulnerability is no more difficult than fingerprinting the OS and checking that it is not Windows 2000. Certainly, installing a patch is a less intensive operation than upgrading an operating system and dealing with any problems and incompatibilities that may arise, so support problems faced by the RCCs are fewer.

In conclusion, the proposed Windows 2000 ban is both costly and ineffective. It seems as if the Resnet staff has already decided on implementing this "solution," which is lamentable. As there has been no discussion of or opposition to the ban on this forum, I felt it was necessary to provide a different opinion.

9. Resources:

Resnet Policy:
http://www.resnet.ucsb.edu/information/win2k.html
http://www.resnet.ucsb.edu/information/use_policy. htm#policy

Code Red:
http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2001-19.html (exploit)
http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2001-12.html (bug)

Nimda:
http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2001-26.html (exploit)
http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2001-06.html (bug)

Windows XP PUR:
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/resources
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/02/02/11/ 020211opfoster.xml

UCSB sysadmins just being lazy....

[MtViewGuy]

If the UCSB admins were smart they would have conveniently posted information about how to make Windows 2000 Profesional reasonably secure.

Things like installing Service Pack 3, setting accounts correctly, banning the use of personal web servers on a client machine, and mandatory installation of a good antivirus and/or firewall program would have saved the UCSB sysadmins a lot of headaches.

Why not....

[Dynedain]

We all know that Win2k is a hell of a lot more secure than win98/ME and probably just as secure as XP....that aside...

Why don't they do what my university did.....if your machine was detected trying to propogate nimda or code red, the smart switches disabled your jack. Getting it re-enabled meant calling Information Services Division and proving that you had cleaned up and protected your machine (downloading and installing the free copy of Norton Antivirus they provided).

It really seems to be a good system. Plug in an unregisterd NIC - blam - jack turned off and MAC address added to a blocked hosts list. Plug in a hub with more than one machine behind it...jack turned off. Run an unauthorized web server...jack turned off, mac address added to blocked hosts list. etc. etc. etc.

I'm suprised other large institutions don't do the same thing. It sounds like it would save a lot of headaches.

Kings College, London

[isorox]

KCL, UK ban linux, stating You may not run any Unix operating system since they can represent a serious risk to network integrity. Any student found running a Unix system (e.g. Linux) connected to the College network will have that system disconnected.

I tried emailing them a corrected version, but their email address was down - so much for network integrity.

"You are encouraged to run a Unix based operating system since they dont
suffer serious risks to network integrity like Nimda, Code Red and Outlook
Worms. Any student found running any insecure system (e.g. most windows
boxes) connected to the College network will have that system disconnected."

Confusingly they do allow the unix based Mac OSX.

Back in my day... :)

[cjsnell]

Here is a fun little prank that I did back when I was in school (1993-1997):

When I was a freshman at Vanderbilt University, we used the campus VAX to register for classes. It worked like this: you would go to one of several large computer labs on campus and log onto the VAX as user REGISTER (or something). Once you logged in, the registration program would fire up automatically (via the VMS equivalent of .login). Anyway, one day at the beginning of the semester, I was feeling a bit mischevious. I was in one of the larger labs and it was packed to the gills with students trying to register. I logged on to the REGISTER account and did something that was similar to ctrl-z suspending and suspended the registration app. Now I had a command prompt. Next, I used the VMZ equivalent of write(1) (...gosh, what was it?) and sent a message out to everybody else using the REGISTER account--literally hundreds of students...

ALERT: THE REGISTRATION SYSTEM WILL BE CLOSING IN 30 SECONDS. PLEASE MAKE YOUR FINAL CLASS SELECTIONS AT THIS TIME.

The first thing that happened when I sent the message was several hundred PCs beeping loudly all at the same time. And immediately after that...you should have seen the looks of panic on all those sorority girls' faces! :)