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Windows Security Holes Go Mostly Unexploited
murky.waters writes "Wired News has an article with a decidedly different take on security holes in Microsoft Windows: Despite the thousands of known exploits and virii, most MS users aren't target of much harm, and the big guns such as Klez have had almost no effect on home users. An interesting read that, if true, challenges some common arguments."
of these holes are exploited by adults who are quiet about it instead of big-mouth children?
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Thousands of people are in dark alleys every day and rarely are any shot, raped, mugged or sodomized.
Banaaaana!
Unexploited == unpatched?
I know the difference, but I'm wondering what percentage of the unexploited are also currently unpatched?
Perhaps all the black hats are just saving up for, MWHahahaha, World Domination.
because they don't notice these viruses.
Saying that unprotected windows machines go un-hacked is rediculous. Just look at your server logs (if you run a web server). How many automated hack attemps do you see? quite a few.
Tons of people are infected with viruses and spyware (now that shit should be illigal, god damn) but they never notice or care, as long as their computers keep working.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
That's because there are SO many exploits to choose from. Nobody has the time (or need) to exploit all of them :-)
That's not the point. The point is that these flaws are not necessarily practical to exploit, or can't be because of a firewall/NAT.
This doesn't mean that Windows' security doesn't need a LOT of work - it does. It's just that practically speaking many exploits are not "the end of the world" as many news sites (*cough*) would like to make it seem.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
As a contractor doing technical support for an ISP, I will attest to the fact that home users are hit very hard by problems such as Klez.
It's an epidemic.
On the other hand, we know of surprisingly few cases where machines were exploited on the network for other types of obvious security holes.
"We know of" being the key phrase.
The article mentioned does not specifically discuss Windows security holes (as the title of this thread suggests), but rather security holes in general, and goes on to mention the Linux Slapper worm in particular.
I find this typical of the slanted, Microsoft-bashing nature of posts here on Slashdot!
Experts who discover and report security holes seem to be far more industrious than the malicious hackers willing or able to exploit those holes.
The problem is that the article fails to mention that if the holes are not fixed, sooner or later the so called malicious hacker will find it and exploit it *quietly*. This is dangerous thing.
IMHO, better to expose it and then *quickly* fix it rather than do nothing.
The problem is now that Microsoft knows (or being told) about the holes but often takes a very long time to fix it and sometimes ditch the bugs as "unimportant". This is even worse as this *will* give a plenty opportunity for the hackers to implement the exploit.
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
You know for being a virus, I'd think the authors would want to give it a cool name, like Infectita or Shadowbyte, I dunno SOMETHING cool. Instead, it's Klez, which sounds like a freeware puzzle game that sucks ass but has a lot of bright colors.
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
Its so bad, that if you install win98 on a fresh machine, password protect and share the C drive, and connect to the internet, you can get this variant within 5 minutes. Opaserv exploits a shared drive password flaw, and has full access to the machine. Then it will ruin the CMOS and main hard drive partitions.
From my tech support experience, this year has been the worst for exploits.
My girlfriend's Windows 2000 machine was hacked about a month ago by script kiddies exploiting one of the recent exploits in a Microsoft product. They then installed 2 apps, a ghosting app that hides any application from the Taskbar and Tasklist, and mIRC with hacked up startup scripts to allow remote control when connected. They used the ghost app to hide itself and mIRC. Whenever she turned on her computer, it would load mIRC, hide it, then connect to EFNet. Then shortly after someone who would see it connect, would use it to mass-ping hosts in an attempt to DoS someone.
Needless to say, for the week this was going on, I noticed serious network problems at home. And pinpointed them to every time she turned on her computer, the network would lag to a stop. Finally after researching it I discovered what was going on.. I found the channel these guys hung out in, and she wasn't the only victim. They had a few hundred hacked users they could control.
So when I see reports like this, I suddenly get a whiff of steaming horse shit.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
why does this headline sound like an invitation?
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I'm sysadmin at a public library with public dialup access. They get Klez by the dozens every month so I wonder where the writer is looking for 'typical users'? I'm sitting in a rural parish (county for the rest of the US) in LA and have a pretty typical bunch of 'end users' in our population with the one exception that I try as hard as I can to educate them as to the evils of Outlook (which falls on deaf ears) and pass out CD-ROMS and setup manuals documenting Netscape for web & E-Mail (which they ignore, whining about having problems getting Outlook Expresss configured.). The only concession to unsafe computing is that I do give detailed configuration steps on getting IE past our federally mandated filtering system because I know that a lot of sites and third party software depends on IE.
Democrat delenda est
Aside from pissing off the odd script kiddy in IRC or on some online game, why would anyone feel the need to hack or exploit my PC? There's nothing there of any import. And I doubt there is on 99.9% of all home PCs out there.
What are they gonna do? Edit someones Sims save file to make them 6 year old girls? I've been DDOS'd and had various exploits tried against me in the past. The worst they could do is annoy me.
I mean, rock-solid security on your OS is all fine and good.. But I don't wear a bulletproof vest either, and it's ok, because I hardly ever get shot at.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
From the article:
"In the computer security game, you can't be an Edward Jenner and come up with a vaccine for electronic smallpox that will put you in the history books and eventually result in the complete eradication of the disease," George Smith said. "You can only be the guy that spots the electronic poison ivy and suggests people either steer clear or buy calamine."
That's not true. If you could come up with a vacine that eradicated Microsoft, the disease would disappear along with it!
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
Most Chevy Geo's are not broken into or stolen, so it would be OK for GM to just use the same key on them all, giving the owners the illusion of security.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
- Steal the HS research paper on crop circles
- Grab secret financial information
- Use as a proxy to hide the hackers identity*
- Part of a DDOS attack*
Now, lets think of all the benefits of hacking a server/websiteAlso note the last 2 reasons for hacking a home computer are really for working with servers. The truth is, not too many people really care about hacking your computer, unless its a means to an end.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
As we speak, someone is changing the news options on the RIAA website. However, they don't seem to be stopping them from doing it. I did grab a shot of a particularly amusing one though.
Oh, and just so everyone knows.
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
each year, I might as well leave my front door unlocked, right? Or better yet, if I am a builder of homes, there is no reason to install those locks at all.
I am then subjected to dozens of e-mail scanning auto-responders telling me I have a virus, auto replies from people I've never heard of, and the occasional jerk who thinks they know everything screaming at me in e-mail telling me I am stupid for letting myself get infected.
The fact I am also the postmaster admin to 13,000 users means I get users contacting me in a panic thinking they have a virus because one of the three above things happens to them. This, despite a faq and notices on intranet etc etc that this thing is out there.
Klez is probably the primary reason I am starting to hate Microsoft. It doesn't matter if my computer and all computers I am responsible for are completely patched and that my mail gateway blocks it, I still get to be a victim indirectly, and I doubt we'll ever see the entire planet fully patched.
Microsoft secretly loves Linux because OSS development sucks all the brainpower away from malicious anti-Windows activities and focuses it on innocuous projects that can do them no harm. Why crack Windows when you can get the same peer respect and feeling of civil disobedience by developing for Linux?
I've had DSL for 6 months now, and have been running my computer 24/7 since. In total my logs show less than a dozen attacks in that whole time. When I first got it I got port scanned hourly, but I haven't seen one in the past month that I can recall.
Before I got DSL (and a static IP) I was warned that they usually get a lot of hack attempts. Maybe I'm the exception, or maybe I'm being hacked at such a high-level that my scanners or firewalls haven't caught it.
But overall, running Win2000 the whole time, I haven't had a problem.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
So the megabytes and megabytes of Klez-type spam in my inbox are "little impact"? The fact that even my mother almost infected her machine because the mail seemingly came from one of her friends, in spite of the fact that I told her not to run any attachments, is little impact? ILOVEYOU, Melissa etc. had little impact? Well, if so, I don't want to know what the deep impact is. They must be referring to extinction level events. And you know why we haven't had one of these yet? Because most virus programmers are just kids who want to try something new and not evil "cyberterrorists". Except for the 911 dialing virus, most viruses and worms have not really explored the realm of possibility. To therefore dismiss the risk of security exploits is frivolous, preposterous, stupid, arrogant, ignorant, foolish -- adjectives fail me. Why did this piece of PR crap get linked? And why hasn't Michelle Delio been fired yet for writing it?
Despite the thousands of known exploits and virii...
Public Memo:
Its "viruses", not "virii". Repeating, "viruses".
Did you also get the memo about the TPS report cover sheets?
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
God Bless American AntiVirus companies and their Anti-Terrorist business campaign!
You could be transmitting your IP address right now for hackers to lock-in on! Buy some protection for you and your loved ones before they wipe out your hidden porn collection!
--
Power to the Peaceful
Do we doubt that there are malicious, destructive and/or idiotic people out there? Do we doubt that there are enough relatively easy-to-exploit bugs out there that can have amazingly destructive consequences?
While I would love for there to be a more holistic approach to security, as long as the majority software platform (with all of it's variants) is rife with holes and the security repair falls exclusively to the same people who built it bad in the first place, I'll take point-by-point/line-by-line review any day of the week and twice on Tuesday.
http://www.riaa.org/admin/press_and_news.html You can modify or post ANY news on the site now, the front page has GOATSE on it. http://www.riaa.org/ Do your worst :P
Who wants to own a Windows box anyway ? Is there anyway to upgrade it to Linux after you get in ?
What is needed is a remote, unattended install of Linux so the system security can be fixed while giving the cracker something more useful to use. It might even be considered charitable, the new system admin could maintain the system for free and the users might not even notice if you gave them an autologin with a message telling them their kid installed a cool new desktop theme!
One thing that bugs me a bit about this article is that it defines an exploit as a security hole. While this is true, the tone of the article makes it sound worse than it really is.
I mean, think about what an exploit really is: Somebody has taken a feature of Windows and turned it against the user or the user's machine. The problem I see here is that you can't have a totally secure machine and have all those fancy features you like.
I'll give you an example: I use Outlooks's to do list to keep track of my tasks. There's a feature where you can attach shortcuts to each task. I've found this handy, whenever I need to do my time sheet I just pull up the task and double click the shortcut inside of it. Now, in order to 'crack down' on security on my computer, I turned off a bunch of those handy-dandy features and found myself unable to launch that shortcut anymore!
Now, before you start saying "Oh, MS could easily fix that...", instead think about the real problem here. Either I don't use that feature at all, or MS has to think of every single malicious use of a feature and only allow the non-dangerous ones. Sorry, that's not a good solution. You're holding MS (or anybody else) responsible for other people's creativity.
I'm not saying that MS is unfairly given a bad rap for this whole topic. I think their default choices are ill-thought and have caused serious damage. However, it needs to be considered that there is always an inherent risk with any piece of software you use. It's not a matter of security holes, it's a matter of deciding whether or not it's worth the risk.
I, for one, would never underestimate people's creativity. I read about an insurance scam once where this guy got fire insurance for each of his cigars, over $1,000 a piece. Then he smoked them. He took the insurance company to court, and the judge reluctantly ruled that the insurance company had to pay the guy $12,000. Fortunately for the insurance company, though, they were able to charge him with arson. Heh he got a hefty fine ($10,000 ish? I don't remember..) and served jail time.
Now, if you think about this insurance company, you probably wonder why they didn't a policy about cigars or items that were meant to work with fire? Well, it's simple: They never imagined that somebody'd do that. The only way they could be fraud proof is if they were to clearly define the rules for every ridiculous outcome they can think of. Know what'd happen then? There would be people unable to redeem fair claims because their unusual case strayed outside the boundaries that are clearly defined. There would also be that one guy who figures out a creative way to buck the system anyway. The insurance company is far better off coming up with ways to deal with the eventual fraud instead of over-relying on their policies and laws to protect them.
So where does that leave us computer people? Well, it's simple: Using a computer is risky. Take a few risks but protect yourself. Worried about people stealing your credit card info on-line? My answer is not: "well don't use one then!" Instead, my answer is: "Get a credit card with a company that'll protect you in that event." Worried about data loss? Make backups once in a while. Worried about hackers breaking in on your always on connection? Use a firewall, but use common sense too. A firewall is the equivalent of shutting a few windows, it's not a structural reinforcement.
Total security is a pipe dream. Instead of blaming Microsoft, take some sensible precautions to minimize the damage done. The benefit here is that you protect yourself from damage that can happen outside of the exploit world. (Lightning strikes, hardware failure, children...)
Nobody who is serious about threatening computer security is after home users. They have more to worry about ad/spy ware than viruses. There are 4 things any home user can do to avoid all viruses/trojans. In order of effectiveness
1. Don't download e-mail attatchments. Avoid attatchments to e-mails entirely if possible, use IM file transfers instead.
2. Don't use Outlook.
3. Don't visit untrustworthy websites. like warezprontrojanforyou.com
4. Use a firewall if you are on a LAN.
Anti-virus software is almost useless for a home user, unless they are incredibly stupid. All it does is interfere with other programs and waste memory. Seriously if you are a home user who the crap wants to crack into your pc? You probably haven't even configured it properly so it can't even have enough uptime to get anything useful from it.
And do hax0rz really want to steal your family photo album? The best they can hope for is your quicken files or your credit card number. They can get thousands of CC#s by cracking a business database better than getting home users through windows holes. Computer security is somethign only business have to worry about.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I think they hit a very high percentage of all windows machines world wide. More is that most people dont know they are infected, how many scriptkiddies you know who have a bunch of subseven boxes ? wonder how they get those....dream on..
but maybe i am wrong lets read the wired article now.
For every person who gets megabytes and megabytes of virus spam and has a mother who gets the same, there are many more Windows users don't have that problem. Both I, my mother, and Michelle Delio live on that planet.
It's true for the script-kiddies who run these attacks too you know.
They'll get around to it.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
A lot of the potential exploits would fall at the first two hurdles above. For instance, by setting Outlook (Express) to use the Restricted Zone, you've already plugged several holes.
This is not to excuse Microsoft for creating the holes in the first place. Particularly odious are those related to allowing scripting to be performed in places where it makes no sense whatsoever, eg. Windows Media files. That is not a case of sloppy coding, that is bad design from the get-go.
Sad to say, even if Microsoft fixed all the outstanding holes tomorrow, you will still need to have a firewall and anti-virus software, because the malware will continue regardless, until such time as we all move to a platform that is secure by design. (And, no, in truth that platform doesn't exist yet)
-MT.
They could care less what you have on your machine. They only care that it IS a machine connected to the Net. They can use it to attack other people, use it as a safe exchange point for warez/porn (especially illegal stuff like kiddie porn). They can run IRC bots on it. They use them as 'currency' to trade for more desirable things like the latest exploit scripts, etc. All script kiddies strive to maintain a stable of zombies to be used as needed.
Democrat delenda est
Likewise, every remote root exploit makes it technically possible for this to happen. Even if relatively few people are being hacked by script kiddies today, that says nothing about the odds of a highly skilled attacker pulling off a single massively devestating attack.
This report is no reason for complacency.
If you cut off the vector, the virus won't survive.
.zip, txt, gif or jpg.
We've got the Exchange server punting any attachments that don't end in
We've got parts of the workstation's registries locked out from normal user modification, and Trend Officescan is installed on all worstations and automatically updated from the server.
We've got an agressive firewall policy. (e.g. no tftp from funny locations.)
We haven't had ANY recient virus attacks. Short of having someone brnig something minor in on a floppy, virus attacks just haven't happened. I don't think we'll see many more as time goes on as all of the easy vectors have been plugged.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
We had a security exposure, we didn't "patch" it - does that mean it wasn't dangerous that we left the doors open? No, it just meant we hadn't been ripped off yet.
No shit, it's illegal to exploit a hole.
Most unlocked doors and windows don't result in a burglary, either, but for everyone to ignore the issue is a bad idea when there are bad guys running around out there who can just walk in at will.
Of course most vulnerabilities don't get exploited, it's just a matter of volume.
Most companies were taken off guard by several of the major viruses and worms over the past 4-5 years. ILoveYou, Nimda, CodeRed, etc. But after each major hit things were done not just reactively, but also proactively.
Virus scan engines were updated, email servers had attachment blocking filters installed, patches were installed, etc.
There has been a slew of updates made available to applications like Outloook, Outlook Express, IIS and so forth which disable many of the features that these exploits took advantage of. The Outlook 2k security update, default permissions in OE 6.0, IIS Lockdown wizard, URLScan, etc.
Then you have a whole slew of administrative utilities such as HFNetChk from Microsoft/Shavlik to test systems for patches and various tools(HFNetChk Pro) to do reports on large numbers of machines and push out patches.
I do agree that the security finders tend to overstate the impact, but it's still important to react to the issues. The conclusion that wired really should be making is that we've learned lessons and learned how to better prepare and respond. That's why their are fewer major problems.
Users haven't been hard hit by Internet vandalism. Even online identity theft--while a serious problem, only affects a small minority of the population.
A security concern is a hole in your system that allows attacks.
A security problem is an attack that actually affects you in a deletorius way. And frankly, the majority of people haven't had a security problem. And the number of people who simply took minimum precautions (updates, not running strange code) and had a security problem is vanishingly small.
So, no, the hassle of Linux (as compared to the minimum precautions approach) is not worth it for most individuals.
And frankly, Microsoft is now light-years ahead of Linux on security concerns for one simple reason. Microsoft boxes update simply and automatically out of the box.
No Linux distribution matches that ease. And frankly, the majority of computer users are, and always will be, uninformed about their machines. Microsoft is manufacturing systems that are relatively harmless in the hands of an idiot. Linux is not. That is a security hole, and it will remain a hole because the Linux community has never been especially responsive to the needs of the computer-illiterates.
Hmm.
*checking mail logs*
According to my mail server's logs, I have gotten FORTY virus/worm-infected emails since midnight.
No effect on home users? Someone hit this guy with a cluebat.
Just my $.02...
Have almost no offect on home users? Funny, I just got a call from a friend this morning - her system had just been infected by a virus (likely Klez), and it was able to both disable Norton Antivirus AND exploit her Outlook Express address book. If a removal tool doesn't work, she'll likely have to reformat her system.
I'd say Windows security vulnerabilities have a significant impact on home users, how about you?
So I guess under this logic it would be perfectly fine to install doors and windows in your house with no locks at all because your neighborhood doesn't have home break-ins or invasions?
Your wrong, home users do have something that is worth stealing, bandwidth anonymouty.
Currently hackers use exploited/infected machines to abuse their bandwidth, and remain anonymous. The bandwidth is used for ddos attacks, you would be surprised what 500 infected cable customers machines can do to almost any network, regardless of its size.
There are also trojans that run as proxy servers and mail relays, to be abused by spammers to send mail and annoying messenger spam out, since it always looks like it came from an infected machine, and there are never logs on said infected machine.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
This is the sort of crappy reasoning that states that since most people don't get wacked by the Mob, the Mob doesn't mean much. In NYC for years everyone payed a 1 percent Mob tax. That was the amount prices were inflated to cover corprate losses to the Mob. If you wanted to build a building the cement was controlled by the Mob. Then you had, and have, labor rackettes.
If a company is hacked and blackmailed they often don't report it. But the cost is passed along to the consumer.
The biggest hole is the end user. Tight network security means nothing if the end user can run a trojanized screensaver sent to him by email or downloaded from Joe Blow's Web Emporium and infect his own machine.
And I have heard claims that as many as 90% of security breaches go undetected. Think about it. How many of even you Linux users actually run tripwire on your personal system? What percentage of people do you think even check the md5sum against their downloads before compiling as root? It is small I guarantee. I once posted the wrong md5sum for a release of an open source project and it was downloaded hundreds of times without anyone saying anything.
Another reason they go undetected is that many trojans are customized. If you were going to plant a keystroke logger on a target's computer would you use one that is found by McAfee antivirus? No. You'd compile your own; changing the signature, different size, different port, different protocol, and only use that particular version in that one instance.
Of the breaches that are detected, many are not reported. What bank or online retailer wants people to know that their personal data was stolen? So just because there hasn't been a Code Red lately doesn't mean all is well.
Waaaaay back in 1997, there was a problem with a version of Lasso (a 3rd-party database-access CGI) that could be exploited. I believe it was discovered during a 'hack this Mac web server and get $10,000' sort of contest-- it was so long ago, I don't really remember the details, but it has been done. This hole was closed very quickly with an update to Lasso.
People just using the web service built into the Mac OS, however, have never had anything to fear. Unlike IIS, Personal Web Sharing and the AppleShare IP Web Service were always airtight.
~Philly
Given the large number of exploits that have rained upon us in recent years a hacker can pretty much choose the one he see as suitable and efficient for his purpose. The holes is there to use and just because no one has made a virus exploiting them doesnt mean that hackers doesnt use them.
Come to think about it, how could the hacker community have exploited every hole and still have had time to hack things? Maybe that is the answer? Give the hackers so many holes that they are occupied writing exploits for them. That way they dont have time using them.
HTTP/1.1 400
1. Sure they do. Diskspace and bandwidth. I know several people who've gotten their DSL turned off because they were suddenly, unbeknownst to them, running piracy sites (and they should be thanking some higher power they werent suddenly running a kiddie pr0n site or something and getting thrown in jail as well).
Saying you dont need security because there's nothing to steal is naive. Getting private documents stolen is the least damaging thing you can get done to you if you get hacked. Getting indicted for copyright violations or kiddie pr0n is far more likely and far far worse.
Huh?
Don't you mean that hijackers have traditionally had little problem with the US airline industry?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
They pointed out the real problems, like KLEZ. But that wasn't the point. The point was that out of the thousands and thousands of supposed security holes very few are ever exploited. They said nothing of the destructive power of the holes that were exploited.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Some of the holes in IE allow to install arbitrary code on a machine which visits a malicious website. This has been used very widely here to waylay modem users. The website clandestinely installs a dialer program and sets is as default internet connection. The new number is of course a very expensive 0190 pay number and depending on how soon the user notices, this can easily cost a few thousand euros. There is currently no viable defense: if your computer dials the number, then you have to pay (a new law is being considered, though). Since all phone bills are collected by a central instance (German Telekom) refusing to pay is not an option, because they will simply cut your telephone line.
People who run antivirus software and keep it up to date are almost completely immune to this nonsense. And it's not like they haven't been warned; anyone who thinks about this knows. Almost everything out there that's prevelant in the wild was patched by MS or put in everyone's virus definitions long ago.
Here's the virus count for my gateway since July 4 of this year:
717 WORM_KLEZ.H
120 WORM_SIRCAM.A
45 WORM_YAHA.E
11 PE_NIMDA.E
6 WORM_BUGBEAR.A
2 WORM_HYBRIS.B
1 JS_NIMDA.A
1 WORM_HYBRIS.C
1 WORM_KLEZ.E
This is the 3rd article (yes I am sure there are many more) I have read this year telling me how little attacks and infections are actually occurring. The media only wants to report the big ones like LoveLetter or Code-Red. If it doesn't effect 10 million systems and it can't really be that bad can it?
I am a security professional. I teach many security course including antivirus administration. I have done trainings for companies with 100,000s of desktops that have full time staff dedicated to the irradication of viri. According to this article these people are wasting their time because it isn't a problem. But when I walk in and have a room full of enterprise level employees all there to learn about how to manage (not clean mind you) viri then I know there is a problem. No company is going to spend money when they don't have to. I would suggest that all these authors go read up on some basics of risk management.
We haven't had a fire in my building in over 30 years. Why do we keep wasting money on sprinkler systems?
Thanks to the 1990s and the popularity of on line services the Internet has grown by leaps and bounds it would have never seen if only government and academia were using the resource.
We have companies all over the place marketing how easy it is to use computers and connect to the "WEB"
We now have a lot of people on the network that have no idea what they are doing on their own computer(well they do know how to look at porn pictures and download their AOL spam) basically the majority of Internet users are morons.
Couple this with stores like BestBuy, Circuit City, and and CompUSA selling things like broadband services and wireless networking pieces to people Who have no idea what going on and we have a problem. These people don't update their Windows for security. Microsoft can release all the services packs in the world but it will have no effect. People still think that personal computers are like their home DVD players, once it's out of the box and working you don't have to do anything else to it.
Do some war driving of your own and see how many home networks are completely open. What happens when someone with any intelligence starts using these open points to threaten the political leaders? What about all the DdoS attacks that can be started from these insecure points?
I think that your situation shows how we all should PGP sign all our emails...
;-)
Being part of a mailing list, I too have had virus messages sent to people with my name (incorrectly) forged in the FROM field. I was very angry indeed. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to research into using PGP, but it'll be on my New Years list
$cat
Is that this doesn't seem to be a hack on the system (that may exist too). The problem is in bad programming. This link (if it's still there) was the main problem, as it was the tool to post news/press releases, and had no authentication. Direct link and you could control what went on there. There might have been other weakness' but that's the one I heard of. Now the funny part is, just before the site went down, somebody caused it to redirect to the infamous goatse.cx, and as a friend noted. when goatse.cx goes up, the owning is complete
Windows Security Holes Go Mostly Unexploited
Well let's get to work!
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
After running up2date on my Redhat box I surfed on over to Slashdot and found a post about a Wired article on the rarity of exploits for Windows security bugs. Intrigued, I clicked through only to find that the linked article was about the exploitation of software bugs in general and only casually mentioned Windows in one instance. I'm sure that there must be another article dealing exclusively with Windows since "Windows" is in the title, the submitter mentioned it twice, and he even crafted a Google query on Windows exploits. Can anyone point me to the correct article? Thanks in advance!
this may be a redundant comment..but perhaps people are getting better at designing better rootkits. Not that it is so needed on a Win32 Systems, how many times have you really gone through your process list in Windows 2000?
:P
But the point still stands, perhaps hackers are just getting better at hiding themselves, I have seen a LOT of example code for hiding in a Win32 system, whether it's processes, files, directories, ports, etc...it can be done without too much effort.
just a thought
proxy
Are the security problems less threatening because most hackers are actually peaceful and not interested in destroying other people's property?
I find that hard to believe, especially in the USA where people buy more and more guns although the crime statistics has been going down for years.
Are you leaving your door unlocked because it is not likely someone will try to steal something?
I don't see how this challenges anything. Security bugs need to be fixed ASAP, whether they are exploited or not.
This seems a common sense. I don't think that anyone would be surprised that while the human body is vulerable to many things, most criminals prefer guns and knives. Were all lazy, or efficient depending on your point of view, and usually use the easiest method to acomplish the task at hand, if there is a well known and easily exploited hole, who should the cracker be expected to go find a new and completely different one just to 0wn j00?
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Security flaws in windows have done billions of dollars of damage. Somehow this fact is being astroturfed.
Users don't always know what caused their computers to crash. Even system administrators don't know, sometimes.
yes, it is true that microsoft has alot of security flaws and they get the appropriate amount of flame for it, but the irony is how the open source losers completely ignore all the flaws that are publically addressed regarding their own "kind" get dismissed on grounds of "who cares? its been fixed.", "it's not that significant, its open source!"
Every thing that accesses the keychain at least does.
If Mail has been changed or tampered with, if AIM or ICQ or iChat, etc, etc, it asks me 'should I allow this program access to the keychain'?
Of course I dunno if this is robust or reliable, but it seems to exist.
GPL Deconstructed
antivirus software in the last 20 years of my work. To date, I've probably lost about 3 man months due to antivirus programs interfering with proper and efficient computer operation. I've lost two days to virus attacks. The only viruses that the programs have ever detected on any of my machines were in emails that I would never have opened and even that has only occured a half dozen or so times. When was the last time you read an article about the threat of viruses that was written by someone without a vested interest in your fear?
Oh, sure. Tell that to all of the people that called me for help in getting rid of Klez.
"People are writing me, telling me that I have a virus. My Outlook keeps popping up weird messages, and things that I'm not sending keep leaving my Outlook. My Internet connection is slow!"
Every Windows user and their mom had Klez, and I had to deal with it. Speak for yourself.
At work we have to disable some users accounts on the wireless data networks who have viruses. They consume too much bandwidth, resource hogs. We run reports, and every day anyone who displays virus/trojan behavior, we shut them off.
We can tell from the users profile if its a p2p network program, or a virus, viruses dont portscan your entire network, or spam your smtp servers.
Many users have found things such as back orafice, or other remote programs. Lucky its easier to watch for this when you own the entire network, for an ISP, it would be much harder.
YMMV.
I notice how the article failed to note that, in 2002, there were more Linux/Unix explots than in MS operating systems by a margin of 2 to 1.
Dolemite
Save the World! Use a Quote!
My lab used to have an unprotected DSL with out-of-the-box RedHat 6.x and unprotected Win95 boxes on it that we used for testing things. As far as I could tell, nobody ever successfully hacked the Windows box, and when I was running ZoneAlarm, it'd detect a lot of doorknockers but no real attack - No surprise, because we had file-system sharing turned off, a relatively obscure freeware web server, no Napster/Kazaa/Gnutella/Morpheus/etc., and not much else useful on it except clients so not much to crack.
But the main Linux box got broken into all the time - I eventually changed its name to "Kenny" because it was getting brutally killed every week. As far as I could tell, nobody seriously bothered it once I upgraded to RH 7.1 in a medium-secure mode (I didn't install FTP servers, for instance, and Apache didn't have any web pages complex enough to be exploited), but by then I wasn't doing much complex, and I'd replaced the highly reliable Pentium-66 with an faster el-cheapo machine that often died on its own so it wasn't available to crackers.
The most common attacks I was aware of were some rootkit followed by installing Staecheldraht DDOS and some IRC bots. (And after I'd wiped out Staecheldraht a couple of times, the loser got annoyed and wiped out my disk drive once.) I noticed the initial attack because one of Kenny's P66 cousins was used to run a tcpdump sniffer to monitor the LAN and it kept doing ICMP to machines at universities. At least one of the rootkits "fixed" ls and ps to not report on its directories and processes, but forgot about some other utilities like /proc, and forgot about semantics problems like
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Despite the thousands of known exploits and virii, most MS users aren't target of much harm
3 words... no shit sherlock. Despitesthe incredible stupidity of claims that klez is ineffective, I'd have to say the reason that thousands of different virii/exploits/etc aren't being used is because the existing ones work very well to nail a large range of people. If 2% of the exploits hit such a large audience of say 100000+ people, why bother trying to hack up new methods.
Once a given method begins to be less effective, then the hackers/etc can move onto something more effective.
It's like having a changeroom with 1000 peepholes. Why do you need 998 of them when the one or two in the corner are showing you all you need to see?
Even processors (like Intel CPUs) have a form of firmware (microcode), but this is usually updated on boot by the bios or OS (think Linux) and not stored on the CPU itself.
As far as I'm aware there is no hardware which implements authentication of the firmware upgrade, the hardware would happily accept garbage. Reflashing a bios / firmware filled with garbage can also be a major task - not all motherboards have a jumper for reseting the bios, and I'm not sure how you would upgrade the bios of a pci card if it didn't show up as a valid card. Besides, just try to find the correct bios / firmware for your "made in mainland china with just a serial number on the circuit board" thingy if the board doesn't even boot.
If you're interested in a discussion of this google for "disk2brick", that should find the long and bitter flamewar on the linux-kernel list on the topic of "how to destroy eide disks using undocumented eide commands".
Oh, and imho - the reason virus makers aren't exploiting this (except for overwriting the bios of some intel motherboards) is that most of them are bored teenagers talking about "virii". If someone with a clue and resources enough to test various hardware put their mind(s) to it I'm sure something could be made that messed up much of the common hardware today - enough that fixing it might cost more than replacing the hardware itself.
Combine that with, say, the bugs in the MS network stacks that MS has admited to existing, and you have the potential of creating a lot of damage in a suprisingly short time.
But of course, that won't happen with the US govermnent becoming the Internet Police soon.. (Ok, so that last sentence was flamebait, sorry
On top of that, I have another point to make: most virii aren't so complexe that they are 'Security aware'... hence, most virii will simply fail if not running as Administrator... you draw your conclusions.
The parent poster was probably the target of some stupid flame wars containing vbs scripts back at his university campus. And his insecure Win9x box got destroyed to smitherines...
Or maybe not =)...
Something you're missing is that he's not referring to Mac OS X, but to "classic" Mac OS (9.2.2 and lower). All the standard buffer overflow problems are irrelevant on Mac OS classic because the vast majority of apps (and the OS itself) don't use the "standard" libs used everywhere else.
A buffer overflow in zlib means nothing... there was no OS-standard compression library until OS 8.5, and that didn't use anything zlib related (MacBinary+BinHex).
A BSD TCP/IP stack problem is irrelevent as well. Classic Mac OS used a STREAMS-based stack that was then heavily modified. Much better (according to SustWorks.com) and immune to BSD security holes.
Although I appreciate the engineering effort that went into Mac OS X, the classic Mac OS environment still has some signinficant things going for it, some of which were listed in this parent's parent (which isn't Flamebait =( ).
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
And pointing out outlook as being one of Moft's flagship bug sources is just plain stupid. Both for the partisans of Moft, and the opposition.
It's a wired article, do people really expect them to have accurate journalism? If I wanted that, I'd go here.
This sig no verb.
One of the things that annoys me the most is the number of reported holes that are caused by buffer overflows. There's simply no excuse for them this decade! If you don't have a good enough quality control process to test for them all, and MS doesn't, you shouldn't let your people write code in C! Don't get me wrong - I really *like* C, and I've been using it for over 20 years. It's a great language for a lot of things, including compact, efficient, clean, obvious code, and it does let you shoot yourself in the foot. But if you can't keep your people from shooting, and can't tell where the holes are, and can't tell whether all your feet are intact, it's not the language for you. And if you want to use C++ or C-- or C-sharp or C-dull, and you don't enforce the use of safe I/O and copying methods, don't do that either. (By the way, this rant applies to Linux as well.)
Esther Dyson has her signature-line about "Always make new mistakes". Buffer overflows and testing for maliciously formatted input aren't new mistakes, folks! They're CS100 material, the first thing you should be learning after you learn how to do arrays and input functions. (And I learned my programming in PL/I, an language that won't let you overflow buffers.) At least make the bugs interesting, like race conditions or something! Accepting input that abuses ..s in directory paths when they shouldn't be there isn't a new mistake, and it's one of the most common bug reports I see that aren't memory-related.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Security is, and never will, be perfect but it does make it harder for an intruder to pull something off. Florida in the late '70s probably had the most stringent security of any airports in the states (lots of cuban hijackers wanting to go home, etc.). Nontheless, I was able to walk all over their security systems before I made the mistake of tellling someone what I'd just done (asking for help, I was).
It's not that most home users aren't affected by viruses, it's that most home users don't notic when they're infected. Most home users don't have the money to pay for someone who can watch their network on an ongoing basis for signs of intrusion. Even fewer are geekheads like me who can look at the blinking lights on my hub, go 'where did that traffic come from' and then load up ethereal and/or go through my firewall logs (firewall? what fireall) to figure out if what happened was really benign.
Even businesses -- One place that I do occasional work (the only Unix-head in a sea of Windows) didn't know that they were infected until I noticed way too much traffic for the time of day and started up ethereal. I told their admin, he plugged the holes, and a little while later I found more signs of exploitation on their net. The last time I told their Windows admin about a problem, he had given up trying to secure their boxes. Spammers are still using their proxy boxes to deliver email but most majour services (except Hotmail!) are refusing their connection, now.
If Al Quaida was using the thousands of 'benign' Windows exploits to setup a distributed meltdown of the internet, we wouldn't know it untill after the pieces fell down. They spent 4 years setting up September 11. How much damage could they do with 4 years worth of Windows exploits?
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Isn't this kind of like saying, "Small Countries go Mosly Uninvaded" or "Girls Alone walk Mostly Unharmed"? The reason everyone gets worked up about these things is because of how bad a single incident can be.
"big guns such as Klez have had almost no effect on home users"
Bull!
I work at a PC shop, and at least lately, not a day goes by that I'm not cleaning Klez off a customer's PC. About half the time there's little damage.. But on a 98 box, well--I'm sure you all know how fragile they are.
Almost no effect? I think not!
Please tell me you are being sarcastic, if not then...
Seriously do you actually know what you are talking about? Are you seriously saying that Unix ( a hugely broad spectrum of OS's by the way) is not at least more secure than Windows? And as for the Windows Reporting, gack.
Funnily enough I would hire a security expert for their bug hunting ability.
Yes, but for the very same reason there is no need to act as if every possible exploit will bring about World War III. Often times Microsoft is placed under a microscope when it comes to security and the smallest mountains are made into mountains that dwarf Everest. I read the security notices and the series of events that must occur for most of these exploits to be effective are so remote to be near impossible to happen.
I turned off the intrusion alarm long ago becaus it popped off so often that I couldn't get anything else done.
Why would anyone want to run an exploit on my box? Ask the people who sent me Klez or have been running portscans or trying to get into port 137.
Tech Public Policy stuff
You mean thousands of slashdot articles have nothing to do with anything?
Who cares if most security holes are not *remotely* exploitable? It only takes one. Once I have access to your system, I can use all the others to elevate privilage.
Oh wait-- Windows 9x doesn't have a concept of permissions or privilage...
My point is-- weakest link principle: all it takes is one particularly bad hole and all the systems are easily compromised. Windows 9x security was way too brittle. Nt is better, but again, locally exploitable holes should might enable privilage elevation, thus making the security more brittle.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
This is a definate possibility. Think virus that overwrites the firmware of CDRW drive, waits until a burn is attempted to a recordable disk, writes a bootable image to the disk, reboots the system, when cd boots it deletes itself from the harddrive then automatically reflashes the bios and IDE HDDs, and Video firmware with junk. Then passes boot to the first sector of the harddrive. Or just shutsdown the system. There are plenty of points of failure here (for the attack), but they involve user interaction and most users won't know what's happening and therefore won't react in time.
The best anti-virus software can not stop a user from downloading that damn Bonzi-buddy. That crap software has caused more problems for my clients than any so-called virus.
-ted
"Now, what was your point? That M$ is insecure because it has so many "features"? Get real."
You blew it. Pull your head out of your ass and actually listen to what I said.
Man, you anti-MS zealots never give up. "We're not going to listen to the guy who has to maintain 20 or so Win2k machines running Office 2000/XP, no no no they did stuff in the past and that's all we need to be righteous."
Grow up.
"I find it amusing that after you have several pies in your face, for being lazy, tried a face save by saying that there are already pies in your face."
For being lazy? I read that in the newspaper. (Thanks Oregonian) I think I know what happened, they run a 'humor' blurb in the comics section called the 'The Edge'. I probably read it there and forgot where I got the story from.
As for saving face: I was wrong. BFD. Not like I'm sitting here saying "no no no, I swear it was true!" Heh. So yeah, it gets annoying when everybody and their mother thinks they're the first to tell me I was wrong.
I'm a 2 bit sysadmin for a small company and both klez and bugbear have managed to get through to various users, even though they had updated virus scanners. My boss' love of porno sites and porno mailing lists is a big boon for spyware on our systems.
The article is ludicrous because the real threat with exploits is to commercial systems, and I'm thankful that my bank uses a Sun JVM Java client (despite Java's crappiness, it is still the only language which has security in it's design) and hasn't fallen for MS Passport. When and if they do I'm changing banks.
In Sudan there are about 2 millions landmines remaining, and there are more than 700,000 landmines victims since WWII.
"The average citizens wouldn't know a hack if it walked up and bit them," Sweeney said. "And many of the so-called landmines require a very specific event to occur and the odds are very slim that it will occur. "
Idiot. People care about the security problems is like Sudan's citizens care about landmines problems. The fact that majority of them are not victims doesn't mean it's safe out there.
There is no such URL. There is a pctuneupkit.org. .org HLD it sounds like a commercial product.
In spite of the
In fact it sounds fishy -- too good to be true. The amazing tune up is accomplished "without loading any software, or changing any of your computer's settings."
Hartman - Jesus H. Christ! Private Pyle, why is your footlocker unlocked?
Pyle - Sir, I don't know, sir!
Hartman - Private Pyle, if there is one thing in this world that I hate, it is an unlocked footlocker! You know that, don't you?
Pyle - Sir, yes, sir!
Hartman - If it wasn't for dickheads like you, there wouldn't be any thievery in this world, would there?
Pyle - Sir, no, sir!
This is one of those situations where you really HATE to bail out negligent, shortsighted companies. While these airlines are somewhat criticial to our economy, it would be nice if the airlines could be saved while royally reaming the previous owners.
This sort of crap has always been foreseeable. That's why El Al puts a solidly locked door between the flight deck and the passengers.
American airline companies were overly cheap and complacent. They ignored security issues for decades while people continually "hacked" them. Finally, these "merely annoying" hacks mutated into something dreadful.
Computing will eventually have it's 9-11. It will take serious loss of life for other American companies to take security seriously.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
A few days ago, I found myself defending my choice of alternative software to a semi-computer literate person. I use Windows, but never MSIE or Outlook Express for example, because I've found software which better covers my needs.
I was asked why I preferred this software, and among things like features, usability etc., I of course had to touch the subject of security. He got quite aggressive (yes, aggressive, like "why the f*** do you people think you are better than others for using alternative software?"), asking why I even bothered to use alternative software when it all came with Windows already and worked "perfectly". Well, I said that it didn't work "perfectly" for me, and most people should look for alternatives because of the many security problems.
His retort was basically that he didn't care. He simply didn't give a damn, because he had not experienced any problems.
He said that he scanned his system once and found 60-70 different viruses, but it didn't bother him at all because he didn't notice them.
I tried to explain that it might do damage behind his back, and it will certainly cause problems for others if he spreads viruses like Klez and other similar ones. Again, he didn't care. Why should he bother with other people's problems when he didn't have any himself?
I am not joking here, this guy just didn't give a damn. And in addition, he started ranting about how users of alternative software/operating systems all did so just to prove that they are better than others. And the problems caused by viruses is overrated and I was full of crap. (Let's see how many sysadmins agree with him on that...) He didn't even believe me when I told him that, no, my choice of software is based on what I prefer to use - what I find to be good software, and it is not an attempt to be "cool".
He is not the only one with that attitude.
So I find myself thinking that it is too bad that viruses and backdoors aren't more destructive to regular users. No, I know it's not very politically correct, but when they know that they cause problems for others and simply don't care because they don't notice it, I feel that they need to be faced with the realities of being connected to a network where your actions might affect others.
They need a wakeup call. The "I don't care because it doesn't to affect me" attitude is dangerous.
I was so offended by this person that I simply left - I couldn't even be bothered to try and set him straight because he had already labeled me as an elitist asshole, and anything I said would just prove to him that I was.
The only thing that helps get the point across seems to be massive destruction, showing that not giving a damn is a bad idea...
Clever signature text goes here.
I know I'm replying long after the fact, and to an AC no less, but I'm going to vent. In response to this:
They don't want to know how a computer or a network works, they just want to be on the "web" and "surf" and read emails. It takes most of their brainpower to do that, much less have the knowledge to know if they've been *hacked*.
Wrong, jackass. Repeat after me:
They do not give a shit.
Most of these people who you think are stupid, and feel *so* superior to you just could not give less of a rats ass about your tiny, self-contained, computer based existance. They want to write a letter, look something up, and THEN, get ready for this:
Go do something else.
Not diddle with their fucking computer all day long. I doubt you can put a kit car together, but I bet you fucking *drive*, right?
So get a fucking grip, okay?