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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!
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
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
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.
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.
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
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...)
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.
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.
Too late, we're already infected.
We'd have to eradicate Microsoft before the KDE, Gnome, and Mono projects finish cloning all of their convenient but insecure features (autorun when someone puts a disk in your CD drive, macros in your documents, Visual Basic scripts in attachments, click and run everything). Trade press folks saying that Linux on the desktop will never succeed until the apps work exactly the same way, when many of the security holes are simply logical consequences of the features as designed.
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.
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...
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
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
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.
thats fine, until they load up a program that does something illegal, and the feds kick down your door, take your computer away and say "Prove it wasn't you"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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
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.
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?
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.
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.