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WindowsUpdate.com Secured, Permanently
Precisely nineteen months ago, Bill Gates sent out a
memo
to employees (and the press) announcing that security was Microsoft's
number-one priority.
Today, about a hundred readers have submitted the
news that Microsoft.com
went down last night.
And now, the company has
"extinguished" WindowsUpdate.com
(future updates will come from a
different domain).
All this because of some Microsoft worm that triggers at midnight. Related news:
Windows Update
says you're protected, but maybe you're not;
WU.com
briefly ran Linux, heh;
worm variant with clever "anatomical term."
So "Permanently Secured" now basically means "Permanently Offline"? Why didn't they just let the worm eat the domain? What's the difference, really? Whether they pull the plug, or the worm does it for them, it still means windowsupdate.com won't work...
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
This is not like those stupid email trojans that are inexcusable because Microsoft intentionally opened the door (with scriptable email, etc.). This is a garden-variety buffer-overflow exploit of the sort that could just as easily still exist somewhere in Linux.
For example, if someone hijacks or otherwise poisons some DNS servers, then all the traffic to windowsupdate.com will make it through to windowsupdate.microsoft.com anyway.
Or, a future worm could be written to target & attack a variety of Microsoft servers.
Or a future fowm could be written in such a way that the target is not part of the worm's code, but rather can be directed remotely somehow. This way, even if Microsoft tries to switch addresses, the person[s] directing the attack can just change the target.
The real solution isn't to keep trying to dodge the bullet.
The solution to become bulletproof.
Even after all this time, Microsoft still doesn't seem to get that.
Part of the reason Microsoft is such a prominent target is of course because it is so, well, prominent. Taking down (say) an FSF server doesn't raise nearly as many headlines (as this week's headlines will attest to). But I don't think that all of the problem here can be traced to how widespread Windows is -- while the Internet's clients are nearly all running Windows, a large fraction of the server architecture is running some Unix variant, and while there is of course some malware that targets *nix (Linux, Solaris, MacOSX, BSD, etc), the results never seem to be as catastrophic as the typical Windows outbreak
To rip of Bruce Schneier's analogy from his security article in Atlantic Monthly a year ago, it seems to me that the what security mechanisms Windows has tend to be brittle, while those that the *nix etc world have tend to be pliable. That is to say, when a problem comes up with (say) Apache, the damage tends to be isolated. This is partly because each installation will be configured differently, with different features enabled or disabled, and partly because the server runs on a variety of systems, each of which may have different mechanisms for providing underlying security protections. On the other hand, IIS installations tend to be pretty homogeneous, and a flaw with one very well could be a flaw with all.
That's not to say that IIS couldn't be just as secure as Apache, if not much more so. But part of Apache (etc)'s strength is it's heterogeneous nature -- people are able to tinker, adapt, mix & match components to suit their needs, and in the process this will also tend to protect them from catastrophic failure. Microsoft has actively resisted this kind of diversity -- witness their howls about having to come up with "thousands of versions of Windows" if some of the firmer antitrust penalties were put into force. Those thousands of permutations are, arguably, exactly what is needed: this will give their users greater choice, and it will make emergencies like this more rare.
I don't get why they're so opposed to the idea.
Maybe they've got cleverer plans than anything I can think of. I certainly wouldn't claim to be any kind of security expert. But if the best they can come up with is a change of address card, I can't help but wonder if they're fumbling in the dark here...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
This strikes me as being a really bad thing:
They're missing a really big flaw, here, which is that this is horribly vulnerable to malicious behavior. There are already plenty of viruses and worms out there that make registry entries for one purpose or another. It seems to me that if you were exploiting a vulnerability for which a patch already existed it would be very easy to automatically modify the registry to make it appear that the patch had already been applied. This would make tracking which systems were vulnerable much, much more difficult. This would work particularly well if you were trying to make a stealth worm.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
I think given Microsoft's position on Linux that they shoud / would have researched the market to see if the service could be provided by a windows shop before signing a deal with akamai. It looks bad ... almost like saying windows isn't up to the task.
No need- end our little war in Iraq and we'll free up the funds needed. I read yesterday that the cost of the war in and occupation of Iraq will cost over $600 billion dollars.
Just close up the operation a little early and divert those funds.
Nah, never happen. Preemptive wars and years-long occupations of nations that are of dubious (at best) threat to US interests are more important than making sure your lights stay on.
"why would i want to help allievate the situation? hell, i get to have all my computers attack microsoft for free! and legally! wohoo! sick 'em!"
I know (think) you're joking, but while we can moan all we want about how Microsoft should design software that's more secure, we can't do anything about existing systems. And windowsupdate was the fastest, easiest way for the non-tech public to protect and repair themselves. Those of you out there that view this impending attack and the shutting down of windowsupdate as a good thing are very shortsighted.
Maybe you don't give a shit about all of those other users out there that use Windows. Maybe you're happy this is happening. Fine. But rest assured, it's not going to cause people to rebel against Microsoft, like many of you are hoping. There will be no enlightenment and mass exodus to Linux or BSD or OSX. This is going to get blaimed on "hackers". And we all know hackers hate God, hate America, root for Saddam, get pentagram tattoos on their foreheads....and use Linux. Pretty soon it'll be "yeah, I saw those Linux guys bragging on slashdot.org that they took windowsupdate down!"
IBM's reps will be going "yeah, thanks heaps for the positive image, slashdotters.........fuckers".
Make fun of people that run Windows all you want, but don't assist in, or support the disabling of one of their few effective means of defense.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I think everybody is missing the point on this whole issue. Fact :- Blaster is a worm, who's payload was intended to dos windowsupdate.com, rendering it unavailable to the folks using it.
Fact :- windowsupdate.com is 100% unavailable.
Conclusion :- Blaster is the most successful virus/trojan to date. It didn't just cause a few hours of unavailability, it wiped the domain from existence. Not just any domain, but a prominent microsoft domain (high profile, big budget website) totally obliterated off the internet.
Folks can say what they want, and argue about the politics of it all, bicker about who is responsible to update what, and whatever, but you cannot deny the facts.
Blaster is head and shoulders above the crowd as a denial of service worm, the first to achieve a 100% success even prior to actually triggering.
Say what you want folks, but this has got to go down in history as the most successful worm ever.