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Stop Christmas-Gift PCs From Feeding Worms
An Anonymous Reader writes "If you recently set up a new PC with Windows XP,
or if you had the pleasure to do a 'reinstall from scratch,' you probably found that many XP systems as they are shipped today are not patched against common issues like Blaster. Given that these worms are still going strong, it doesn't take long for a new system to be infected. In particular, if you have to connect it to the Internet to download all the patches.
Well, help is in sight. The SANS Institute released a paper entitled Windows XP: Surviving the First Day." (Read on below.) Update: 12/24 17:59 GMT by T : Thanks for reader Bill Curnow for the updated link. Update: 12/24 19:15 GMT by T : Besides the workaround suggested below, Roblimo has a good suggestion on avoiding the first-day-of-Windows altogether.
"With many screen shots, it will walk you through the procedure to enable the XP firewall and downloading the patches without getting infected while doing so. This could be the (free) stocking stuffer that may save Christmas for your folks ;-). Given that its probably to late now to start downloading your favorite Linux distro."
But if you do have the time and bandwidth, and you're stuck on Windows, a nice live-CD distro like Knoppix or Mepis means you can download patches without racing the worms, and install your patches while offline. (And if you have time to download 50MB, you have time to grab Damn Small Linux.)
People should return non-patched systems that are shipped from the manufacturer, and return systems where the install CDs don't put them to the same patch level they are shipped with.
while this isn't a cure-all solution to the patch mania that is necessary, but will go a long way to help bring up the baseline security of all these end-user hosts on the internet.
Try first ten minutes.
Due to some oddities in the purchasing orders for new hardware this year, it ended up that some of us unix guys were tasked with hauling new windows boxes around the workplace for people. We weren't expected to set them up, just unpack, plug em in, and turn em on. Ignorant of how vulnerable windows boxen are, we did just that, doing the silly clicky crap that any OEM relase makes you do, and walked off.
Within ten minutes, the traffic sniffers the security team has up were getting alarms caused by the machines we had set up and their ports got blackholed in about 15 minutes. One of the machines was already being used as a spam relay, the rest all had whatever viruses are still floating around.
Was quite an eye opener, I'd thought those viruses were over and done with and weren't a cause for concern anymore. Made me wonder how much bandwidth is being wasted that we don't even acknowledge. Spam is easy because it generates email.. but there's this underlying background noise sucking up bandwidth that you don't even see.
Course us "unix guys" had a good laugh over it, patting ourselves on the back in true bigot fashion over how secure unices are. But later that afternoon the nfs server that serves our home directories puked it's guts up so it put us in our place pretty quick.
No, the proper technique is called a "reach around". You reach around behind the box, unplug the network cable or phone line (I caught a worm over dialup once, that was the most hilarious thing ever), and consider yourself lucky.
I recentally had to install xp from scratch (because my roomate downloaded some virus). After I get xp running again, and get all my programs installed again. I went and bought Nortin Anti-Virus. After the first scan a few hours after I re-insalled everything I already had the blaster worm and some other type of worm! I guess that is what I get for not installing the patches the moment I install xp...
I do DSL tech support for a large telco with a three letter name starting with "S" and ending with "C" and I have to bite my lip every time these poor, dumb people call in connecting their brand new Dells and Compaqs to the DSL with no firewall and not a clue as to what Windows Update is and why they need it. The reason I bite my lip is that Windows Update and firewalls are outside my scope of support and I was already told by my team lead not to waste time helping people with that stuff. Even worse, offical training tells us to leave the Windows firewall off when configuring a PPPoE connection - I am not making that up!
It's sad and irresponsible to let these people wander onto the Internet with their unprotected Windows computers like dogs wandering onto the freeway.