Slashdot Mirror
Exploit Based On Leaked Windows Code Released
mischief writes "A post to Bugtraq from SecurityTracker.com reports an Internet Explorer 5 exploit that has been released based on the Win2K code leak: 'It is reported that a remote user can create a specially crafted bitmap file that, when loaded by IE, will trigger an integer overflow and execute arbitrary code.' Only affects IE 5 apparently, but still - it didn't take long!"
Oops... we just gave MS a chance to say keeping the source secret keeps flaws like this secret as well. :)
Anyway, I took a look, and decided that Microsoft is GAYER THAN AIDS.
When you break the law and possibly expose thousands of users to a root exploit, at least you could be politically correct about.
"GAYER THAN AIDS", what the hell?
I hope they sue him..
More proof that code who's source is open is less secure!
(trigger-fingered mods : thats a joke)
bug-fixes and patches???? When the full force of this hits, you ain't seen nothing yet!
to fix it...
"/Dread"
Of course the bitmap is of a penguin! More ammunition for the M$ FUD campaign.
-m
#
# Modus Ponens
#
What the fuck in a bitmap renderer could overflow and cause such problems?
Fuck MSFT it's called bounds checking. e.g.
1. load int from char array
2. check int against sizeof(yourbuffer)
3. reject if greater
Not exactly a challenging task. I guess they're too busy adding in all that crapware to actually code at least one thing right.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Wouldn't it be interesting to see the patch come out later today, from an anonymous source!
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
So, what is this... like the 10,000 IE security hole reported in the last couple years. Why write another IE virus? Is there really any challenge left?
Evolution or ID?
Just to those that couldn't get access to the source code. Some people with access before may have known about this for a while. Not that we'll ever know.
Microsoft just needs to get a copy of the leaked code and look it over for potential exploits.
:^)
Oh wait.
My old sig was REALLY stoopid.
An exploit this quick? There's going to be some serious happenings going on at Microsoft. Also look for another Longhorn delay sometime due to everything that is found out.
I'm not sure what to think. I'm not happy that when I get back to work this summer, I'm going to spend way too much time fighting these problems/viruses and patching things up. I'm not happy businesses are losing money. I am, however, happy that Microsoft is forced to clean up their act even more, or they are going to lose market share.
Open source isn't 'communistic' -- it's capitalistic. Why? It increases competition.
We have an interesting 6 months ahead of us, folks.
Berto
So I should be all set for the next 2 days until the next major security flaw is found.
Anyone? Come on, there's a million /. readers. Somebody must have thought this wasn't going to happen.
Maybe the once-a-month patching schedule's going to have to be revised though.
Haida Manga
...if the code was open from the start, how long would this flaw have lasted?
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
This means that the exploit is so obvious that even a 14 year old can figure it out.
I guess all those advertising^W software engineering dollars that MS spent on their security inititive were not^W well spent.
And so it starts. How many of these exploits will be found based upon the source? Tons?
Just how bad is the source that a whole lot of exploits like these can be written? I wonder what this means for MSFT.
Can the same thing happen to linux? Or do exploit authors prefer windows?
'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' -HST
Microsoft code must be so ridden with bugs to create a exploit in just a week.
Or maybe it is a ploy by microsoft to force users to upgrade to XP
I for one am truly alarmed and cannot wait for Microsoft to start the repairs; but then again this is good news for MS programmers looking for OT.
It was only 15% of the source code which leaked out, yet it will show MS in the weeks to come just how the Open Source community operates. I forsee them working over time to provide updates to the numerious vulnerabilities which will arise due to the leaked code. This here is just one example. There were some what, 3 million lines of code in the leaked source. It is just a matter of time. Hopefully folks will report the vulnerabilities which they find, opposed to exploiting them.
My Thoughts, Kyndig
They can if the tool you use to open them is ridiculously poorly designed and permits buffer overflow (i.e. IE).
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
bigger than Linux, but there were a lot of people mirroring it and so
it didn't take long.
Anyway, I took a look, and decided that Microsoft is GAYER THAN AIDS
For example, in win2k/private/inet/mshtml/src/site/download/imgbm
offset. Now all we have to do is create a BMP with bfOffBits > 2^31,
and we're in. cbSkip goes negative and the Read call clobbers the
stack with our data.
See attached for proof of concept. index.html has [img src=1.bmp]
where 1.bmp contains bfOffBits=0xEEEEEEEE plus 4k of 0x44332211.
Bring it up in IE5 (tested successfully on Win98) and get
EIP=0x44332211.
IE6 is not vulnerable, so I guess I'll get back to work. My Warhol
worm will have to wait a bit...
PROPS TO the Fort and HAVE IT BE YOU.
If you were to embed myDoom after the overflow area in the bitmap then when outlook opened the file using ie's render could one have my doom that didn't even need to have the end user open the file? It would just execute replicate, then piss people all to hell? For that matter could I include the windows equivalent of rm -rf / ?
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
"In short, there is nothing really surprising in this leak. Microsoft does not steal open-source code. Their older code is flaky, their modern code excellent. Their programmers are skilled and enthusiastic. Problems are generally due to a trade-off of current quality against vast hardware, software and backward compatibility."
But this IE exploit shows that the author was wrong on at least one account:
"The security risks from this code appear to be low. Microsoft do appear to be checking for buffer overruns in the obvious places. The amount of networking code here is small enough for Microsoft to easily check for any vulnerabilities that might be revealed: it's the big applications that pose more of a risk. This code is also nearly four years old: any obvious problems should be patched by now".
-------
Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
My feeling is that, in the context of preventing attacks, it's bad. With linux, discovery almost immediately leads to a fix cos it's the same volunteer community does the finding and the fixing, but Microsoft doesn't let the Bugtraqs of this world help. It's going to buckle under the strain of too many bugs at once.
:)
Of course, from the point of view of converting everyone to Linux, this can only be a good thing
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
You know what MS's solution to all these bugs will be - upgrade to XP...
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
So does that mean that all the users that use outlook could also fall prey to this? Send out spam with image and if the outlook user has auto preview on, which they probably do they now can be exploited by whatever code. That would be an interesting concept that would lead to alot of trouble. Sure IE5 is old...but lots of people still use it.
If you are running Freenet's unstable branch, you can download it from here. Its about 200MB and will take a few hours to download (Freenet is averaging about 30k/sec these days). I grabbed it and it looks like the real thing.
Well it's not really the image file running the commands. It's the browser that is loading the image. The browser reads bad image data and gets overwritten.
It's no hoax.
a specially crafted bitmap file
.jpeg .gif and .tiff
Good thing all thoes Goatse pictures where in
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
No system is 100% secure be it Windows or Linux.
When people have access to the source they can more readily find exploitable mechanisms in your code. This is a GOOD thing because you want to know that your system is exploitable, how it is exploitable, and (which is the case in many open projects) how to prevent that exploit.
Any form of content (not just scripts and ActiveX controls) can be used to exploit a weakness in a system. A security strategy that involves simply filtering content is a weak one.
The open source community can be a powerful friend to any organization willing to take the chance on their code being available to others.
I'm a bit confused.
:p
I mean, I've been doing C for almost 20 years. One of the first lessons I learned --And not for 'security' so much as crash free programs-- was not to do such things.
I mean, holy crap, it's too damn simple to see the bug. What kindof idiots do they have working at MS?
"The Very Best Kind"
"...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
Whether it's finding exploits, bugs or whatever; anything that anyone does with it will eventually make Microsoft stronger. If it's a security problem they 'll fix it. Maybe Microsoft is trying to capture open source developers and their free services; I don't know.
What I don't want to see is Microsoft making improvements on their product based on this experience. I don't want to see as much as two adjacent assembler instructions from it end up in Linux.
If you want to do something constructive, run the 2.6 kernel and start making the supporting software more secure. Don't waste your time supporting losers like Microsoft who demand your money up front and then deliver whatever crap they feel like.
Just ignore it!
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
You laugh, but I won't be the least bit surprised when this very logic finds its way to the receptive ears of less-than-tech-saavy corporate officers...
"Linux? Good god no, man! Didn't you see what happened when just a bit of the Microsoft source code got leaked? I thought you were up on these things!"
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
1. Fake a source code leak of some of the shittiest code in your projects
2. Act surprised
3. Wait for people to look at code and publish found holes, getting free QA resulting in major savings
4. Create Patch before major damages
5. Sue person who found hole
6.
7. Double PROFIT!
</conspiracy theory>
[alk]
Smells like you shoud read some documentation on buffer overflow techinques. Of course image files cannot run commands, but you can do some nice tricks if the program that is loading the file fails to check where the data is loaded. If the data is bigger than the allocated space, you can garble the stack in some funny way and actually craft a picture that gets to be executed (in some parts at least). Of course, doing something other that crashing the process is NOT easy, but...
Is there any better way of Code Review by 'leaking' the source to the outside world. Seems MS likes this open-source model, but they need a back door to get to these benefits.
It would be a bit hard to admit:
"uhh, yes we do embrace open-source, but our business model is to protect our intelectual property", "recently our business model has been adapted to incorporate also the intelectual property of 3rd parties, also known as hackers", "the only way to do this legally is to put the FBI out on those folks what ensures that the code review can be reworded as 'theft' and will face the highest criminal punishment", "you know it's all terrorism and that kind of stuff", "It's terrorism on the American Capitalistic Marketing Model", "And we're going to nuke those hackers",
Probably without the approval of the United Nation
From Yahoo Financial: "For the six months ended 12/31/03, revenues rose 13% to $18.37 billion. Net income rose 7% to $4.16 billion. Results reflect increased demand for both desktop and server products, partially offset by a $1.48 billion stock option transfer charge."
Here's their financial statement.
You may dislike them. Pretending they're not successful is just ignorant. The source leak is a problem for them, but I doubt it'll have any serious repercussions much beyond this quarter.
..that the "many eyes" tenet of open source really DOES work!
i wanted to post this in the first MS leak story, but oh well, here it is now.
/win2k/* | wc -l
$ grep -ir " don't care "
332
check it yourself
It also shows that ms does their job.
.net or you don't programm at all. Its the price you pay for native compiled code and the main reason people are turning their backs on it.
When microsoft declared security as their main goal ie5 was the current browser. ie6 has it fixed so they obviously wen't trough their stuff to fix it.
Its very true that bounds checking errors are very easy to prevent but if you say its sloppy programming to have errors like this in your code you either work in java or
Also known as: Was this fixed long before the fact? Does IE 5.5 contain this same vulnerability?
.5 or any of .5's service packs) that would be vulnerable to this, and are the folks who run 5.5(sp1/sp2?) for some reason still vulnerable?
Sticking with Win2K for a moment, IE5.5 is part of SP4. Office 2K SR-1 or later needs IE5.5. Who is still running IE5(not
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
Burn some Live CDs to hand out to friends,
n ux
family, co-workers. Introduce them to Linux and
warn them of the dangers of LOOKING AT IMAGES
using Internet Explorer 5.0.
There are many good ones*. Personally I fell in
love with the Knoppix 3.4 c't edition with the
2.6 kernel -- using it gave me my first
experience of non-stuttering KDE with heavy
loads, looping MP3s and lots of useable features
(except detecting the Dell Inspiron 5150's on
board WiFi -- not Centrino).
Pick several, spend a few bucks on good CD-R
discs, make a nice label with "do exactly these
steps" instructions on the label.
It's not about world domination, it's about
stopping the theiving cracker spammers from
gaining more zombie Windows boxes to do their
bidding and ruin the Internet for the rest of us.
* start here:
http://www.google.com/search?q=live+cds+li
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
a)The jpeg virus "hoax" was down to IE interpretting a jpeg as a VBS file. That's perfectly normal - if you name a shell script "harmless_image.jpeg", provided the shell sees the #!/usr/bin/shell line, then it's going to see a script and execute it as such.
b)You wouldn't think that an overly long PASS string sent to an ftp server would be able to execute commands - but it can. If you can overflow a buffer and force it to work it's way back up the stack then you could convince mouse gestures to execute commands.
I see this is good news in that there is going to be an ongoing stream of exploits in Windows. This is good news. Think of all of the boxes that will be broken in the next few months. I should mention that I make a living fixing Windows boxes. I also fix Mac and Linux - but there isn't really much money in fixing them.
Stay tuned for new sig...
There seems to be an average of at least 1 attack a month on an enemy of open source so far (SCO/MyDoom, M$/source leak). So needless to say, who's next?
Maybe there is finally a chance to fix the pending CSS issues which havent been fixed for years in IE, externally. Ah yes and PNG transparency might also be possible now :-)
Wow now we get a peak at the much coveted MS source code, that BSODS all day, has a new virus attacking it every week, and generally frustrates users.
I wonder who will be the first to incorporate this leaked source. Judging by the exploit found, it's no wonder they want to keep the code secret.
"Bill Gates can't gaurante Windows to work. How can you gaurante me that?" John Crichton
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
The image file ISN'T running a command. I'm not claiming that I understand the code or what specifically triggers the problem [negative offsets or something], but there is something special about the bitmap image that causes the rendering program to break in such a way that data in the image can be copied into memory and then executed.
Images are just data and everyone agrees with that, but you can display source code [C, perl whatever] as a bitmap file if you really want to, in numerous ways. Won't look like much, but you can't deny that the code is now a picture. Why can't a picture be formatted in such a way as to be interpreted as code.
The problem here is the renderer [have I mentioned that already], not the picture.
I cant wait to read a whole thread of slashdot people saying "i told you so".
However, i feel bad for the "slashdot team" of the microsoft PR department. I doubt those guys will have presidents day off. They might even have to pay extra for an additional delivery of "bulk mod points".
That's all I was hoping to see. MS says that it reponse time for bugs is lower then OpenSource reponse time.
Now we have a released bug, and I want to see how long will it take until MS fixes this bug.
Somebody, please, monitor this bug (or teach me how to monitor it)
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
Did you hear about the image that kills your computer whenever you view it?
As a kernel developer I'm familiar with the number of people who audit stuff put into the Linux kernel. To get a patch approved, you usually need to convince 4 or 5 people that your patch is a good idea. You could get away with 1 (Linus), but the top people are unlikely to consider your patch if it hasn't been approved by their chain of command first. All of those people examine it for functionality, stability and security. The higher level ones usually won't look at it very closely, but I imagine core kernel code gets a lot more attention than device drivers.
You also post it to the LKML. That has a lot of eyeballs, but most of them aren't familiar with kernel internals and don't more than glance at patches. If you're lucky (although perhaps lucky isn't the word) you'll get twenty skilled eyeballs looking at and criticizing your code. Most times the number is only two or three, and it can be even fewer.
If you take an average of ten knowledgeable people examining your code, then I think you can agree that it is plausible that Microsoft has just as thorough a review as critical OSS projects like Linux. Four or five people looking at code before a commit would put it within a factor of two of Linux. The skill of the people doing the audit would be much more important at this stage.
Once you get a release of Windows code, no one examining it in the general community is knowledgeable about Windows specifics, but it may get a lot of attention from a lot of skilled people, just because of the novelty. I would think that parts of it will be subject to much more scrutiny than Windows or Linux source code usually ever is.
On the off-chance that you aren't kidding, that is how Freenet works - it creates a HTTP server on your computer and you use your web browser to talk to it.
Being that the code leaked was Windows NT 4.0 and
:) Didn't they originally clame they
2000 source codes, why are we seeing an issue
with IE 5.0? Just goes to prove how close the
browser was tied to the operating system.
On a cynical note, this only bolsters security through
obscurity.
had fewer bugs than open source competition?
With some 10% code or more leaked, there is quite
a bit more worry about their own peer-review process
or should I say lack of.
FTE's who will likely be the ones writing the code to replace the bad code found will not get OT. Only the contractors get it, and then it has to be pre-approved (and guess what, if you're a contractor responsible for writing bad code, if they let you keep your job, you sure aint getting OT for fixing your mistake).
:)
Also, those who code reviewed the offending code and let it through are likely to loose their jobs.
All in all, heads are going to be chopped on the main campus. Cutler will have to reshuffle his team, and theres a few FTE's sweating right now.
I wonder whether Microsoft will stick to their new policy of only releasing security updates once a month if there is a big flood of such full-disclosure bug reports. In a way it's the worst of all worlds. Enough of the source code is available for the black hats to give it a good going-over, but not enough that users can patch their system and recompile.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
You have 'contaminated' me.
I will no longer be able to code a buffer reading algorithm with an overflow bug without violating Microsoft's IP.
to send them a patch for it before they release one :)
if i had the time to fetch copy of the code, i'll do it myself...
I guess I shouldn't have lied about my certifcations during the interview...
sudo eat my shorts
It's getting the same kind of security review - but none of the feedback. No white hat wants to admit to MS that they've seen the code, and black hats wouldn't anyway. All this may end up doing is increasing the number of "submarine" exploits out there that hackers use for their own benefit, rather tahn making super-viruses that make the exploit famous.
Last post!
On the other hand, there are those of us that believe that all source code should be publically available, and that looking at someone else's code does not constitute "theft" in any way.
No one has yet posted a modified version of the goatscx photo that takes advantage of this security "hole".
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
if (!Read(abDummy, cbSkip))
goto Cleanup;
My god... I thought this was one thing they taught us not to do in schoool. But here it is in Windows! My god, don't they screen for these things at the interview?
Is that what you meant to say? :) It's plain from this first exploit that basic coding security precautions are not being followed (or retroactively applied) at Microsoft.
I'm bracing for the coming flood of exploits. The OSS community may prove themselves honorable and pitch in to help, but it's the script kiddies, and those whose moral compass is broke, that I'm worried about.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
So there was some IE 5 code in there? Too bad it wasn't the IE 4 code, I hear you can summon demons by reading that out loud.
check out http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/home/mxr/gfx/2d-hi.html lot's of good info on 2d formats, tiff is a good read, bmp is a pretty shitty format anyway. As for why it's upside down, why not?
Well art is art isn't it, but then again water is water; and east is east; and west is west; and if you take cranberries
You didn't need the source code to find that problem. I found it because I was creating compressed .BMP files and accidentally created one that crashed Win2K every time.
If Microsoft doesn't read Slashdot, that's their problem.
By the way, does anyone know why the bitmap formap [sic] is writte [soc] upside down?
;)
It's an obscurity that provides extra security against exploits like buffer overflows.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
There's a lot of fakes floating around, but if you want the source here's the one for w2k.
8 20 7|34BB9F3A3E8D3E0C4490A96EC30B9F3C|/
31,000 files of exploitable goodness!
ed2k://|file|windows_2000_source_code.zip|21374
2000 is for me the only decent windows OS in many ways. ..And it is also partly crappy!! ;)
Consider this. MS leaks the code through a vendor of a previous version intentionally. There are two benefits:
1. proper QA is done right, as only open source can allow (they get the benefit of QA that only the dynamics of open souce allows, all without acknowledging open souce has a superiour model in this aspect)
2. they can push XP as a superiour OS, and get more users to upgrade to XP and drop 2000/NT
Does anybody else see this?
It is called Firefox and can be downloaded at Mozilla.org!
Nobody knows how old the sourcecode actually is! Several people have used IE 5 and the exploit code does not work. The things in the code could have, and in this case, has, been fixed long ago!
It's many uninformed programmers that force people to browse as Aministrator in Windows XP. I have many older and current commercial programs that don't work unless the person has admin rights. All a programmer has to do is write to the CURRENT_USER registry area and current user file area - this would keep most programs from breaking.
I wish that I would of thought have that.
:)
It could of been me that was modded insightful for of-ing no grammatical skills.
Well, you know the old saying... birds have a feather, etc.
Of a nice day!
Also, never look at:
.. this one's for you, MS!)
- patents (despite them being protected by patent law)
- sheet music from other musicians (despite them being protected by copyright)
- trademarks (despite them being proteted by trademark law)
- software code (despite them being protected by copyright
Remember kids, even tho ALL of this information is protected by decades-old, and even centuries-old legal frameworks, if you look at it you will be stealing money! Its as simple as that!
Yes, I'm being sarcastic. The parent poster is a 'Yes Man' moron beyond my wildest dreams. Maybe one day he will sit down and actually learn about copyright/patent/trademark laws and realize that knowing how exactly your peers do things is what has led us to such an incredibly robust technologicaly and scientificly rich society.
Sharing your methods does not cost you shit, even to the point that patent law is designed to promote sharing of information in return for legal protection. Same with copyright law. MS doesn't want you to see their code not for security reasons, but because it helps you build interoperable products and thus become a competitor. And we all know how anti-capitalist competition is!
"Old man yells at systemd"
Ah, but how many of them eyes are wearing white hats, and how many are wearing black hats?
In this case, the white hats working inside the Microsoft Compound had to turn a blind eye to these bugs in order to focus on their impossibly rushed deadlines. (Of course, now those same eyes are in panic mode since the leak.)
Meanwhile, the white hats outside the compound walls are powerless to fix the bugs, through fear of legal repercussions: The very existence of any fix suggested proves that they saw the source without paying the license tax and signing away their firstborns to an NDA.
The black hats, OTOH, shielded by anonymity and freed from the bonds of legal accountability and responsibility, they're free to see all the chaos, hate, and mayhem they can cause (and then go do it), secure in the knowledge that nobody can stop them.
Sure, some of them will be slowed, as patches trickle out after the fact. Sure, some of them will be caught, as their own idiocy gives them away. But nobody can stop them, because more of the eyes looking at the sources, with the power to change them, are wearing black hats than white.
This Windows disaster cannot afford to be called similar to the situation with Open Source Software. With the sources open, and the maintainers equally open, more of the eyes looking at the sources are wearing white hats than black. And thanks to the openness, the white hats are just as powerful, if not moreso, than the black hats.
i dont see why everone is going crazy over this exploit. i mean really... microsoft actually has already done something about this... its called get the NEW version of IE. Don't get me wrong, I am a big open source supporter, but seriously... oss would have made no difference here. Basically people just have to keep up to date with IE and patches to get around this. Same as if someone, however unlikely, found such a exploit in a mozilla product... or some other open source browser. the fact that it is open source and someone could find the bug faster means nothing if you dont keep your software up-to-date. And no, most casual Windows users don't. and no getting them to switch to a 'nix OS wouldn't change that.
/. crowd have no idea what they are doing....
its really more of an education problem than a software problem. most computer users (not the
at least thats my 2 cents.
Matt
You have 1 Moderator Point! Use it or lose it! Is that a threat? -vapid
Part of obtaining Palm Certification for your software involves surviving the Gremlins. You can't use the Palm logo on your program without it. It's even built into their emulator right on the menu. And yes you find some weird shit.
This is really easy. Back in the good old days, when developers measured memory in kilobytes rather than megabytes, and cpu speeds were expressed in single digit mhz rather than single digit ghz, performance was a BIG issue. The layout of the data inside a bitmap was set up to mimic the memory layout of a video card, so that you could literally just copy the data with no transforms.
Over time, video memory layouts changed, computers got faster, and now have more on cpu cache than they used to have memory. The rage in software development has come full circle. Instead of trying to optimize things to see how efficient they can be written, it seems to be a goal to see how much overhead one can put into a given application before it actually starts to do something useful. Some things tho seem to be trapped in thier legacy heritage, and the format of a bitmap is one of them.
That is a little funny... Isn't a 'specially crafted image' the same 'exploit' that Geordie LaForge came up with for introducing a virus into the borg collective? Remember the first episode with 'Hugh'?
-db
Monkey Lives
Come on, who keeps modding this stuff as insightful? It's been beaten to death. Personally I don't agree with the conspiracy theory but that's irrelevant. This was mentioned many times in the first article
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http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=96614&cid=826
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=96614&cid=826
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=96614&cid=826
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=96614&cid=826
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=96614&cid=826
and the follow-up article
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=96732&cid=827
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=96732&cid=827
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=96732&cid=827
So, where's the .bmp I can link to my web site that makes IE5 remotely execute Mozilla Firefox installer?
Ask a silly person, get a silly answer.
No, it doesn't work that way. All the major Linux and BSD distros backport security fixes into older apps that they have released; they do not insist that you upgrade to the next major version. When someone (e.g. Red Hat) drops security coverage for older versions, multiple efforts (Progeny, Fedora Legacy) spring up to fill the gap.
I can see the ultimate virus now: you click an innocent-looking link, it takes you to a goatse bmp, and the exploit will lock your keyboard and mouse...leaving you utterly defenseless! Oh the horror!
I mean really, who runs IE 5 anyway. I'm sure that most corporate network admins keep up with updating IE. Let me check on a random company machine...
Help-About Internet Explorer-.....Never mind my previous comment.
That kind of thinking explains the collapse of the British Empire completly.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
You could always check out the google Zeitgeist.
:)
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
Down in the middle of the page, it shows a graph that depicts MSIE 6.0 to be the dominant browser in nice clear red ink.
Microsoft, with a couple hundred million users they'd really wouldn't mind being compelled to buy their next O/S
Or some surly hacker who doesn't care if he loses his job?
Fear is a powerful motivator against the latter... and Microsoft's greed, which has compelled them to illegal market-manipulating tactics in the past, seems the greater force. We haven't seen much response from Microsoft about the source leak, yet it may prove to be the 9/11 for the computer business, if virus writers get busy with it.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
Doing ANYTHING with the code, good or bad is illegal. So if we DID make a patch, we couldn't claim we did.
___FutureShoks___
Point well taken. My response may have been a bit flippant.
As a thought experiment, imagine the following contest:
a) 1000 Linux developers are given (full) WinXP source code and locked in a room to find potential exploits.
b) In another room, 1000 WinXP developers are locked in a room with (insert distro here) source code to find potential exploits.
Which group finds more holes in a week? Which group finds more serious holes? Up until last week, this was purely a thought experiment, with OSS claiming the virtual victory. Last week, it became real.
(And don't you think that it's possible that Microsoft has been conducting contest (b) FOR YEARS trying to find holes to prove OSS insecurity?)
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
where would you get free patches for Red Hat 7.3?
I think the point is that you can patch Red Hat 5.x for free by upgrading to a more recent version of Red^H^H^HFedora for no charge. IE 5 is the last version IE to run on Microsoft Windows 95, and Microsoft charges for newer versions of Windows.
I don't know about the original poster's ideology, but I certainly expect to get the "source code" to a book when I buy one, or even when I browse in the bookshop or library. I expect to get the "source code" to a newspaper when I buy one, or when I flick through it in the newsagents deciding whether it looks interesting enough to buy. I generally expect to be able to read recipes when people give them to me, and I *definitely* expect pre-processed foods to contain a list of ingredients when I buy them.
As for PIN numbers, I have never tried to sell my PIN to anyone, so I don't see what right anyone has to know what it is - but then you were just being flippant with that comment, weren't you?
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
There comes a point where releasing a patch would be ludicrous, because the problem and its solution are so obvious.
It would be like calling up Boeing to report that the wing has fallen off your airplane, explaining why that is a problem, and giving them detailed instructions how to fix it. They know what's wrong and how to fix it. The problem is motivating them to do it.
Time and again, MS has proven that the only motivation to fix problems is concrete exploits in the wild (and even then, they sometimes don't fix it).
I see lots of posts here from people saying "Just upgrade to IE6.1. The problem is that there are lots of people out there that can't or won't.
(1) There folks still running Win95 that are stuck. They've got an old Pentium 166, and have no legitimate way to upgrade to Win98. Have you see upgrade copies available in the last couple of years? Sure they can find a copy on ebay, but lots of these folks would never think of that.
(2) There are folks with Dial-up who didn't want to tie up their phone lines downloading the beast. These folks should definately do it now, but they haven't had a really compelling reason.
(3) They may not know how. "Windows Update, what's that?"
I do lots of work for clueless users, and trust me, their are PLENTY of IE5 boxes out there.
Mark
------- Mark
I don't know why everyone is raving so much about the windows 2000 code. The NT4 code that leaked is much more interesting, containing a lot of the networking and security code that the 2000 leak misses out.
.zip|241131483|7a8b8624a5014a3f2c586c813568be09|
ed2k://|file|windows_nt_4_source_code .zip|241131483|afcb4b1fd05ed574e2ee77618222621d|
.rar|1357906140|dba2a19a3c822837ad6ade3b7f178862|
A couple of links are here:
ed2k://|file|windows_nt_4_source_code
I have downloaded the first one. It contained a minor bit of corruption in the zip file. The second one may be more pure, but I don't know as I'm only 90% complete with that.
Though I have to say, the bugcodes.txt file in the windows 2000 archive was a fascinating read.
Also, I hear rumours that there is a longhorn source code leak out there. I noticed it was available on overnet, but with no sources available to me, I couldn't download any of it to check. Can anyone confirm?
ed2k://|file|windows longhorn build 4008 source code (partial)
So the old theory that keeping source code secret will help prevent security attacks has now proven to be invalid, for the reason that you can't be sure that the code will in fact reliably remain secret. When the code inevitably gets out you will have a shitstorm of problems.
Now open source has in reality been proven the best way.
And security by obscurity fails again.
I recommend reading Smashing the stack for fun and profit.
It's very informative.
This is an exploit which effects Users, running a WEB BROWSER. Please tell me one single (however insignificant) thing a Normal User who is running a web BROWSER could possibly give half a fuck about which requires administrator privledges.
Seperate user accounts, securing the system itself, etc, that is _ONLY_ security-related when you are the administrator of a server and require your box be up 24/7 (or at least somewhat often)
Think about it for two seconds: You're a normal user, you're using your personal computer. Hell, you're using it to surf the web, this isnt any system which other people are dependent on having a high uptime or anything. You go to a webpage, and some arbitrary code gets executed.
What files could be effected? Well, you're running as a normal user, so luckily for you only the files which you give a shit about will be harmed, while the easily replaceable part of the system remains intact.
This whole "multiple accounts == security" line is pure bullshit extract. The files which a USER, not a System Administrator, cares about, are files which that USER created, downloaded, edited, etc. Files which the User has access to.
If some malicious code executes as root/Admin, so what? Your important files are trashed and you need to spend an extra hour reconfiguring your system? That extra hour or two doesnt mean squat compared to the years it may take to restore the files which you created personally.
"You Should Keep Backups anyway" is Irrelevant. As that can just as easily be applied to root-accessible files, the point is that non-admin privs are just as bad as admin privs on a personal system.
And this exploit _is_ talking about a personal system, unless you're in the habit of running IE5 on a high-priority server instead of the laptop sitting next to it.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Try this for a start.
Blackhats like CIA, KGB, China intelligence etc have had access to this code for much longer no doubt. Anybody think that MS delivering of the code to china hasnt been propagated to their intelligence agency? This only shows that there are no security in hiding security mechanisms. A quick glance at the crypto industry should be pretty revalating to MS.
MS i in for a ride and it should be hammered around that most of theese exploits would NOT be stopped by Palladium. Palladium is just a buzzword and does not stop errors in protocols or implementations of them. Thats not going to stop MS from marketing palladium as a tool to stop errors in their code.
HTTP/1.1 400
Sorry about the busted links.
Click here for the Google Zeitgeist.
Click here just for the graph.
This shouldn't be a discussion about whether open source is inherently more stable (which it surely is). What the leak gives everyone is a chance to see into the coding practices of Redmond. That is what is interesting.
No one thought they were stellar; some already knew how bad things are; some figured, naturally, that if you could poke holes in their stuff like we've seen, something must be very, very wrong.
But now people are going to see with their own eyes - and that, I insist, is what is interesting here. So keep your eyes peeled (sorry, PJ).
Win NT 4.0 Source:a sh=66a26447f563c3dc2336de74ae37dc14d11dd8b9
a sh=f03fc1e04869294d5644d3c8c5d0fb8f2d26aa59
http://torrent.spyderlake.com/download.php?info_h
Win 2000 Source:
http://torrent.spyderlake.com/download.php?info_h
Please change your browser because otherwise you will get rooted (i cannot explain why, please, please believe me).
Would you take this serious ? And what amount of time would it take to find a exploit for a explanation like this:
Found a serious buffer owerflow in IE when loading a bitmap image...
This would result in exploits in a couple of hours and would give only the false impression that there are no exploits up to now...
The source code is leaked since friday and you don't gain anything by telling only Microsoft that this and that vulnerability exists. Till they fix it its to late. And without a proof of concept everyone could claim he found a serious bug.
The nature of open source software makes actually verifying the existence or non-existnece of code very easy. Microsoft wouldn't even need to contact anyone to tell them they thought they were including Microsoft code in their product. They could just download it and check. As could everyone else.
The main problem is, and this is why I think MS has not actually gone to court against major oss projects yet, is that doing so would force them to show the offending lines of code in order for it to be compared to the oss source. If this incident has shown anything it is that revealing source is not something Microsoft wants to ever do -- even for products that are near or at/past EOL.
That said, I think that project managers REALLY are going to need to be vigillent in monitoring contributions to their projects especially when programmers claim to be introducing Microsoft compatibility with the code. Chances will be good that some unethical programmers will try to slip some Microsof owned code into a project. I can actually see some pro MS people joining oss projects just to try to do this then notify MS so they can take legal action. But, if a project manager is doing their job, this should be an easy problem to fix.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
You tell 'em. Someone called the cops the last time I exposed myself.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
You do realize IE6 is a free download for 98/2000 and up, don't you?
If this were an OSS program, everyone on Slashdot would be falling over themselves posting to "upgrade to the latest version, it's fixed." But when it's Microsoft, suddenly there's some sort of unnamed hassle when it comes to just downloading a setup program and running it.
You of a keen wit.
You're the sort have guy I admire.
You could of noted the grammatical humor, but instead you chose to be have a cleverer sort.
Shame about the lead paint in your nursery.
This is really easy. Back in the good old days, when developers measured memory in kilobytes rather than megabytes, and cpu speeds were expressed in single digit mhz rather than single digit ghz, performance was a BIG issue. The layout of the data inside a bitmap was set up to mimic the memory layout of a video card, so that you could literally just copy the data with no transforms.
Which is actually not as good an idea as it sounds. When you refresh the screen (or a large window) upside down, CRT refreshes, which always go from top to bottom, become much more obtrusive. The system looks and feels slower due to more screen-tearing, even though it's technically 1% or so faster.
This is why display systems that put (0,0) at the lower-left corner are a pet peeve of mine. Upside-down rendering = a slightly more elegant mathematical model that yields significantly worse-looking results in real life.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
The right combo of blinkenlights, color, speed, pattern etc can trigger a seizure in people even without epilepsy.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
This is completely off topic from the parent post. But THE LINKED ARTICLE CONTAINS SOURCE CODE FOR WINDOWS.
The Slashdot editors should remove the link immediately. Its really dangerous to have on the front page of this site.
I wonder if any of the leaked source code includes the MS crypto system. If so, this could be very bad news for Microsoft seeing how people have already discovered a slew of critical vulnerabilities but are biting their tongues to wait for MS to fix the flaws. Now you have a bunch of crackers running their debuggers on actual source code... they are going to craft and use exploits before they're public knowledge or officially fixed.
You said:
There are also no exposed pointers in Java, thus no way to clobber the stack by writing to a negative array offset, as in this exploit. Reading or writing to a negative array offset in Java will result in a RuntimeException of some sort. Buffer overflows are also impossible in Java, since writing off the end of an array will result in a similar exception.
I say:
Yes, I agree completely. The next version of Windows should be written in Java.
Of course you realize that it is absolutely pointless.
If MS is doing its work they will check the exploit's code and fix it in a timely fashion.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.