Point, Click, Root.

An anonymous reader writes "The Metasploit Project just released version 2.2 of the Metasploit Framework. This release includes a VNC server payload that can be used with almost any of the Windows exploits. The scary thing about this payload is that the VNC server executes as a new thread in the exploited process; without writing any files to the disk drive. Is this the end as we know it for simple remote command shell exploits? A couple articles have already mentioned this project."

Comments

Re:VNC ?

[airjrdn]

For those interested in RealVNC's response, see here - http://www.realvnc.com/faq.html#security

Isn't VNC open source? If so, isn't that supposed to make it not shitty and insecure?

An example need for change

[mcrbids]

This is a pretty clear example of why we need to make a change in the way files/memory are kept.

Here's the heirarchy for data storage:

cpu registers (where the data is requested)
l1 cache
l2 cache
l3 cache
RAM
<snip>
disk/network

Notice the disconnect between RAM and disk. All levels of storage above disk are essentially buffers for the RAM - Why the disconnect at disk/network?

I think we should remodel the memory/storage model to fall fully in line with "everything is a file" - including blocks of memory! Treat memory as though it were simply a buffer for a file, and make the concept of "in memory" merely a detail for the disk cache controller.

Writing to memory and writing to disk/network share etc. should be the same operation and would eliminate all kinds of un-needed software complexity.