Slashdot Mirror
Microsofts "Honeymonkey" Project
g0bshiTe writes "Ever hear the saying, 'given enough time a room full of monkeys could type out Shakespeare'? Well Microsoft seems to be taking this saying to heart, and taking a cue from the Honeynet project, they have created what they have dubbed 'honeymonkeys.' Security Focus has an article which describes this honeymonkey network, which is little more than a network of virtual Windows XP boxes in various patch states. These boxes are setup to crawl the seedier side of the web in search of vulnerabilities not bieng reported, and are being actively exploited in an attempt to further secure their product. Sounds like a decent idea from the Redmond crew to me."
they call these guys "customers" over in redmond ...
IAAL
*GENERIC JOKE ABOUT MONKEYS BEING IN CHARGE OF MS WINDOWS SECURITY*
Just thought I'd head everyone off here...
(lameness filter padding lameness filter padding lameness filter padding)
In addition to getting info on new vulnerabilities, they'll probably also get loads of malware to add to the anti-spyware tool. This is a good thing.
Sounds delicious.
But the real reason they named the project this is because they intend to sting you like a bee and then throw fecal matter at you.
This is a pretty good idea. If anything, it will help curb the script kiddies indesciminantly flinging exploits around. Unless you want that overflow you found to get patched, pick and choose your targets carefully.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
It looks like the monkeys aren't only working on Shakespeare...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I like to call it, "break time"
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that, it's called everyone, they meet at the bar."
This group has done several impressive projects. Among them is the "Strider Ghostbuster" Rootkit Detector.
This is part of the general Strider Project in Microsoft Research. They do very good work.
Test your net with Netalyzr
No, it is the start of Microsoft Newspeak. Longhorn will no longer say "Memory Page Fault" but instead "memfault." "Blue Screen" (bluescree) will lose its negative meaning and come to be a blessing from m.s. (Microsoft). Words like honeymonkey will eventually take on meanings like Ingsoc or doublethink, and there will be no more crashes, because it is no longer possible to concieve a crash.
"he is a doubleplusgood honeyeymonkeyer."
"Bluescree! Praise m.s.!"
"MSCalc: 2+2=5!"
Put these honemonkeys on a network with a bunch of other computers running Firefox/greasemonkey, and let them fight it out.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
A roomful of monkeys wrote Windows XP? OK, I'll buy that.
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
Computers are supposed to crash. Computers have always crashed.
Pre-Monkey Era:
-- someone exploits a vulnerability
-- 2 weeks later someone discovers it
-- half a year later M$ patches it
-- three years later new version of Windows is released and finally the last 80% of users have patched systems.
it took 3 years, 6 months and 2 weeks to patch most computers.
Post-Monkey Era:
-- someone exploits a vulnerability
-- 2 days later monkeys report it
-- half a year later M$ patches it
-- three years later new version of Windows is released and finally the last 80% of users have patched systems.
it took 3 years 6 months and 2 days to patch most computers.
nice PR move though.
Two simple questions:
1. Are these machines using non-Microsoft IP addresses for their 'net access?
2. If not, how long until the worm authors take that into account?
Yeah, and everybody should hold hands around a campfire and sing Kum-bay-yah too, but the real world tends to be a little different.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Maybe some of their non-critical patches actually fix an unknown exploitable hole. They might want to change the status of those fixes from optional to critical.
Here's the first crash
I think they were computing pi.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
Seems like the simple counter measure is a "blacklist" of the honeymonkey servers. Granted the IP addresses of these PCs should be secure but A LOT of info leaks / is stolen / is hacked / is accidentally exposed.
I thought this article was going to say "So they've hired an entire team of moneys to get them to write the next Windows". Infact it's just a load of machines doing nothing. I prefered my idea, much more chance of shit-fights between the moneys.
Do you have what it takes to hit the (honey)monkey?
the layman's guide to computer science
Somebody at MS got caught surfing porn/warez and cooked up this 'honeymonkey' nonsense to cover his dirty buttocks.
It takes a Terminator to defeat Skynet. It takes a script kiddie and a buffer overflow to defeat Windows.
More like queue the typical slashdot groupthink about how there's so much typical slashdot groupthink.
In articles I tend to see just a small fraction of posts showing this supposed typical groupthink... and then a gigantic mass of posts from people who think they're observant and different and insightful for pointing out that it's going on.
From TFA...
""Just by visiting a Web site, (if) suddenly an executable is created on your machine outside the Internet Explorer folder, it is an exploit with no false positive -- it's that simple," Yi-Ming Wang, senior researcher with Microsoft Research, said during a presentation at the IEEE Security and Privacy conference in Oakland last week."
Want this sillyness fixed? Kill the ActiveX shit! Microsoft created that mess in the first place trying to dominate Java and like usual instead of going for the cause they go for the symptom.
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.