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Microsoft's Security Disclosures Come Under Fire
Old Banana writes "Is Microsoft silently fixing security vulnerabilities and deliberately obfuscating details about patches in its monthly security bulletins? Matthew Murphy, a security researcher who has worked closely with the MSRC (Microsoft Security Response Center) in the past, is accusing the software maker of 'misleading' customers by not clearly spelling out exactly what is being patched in the MS06-015 bulletin released on April 11."
How would you like a birth control patch that also doubles as a nicotine patch without your knowledge? Sure you can have sex without worrying about getting pregnant, but there would be no cigarette afterwards. What MS has done is taken away the cigarette from the consumer. My Windows sex machine can "interface" all night long without getting pregnant, but it can still get STDs and won't be smoking any more afterwards.
If you explain exactly what is being patched, then you give the hackers a pretty clear roadmap of what they need to do to exploit all of the unpatched systems, don't you? The sad truth is that most systems remain unpatched. Granted, Microsofts assumption that it's customers are idiots that couldn't handle the truth is annoying to those of us that do understand the problems, but in the majority of cases there assumption is pretty close to the truth - they are protecting the naive by not giving hints out to the malicious.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
As long as Microsoft are fixing them I'm not too bothered about this, but it would be nice to know what exactly they are fixing.
"Oh boy"
For Business users, they might actually want to know what might break if they do the update - especially since many cannot be "un-done".
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I would speculate that more people download Windows updates then almost any other piece of software (mostly because they are unaware mostly because this feature comes standard and enabled in Win XP). So why would microsoft want to divulge the security holes it is patching so openly? If I was looking to break into someone elses system the first place I would go is to microsoft.com check to see what security holes it has just patched and then see if my neighboor has patched yet.
It would be way to easy for people to learn about the problems that microsoft has riddled the world with.
I think the real point of the article was a few paragraphs in when Murphy said that "You simply don't know what the patches are for. It's virtually impossible to make a determination about a deployment time frame if not deploying a patch has the potential to place you at an additional, unknown risk."
One of my favorite things about open-source systems like Redhat's RHN up2date is that you know exactly what a patch will effect and what code it will be changing. An update to the kernel, or to an individual program, will have a description of what it does, and in may cases a list of files that it will modify/replace.
I can see how microsoft could be more open about what specifically a patch does, but without making the patches open-sourced I don't see how they will ever be able to match Linux's level.
To me this looks like MS have patched the flaw they say they have, and maybe seen some other bugs that were in there whilst they were there.
This is not necessarily a good thing though, as vagueness in what a patch fix implies vagueness in testing that the patch works properly. Microsoft should post exactly what it fixes, so people know what they are putting on their system. For instance, what if the patch breaks third party software? As the third party won't know what was changed, they can't fix it.
If I'm getting the gist of the article correct, it sounds like this guy is just whining because he found a variation of a vulnerability that was being fixed and he didn't get his name posted in the headline as finding the main vulnerability.
So, really, this is just a single guy complaining because he feels like he should have been a headliner but MS felt he was just an extra.
This brings up the age old debate which I will not revive. However, my spin is that if you are patching a vulnerability you should disclose that. Otherwise the end user might not apply the patch. This very same situation happened with Cisco at Blackhat and ended up in the Courts and Cisco ended up with a public black-eye. Based upon the IT reaction to that I would venture the assumption that we want to know.
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If you explain exactly what is being patched, then you give the hackers a pretty clear roadmap of what they need to do to exploit all of the unpatched systems, don't you?
You do that already by providing a patch. The bad guys will simply look at the differences of the binaries and find out what has been patched. So instead of helping the good guys, Microsoft gives an information advantage to the bad guys.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
Remember when there was an update to Windows Media Player that added those DRM module things and there was a big outcry? I may be acting a bit paranoid, but isn't it remotely possible that Microsoft could sneak in other restrictions like this without users ever knowing?
If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate.
New patch advisory: "This patch solves yet another attack vector that can be exploited by a malicious hacker. The fact is, this is like sticking your finger in a dike. Actually, it is more like sticking your finger in a non-existant dike against a tsunami. Tomorrow, five other security holes will be discovered. Odds are, this patch will introduce yet more attack vectors. You are screwed"
Microsoft: You may use the above for a small fee. TIA. HTH.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The big problem when they do this is compatibility testing. I work at numerous companies where we need to read through each patch to see what they 'fix'. Now when Microsoft does this we will just have to guess what they might break in a legacy application deployed across the world.
Hello, we'd like to announce a new security patch, that's um, kind of critical. What is it? Well, let's just say when we say it, everyone said "OMFG!" and started running around like people with their hair on fire ...
... well ... it's not optional.
... um ... your security ... yeah, that's right ...
Now, we can't tell you what it is, because if we did that, you might clue in that we probably made the same mistake in pretty much all the code we rolled out to give you that latest Feature (Patent Pending), and telling you would mean that lots of script kiddies would be making your copy of Windows Vista turn into a large pr0n server that played Death Metal tunes.
So, just trust us on this one, and
P.S.: Please ignore the large backdoor we installed to scope your box out to see if you're trying to run some kind of Linux device on your network. It's just there for
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I would think that corporate "Software Assurance" customers who are paying for continual updates and support, and have to support MANY legacy applications that may be affected by such flaws or patches would be (and ARE) demanding such notifications. Joe Bob Home User does't really care, but Fortune 100 Fred in IT sure does, especially when his job (which is to keep the companies infrastructure up and running) is on the line.
Microsoft's just trying to save face, they could quite obviously still tell you that your applications and/or operating system had flaws that you needed to be aware of without going into specifics. Regardless of how much they want to disclose, one would imagine that they should have a legal responsibility to their customers to release any knowledge they have about a fault in their product that could compromise the security of their customers financial and private information, particularly in today's age of putting warnings out for every little possible fuck-up imaginable for other products (you know, like pepsi bottles that tell you to open with the cap pointing away from your face, etc...).
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
How to find out? MD5 sum your /windows folder including the sub-directories (don't forget the hidden ones) before the patch. MD5 Sum again after the patch and compare the results. bdiff the questionable file differences and dis-assemble. At least thats what I used to do as a prior legitimate Windows license(s) owner (but before being called a thief by Microsoft).
Like I said earlier today, you either own a Microsoft appliance or a personal computer, these days you can't have both. Switch to something else or stay with Windows.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
The main reason for implementing the monthly patch cycle (AFAICT) was PR. A bad week with 3 critical patches could really kill a sales rep's story that MS 'professional programmers' was the way to go if you wanted a secure system. It was only a matter of time until some PR hack realized that things could look even better if you didn't bother to document every security hole that a monthly patch fixed.
The upside for the user end (most often touted) of the monthly patch cycle is that a company doesn't sometimes need a full time crew just to go through the sometimes daily critical patches to see if/and what they break. The two downsides are that you don't always know what the monthly patches fix, and a well timed zero-day patch can mean that the black hats have up to a month to stomp on your system before the official fix comes out.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
This site mentions a high-level I/O-processing bug that was present in csrss.exe in many versions of NT/2K/XP that could be triggered by something as simple as a opening a text file that contains a bunch of backspace characters.
"On 2002-09-24, Microsoft KnowledgeBase article ID Q311486, promised six months ago, finally appeared. Its publication date is falsified to claim that it appeared on 2001-10-26. It talks about programs that "pass invalid screen size parameters" when the sample program code that it gives for replicating the bug clearly contains nothing at all relating to screen size parameters."
A good analogy, but perhaps a bit inappropriate considering slashdot's users.
The bad guys don't need to spend time with compatibility or regression testing for their software.
They can download the patch the day it is released and have an exploit ready that same day. You'll still be meeting to discuss the test plan for your servers.
Attempting to hide information doesn't help anyone except the vendor and the bad guys.
At least if you have the information, you can determine your own level of exposure and decide what mitigating actions you want to take based upon your environment.
You tell people what you're doing to their systems.
It's that simple.
Security reasons, or no security reasons, you tell people. Anything else is misleading, which equates to lying.
They own the systems, not you, regardless of your fucking EULA.
Then if anybody doesn't care or doesn't want to know, it's on them.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Last year when I had my problem with Windows 2000 hosing my system's partition table because installing it with Service Pack 3 on, THEN installing Service Pack 4 was insufficient to prevent it from hosing the partition table on a big disk when the outer portions of the disk eventually ended up being used, I finally dug up a Microsoft Knowledgebase article that admitted that "some disks" geometry wouldn't be read correctly in that situation.
Nowhere did Microsoft identify WHAT disks, WHY, or HOW. It was a "throwaway line" like that referenced in the present article. Microsoft was happy to say that LBA48 was supported by Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, but NOT that if you installed it first WITHOUT Service Pack 4 and then installed SP4, that Windows 2000 would silently wait until you actually tried to use the larger partitions before trashing your hard drive.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
This would NOT happen in the Open Source world just because of the transparency of the software. OSS could not include such devious actions without a million people seeing it before it even gets to your machines. I frequently check my updates even before I update my servers/desktops. I know what is getting put into my Linux boxen.... Do you???
Yesterday, my office gets a frantic call from one of our clients, a lawyer. She had a filing deadline and was trying to finish a document she needed for this filing. Word 2002 stopped responding to user input every time she tried to save her document. All of my techs were out in the field, so I had to respond to this one (I'm VP Operations).
True enough, saving a document in Word or trying to open a new one while another document was open would hourglass the cursor. Only Task Mangler could end WINWORD.EXE.
Sysinternals's PROCEXP showed that every time a document was saved, Word would spawn VERCLSID.EXE as a child process, an executable that was "patched" by KB908531, which was pushed through Windows...err, Microsoft Update the day before.
I googled "verclsid". Let me tell you that yesterday, this search string returned no results. This morning, it returned exactly one. Now, it comes up with 67 web hits and 21 Usenet results.
Also, because of this "patch", typing "www.google.com" would return the generic IE "Server Not Found" page. One had to prepend "http://" to the URL. VERCLSID.EXE checks the validity of COM objects, so the damage wasn't confined to Office applications; it affected EXPLORER.EXE and IEXPLORE.EXE.
The workaround was to rename the current version of VERCLSID.EXE and restore the file from the backup created by KB908531 (a System Restore would have sufficed as well). I expect a patch for the patch to be released by Microsoft Real Soon Now. I guess this one was rushed out the door without sufficient testing.
Our company policy for patches is this: updates for servers are tested in-house before being deployed on production machines. For workstations, however, Windows Update is set to automatically update, unless the client's workstations run legacy applications, like the Reflection terminal emulator, or if high-end esoteric applications are present, like DataCAD or Design 20-20. As with servers, they're tested on a non-production system first.
I'd say that 10% of our clients got burned by 908531. Rolling it back wasn't that hard once we identified the problem, but this costs money.
I don't want to single out MSFT; last year an Apple Mac OS X security update broke Samba for me for about a week until I could figure out a workaround. But let's put this in perspective: how many people using Mac OS X (2 to 5% of the workstation market) also use Samba? Contrast this with the percentage of Windows XP/2K users also using Word (must be in the high 80% range), Internet Explorer, and the GUI, all affected by a buggy 908531 patch.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
No, the crux of his complaint is that he can't tell what he's supposed to be looking for. How is he supposed to test what M$ does not tell him? For some reason he thinks M$ is going to tell him what their "updates" do. How many hours do you expect him to test every month?
It's incredibly stupid to put yourself out on the line like that. One day it'll come back and bite him when he's wrong.
Looks like you've already bitten him. Do you work for M$ or do you just like shooting your mouth off?
The only dumb thing here is trust in M$. Look at the reward he's getting for all of his "responsible disclosure" and patient work trying to patch the XP sieve. He sits and waits for 700 days while everyone else gets hosed. M$ is oh so happy he's put their interests ahead of yours. Yet, you've acted like Steve Baller and called him incredibly stupid now that he's changed his mind and stood up for you. Other's have called him selfish and publicity seeking. I think he's getting a little fed up with it all, which is the first step in a very smart move.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You're doing it wrong. I gots me a sugar momma.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I'm certain MS's EULA absolves them of any responsibility or liability for what happens to your machine or your data.....
Rick B.
>> I fail to see any law or EULA where such notifications are required.
There are things you do because of the law and then there are things you do because they're right. The issue at stake is the how much you trust MS to not break things with their fixes. What happens if a fix causes a critical application to break?
Say this was at a paitent records system in a hospital? Say they changed their image handling code and xrays could not be displayed because the fix broke something either in operating system or in the application because the vulnerability might have accidentally let a bug go through the QA processes. Now imagine if the fix was deployed saying that it addressed an obscure issue with Outlook Express. Administrators and software developers could end up wasting a lot of critical time.
Imagine a scenario where Pzifer changed the formula of Viagra without informing the FDA or the physicians involved in dispensing them... imagine if that side effect.. oh never mind, you know where I'm going with this.