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Windows Vista still Rife with Insecure Code
osxpetition writes "As noted in a News.com article, Symantec researchers have been testing the latest Microsoft Windows Vista build (Beta 2), and have found that the code is 'complete with new corner cases and defects' in the networking component. Symantec describes how Microsoft scrapped the old networking stack code from Windows XP in favour of newer, rewritten code. 'Microsoft has removed a large body of tried and tested code and replaced it with freshly written code.' Since January 2002, Microsoft has put a stronger emphasis on protecting PCs by attempting to implement stable, secure code into Windows XP and their new operating system. This latest report from Symantec brings attention to Microsoft's trustworthy computing campaign, and shows how it will be a long way before it is ready for the mainstream."
They figured out that the old network stack was starting to get too secure and not something they could live with! Not wanting to break the trend of security problems they went ahead and rewrote the code from scratch
have a solution that will "protect" you.
This may not be a bad thing.
I am much happier with well laid out, structured and simple code that has X rate of defects than well polished over the years, old, cruddy and complex with X rate of defects because with the former:
Fixes will be faster.
Fixes will be easier/cheaper.
Fixes will be possible!
Bug fixes will have less chance of introducing new bugs.
Given time we can then be sure that we will end up with... err well polished over the years, old, cruddy and complex. But it probably won't be as bad as if the process never happened in the first place.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
You mean there's still hope for Sun Microsystems?
How dare they! Just when I know all the exploits in the old code, they make me go and have to discover all new bugs in their new code. Being a hacker is hard some days...
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
Since you didn't provide any useful context to your question, allow me. From here:
OK, so Symantec makes money selling products that patch up problems with Windows OSes. Microsoft trying to put them out of a job. I'm not saying Vista is really achieving this goal, but what sort of report did you expect from Symantec? "Wow, this Vista really makes our products unnecssary"!
FUD. At least they learned Microsoft's greatest marketing strategy.
-Ryan C.
Isn't it to Semantecs best interest to generate demand for their product by creating uncertainty when it comes to OS security. They did this to linux too...
Granted Microsoft may be using new code, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's more insecure than the current network stack.
Let's see what the non-beta software looks like, and see what a independent lab reports.
Bill
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Shatter attack are a configuration error, not a OS issue. They are roughly similar to running xterm as root on Unix and then complaining that users can execute root commands.
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But apparently Vista has entirely removed the idea of an "interactive service", so they won't work. Info here: http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2005/
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
I had never heard of such a thing before (actually, initially I thought you were just punning on Windows + 'shattering', har har).
It would seem that Vista allegedly fixes the design flaw that allows for the attack, by not running system services in the same session as the user. At least, that seems to be what the Wikipedia article on the topic is suggesting.
The key to shatter attacks is that Windows allows processes running in the same session to pass messages between each other, the result of which is that via code injection, any process can escalate up to the level of the highest process also running in its session. MS is quoted in the article as saying "[This is not] a flaw in Windows. In reality, the flaw lies in the specific, highly privileged service. By design, all services within the interactive desktop are peers, and can levy requests upon each other. As a result, all services in the interactive desktop effectively have privileges commensurate with the most highly privileged service there." (Which is amusingly doublespeak-ish; they're saying "this isn't a design flaw, we designed it that way!")
This blog post by a member of the IE7 team would confirm that they've at least tried to address this in Vista (but of course that's what you'd expect them to say). It says: "User Interface Privilege Isolation (UIPI) blocks lower-integrity from accessing higher-integrity processes. For example, a lower-integrity process cannot send window messages or hook or attach to higher priority processes This helps protect against "shatter attacks." A shatter attack is when one process tries to elevate privileges by injecting code into another process using windows messages."
Yet another nice legacy "feature" from the single-user-OS days.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Oh man! I can't even begin to think of a joke worthy of that setup...
This "shatter attack" has been known about and acknolwedge for MANY YEARS. (Long before the 2002 paper cited in this thread.) Every once in a while people will bring it up as proof that Windows has design flaws.
This was a design decision with known trade-offs. Attaching security tokens to window messages would result in MAJOR overhead that would, even on today's beefy hardware, kill performance. Having to do a permissions check every time the mouse is moved is not feasible.
So Microsoft decided that they would rely on "best practices" information as apposed to enforced security in the OS to prevent "shatter attacks". The best practices are pretty simple: If your service/application is running with elevated permissions (such as SYSTEM), do not display a GUI on a desktop owned by a lower privledged user.
There have been examples of applications, in particular some poorly written anti-virus applications, that liked to display GUIs to the user despite the fact they were running as SYSTEM. For the most part, however, very few major applications exist today that have this issue.
Applications that run with high privs that need to display a GUI typically launch their GUI with the privs of the user, or display the GUI on a secure desktop. (Like Winlogon.exe.)
This is really a non-issue and hasn't been for a very long time. Please, ignore the FUD.
Curiously, both have dominant but benevolent personalities in charge...
:-)
That's the nicest thing I've ever heard anyone say about Theo!
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Microsoft has put a signifigant amount of work into creating USER/GDI messaging passing barriers between the new Vista integrity levels. This feature is called UIPI and mostly works in the betas.
BTW, almost no Microsoft written applications are still vulnerable to shatter attacks on XP. This is mostly an issue that still hits ISVs because they don't understand the problem.
To be fair, the original design of NT networking was focused on IPX and NetBEUI. The bandwidth was 10 Mbit. If you routed in several steps, you didn't expect minimal latencies. You were also supposed to kind of trust the traffic on the network (no SYN attacks or stuff like that.) IPv6 on current Windows versions still has "it will kind of work" status. You don't start with MS-DOS and end up with XP. You end up with Me. Rewriting something because the old version is broken is highly unwise. Rewriting something because the old version is unappropriate for what you currently use it for might make sense. I remember the JWZ article and he talks about all the hidden assumptions you've found through hard work and how those are an essential value in the current codebase. If enough of those assumptions are not true anymore, it can make sense to rewrite something.
In fact, I think it's the only way to explain how many security bugs are in Windows.
I think you perhaps need to take some lessons in critical thinking. This is the equivelent of saying, "The only reason auto-manufactuers put problems into cars so they have to recall them is because the government makes them, which is why Japanese cars are better than American cars."
Large monolithioc systems are inherently more complex that smaller componant built systems. (Although those have problems too along the boundary interfaces.) Auto-makers put lots of time and money into making a car that A) doesn't fall apart and B) doesn't require a multi-billion dollar recall effort. Microsoft puts lots of time and money into trying to make their software more secure.
On the whole, I'd say the auto companies do a better job. :-) Thowing money at a problem very rarely solves the problem. The need to have an understanding of the problem, and how to fix the underlying problem is vital. I think that is where Microsoft fails. The systems they have in place (from what I hear) are more frustrating to the engineers than helpful.
I also have problems believing MS engineers are really motivated these days. Many of Microsoft's security issues have stemmed from their own code interactions which they implemented as deliberate features. Many more have been from sloppy programming (such as buffer overruns).
Trying to blame MS security issues on government mandated back doors smacks of plain political diatribe with a nice glossy veneer of ignorance on the top to give it a nice sheen.
I am not a resource! I am a free man!
FTA:Symantec researchers put the networking technology in Vista under a magnifying glass to determine its exposure to external attacks. The team said it found several flaws in build 5270 of Vista and even more in earlier test versions. However, these were all fixed by Microsoft in build 5384, the version of the operating system that was publicly released in May as Beta 2.
For those too lazy to read the article all it really says is. We found a few issues in early releases of Vista. They've already all been fixed by Beta 2, but we are guessing there are probably more.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Okay, compare it to the current release of Windows.
Oh, what's that? The newest release is Windows XP OEM SR2? Essentially a five-year-old OS with a few patches?
I guess it IS a fair comparison then, after all. Come make that same argument this same time next year if both:
a) Vista has shipped
AND
b) Folks are comparing Linux to XP rather than Vista
at that point. Until then, XP is the only valid comparison, unless you want to talk servers in which case Windows 2003 would be the logical comparison point.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50