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Security Firm Bypasses Patch Guard
filenavigator writes, "This week the security firm Authentium found a workaround for Patch Guard, the security feature Microsoft has embedded into the 64-bit version of Windows. It is supposed to keep out unsigned drivers, kernel modifications, and security company competitors. With Authentium's workaround it can be turned off, software installed, and turned right back on. Microsoft immediately responded by saying their reckless ways are endangering the security of Windows users and that they will disable this hack quickly."
What's more reckless... writing software with security holes and making its' selling point the high level of security it contains... or discovering an exploit that defies the marketing team?
Yes, Microsoft's reckless ways *are* destroying the security of Windows users.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
If Microsoft hadn't been so assholeish about it, no one would have needed to circumvent their "protections".
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
To users, security is about protecting the machine from external threats.
To Microsoft, security is about protecting the machine from everyone, including the owner and admin.
To users, security is about protecting the user's personal data and ability to use the machine.
To Microsoft, security is about protecting someone's data (not necessarily the user's) from everyone (perhaps including the user).
To the computer's owner, the machine is entirely their own domain, and exists for their own benefit to maximize their own interests.
To Microsoft, the machine is partitioned and not all of it belongs to the owner, ultimately to maximize Microsoft's interests.
To the computer's owner, their relationship to Microsoft is that the computer owner is the customer.
To Microsoft, their relationship to the computer's owner, is that the owner is both a customer and a product.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Malicious software and black hats will continue to use the pagefile exploit to overwrite what they need and do what they want, while legitimate software writers get locked out completely. Kind of defeats the purpose...or do you think that MS had a different purpose altogether?
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Well, I hate to be contrarian (actually I don't) but in this case Microsoft is attempting to address you point 1. in a reasonable way, by disallowing unsigned drivers. The fact that the protection can be broken is problematic. The fact that Microsoft is now looking to close the loophole is fine.
Isn't the whole reason for these security companies' existance because of Microsoft's "reckless ways"? Although the notion of a black box kernel can (and I'm sure - will be abused by MS by eliminating DRM circumvention - say goodby to virtual CD drivers), isn't this the only true way of making sure that nothing gets past the kernel? Kudos to MS for plugging this hole.
"If your parents never had children, chances are you wonât either." -Dick Cavett
It would seem to me that backwards compatibility is, once again, a security hole.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Yeah, sure it is a far fetched conspirational theory. Mods, before you mod it troll or offtopic or wierd or paranoid, take a look at the comments in the code outed by MainSoft. Obsolete version of Windows NT code. But it had numerous comments like, "Private entry point for Jim to get Excel access memory faster". Private entry points, calls that take shortcuts through several application layers and protocols... that is how security holes are made. Such close nexus between application coders and OS coders is the reason why such api-layers are violated.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Page Files... Wow.
I haven't had a machine with one of those in at least 5 years. I also don't have a 5 1/4" floppy drive anymore. Both turn a modern dual-core machine into an Apple ][e class machine.
In all seriousness, why is this even supported in 64bit Vista?
Memory is no longer a constraint in a 64bit system. If you can afford $450+ (widely leaked price) for the non-crippled Vista, you can afford the RAM. And if you're running a server, paging = death, even when using 15k RPM drives.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
sure it's not perfect, nothing is, but I find the effort of making patchguard a step in the right direction. Here's the thing, If it were possible to prevent anything but pre-approved code from running in kernel space, there would be basically no need for vendors to hook the kernel in the first place.
/dev/kmem which is a step in the right direction, but it's still not good enough.
Also, a lot of people are really talking it up about how Microsoft sucks and patchguard is just another flawed attempt at security by a company that doesn't know its ass from its elbow (or something to that nature)...but I haven't seen much if any effort by any of the other mainstream OSes to prevent kernel patching at all. It is downright trivial to write a Linux kernel module which hooks all sorts of critical data structures, same with FreeBSD and Solaris.
Is it the argument of the anti-patchguard people that if it can't be done perfectly, lets not even bother?
I guess the major driving point of my being a Microsoft apologist in this case is that, at least from an academic point of view, the kernel is supposed to be the only software which accesses these low level things and abstracts out interfaces for the rest of the software to utilize...the kernel shouldn't be exposing anything like direct disk access, or kernel space memory to user space....ever, under any circumstances. do that and things like rootkits are an awful lot harder to make in the first place.
Some Linux distros are starting to get the point by limiting and sometimes eliminating entirely access to
The way I see it, Microsoft may not be perfect, but at least they are trying.
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