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Word Vulnerability Compromised US State Dept.
hf256 writes "Apparently hackers using an undisclosed (at the time) vulnerability compromised the State Departments network using a Word document sent as an email attachment. Investigators found multiple instances of infection, informed Microsoft, then had to sever internet connectivity to avoid leaking too much data!"
Well this should push everything towards open document formats a bit more, so it might just be a good thing...
It seems those hackers missed the Philippines and accidentally hit the state department instead
The fact that a simple Word document can cause such a big problem is really sad. How can you tell a few thousand of people not to open word document attachment? I mean, where I work, users receive tons of documents (pdf, office, autocad) files by email from vendors and such, I guess the only defense is good email filtering but still a 0-day attack would make that useless.
Queue the legion of Microsoft apologists, saying things like:
a) It's only because MS Office has the largest market share, this could of happened to any office suite!
b) It's not a big deal, obviously the state department's IT department is incompetent.
c) Damn Hackers, always trying to ruin a good thing!
d) Macs run on Intel processors now, so they're vulnerable too!
e) This is probably because the NSA sponsors SELinux.
f) In Soviet Russia, MS Office hacks YOU!
Did I miss any?
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
1) the attack, once found, would have a bevy of coders working on it (we hope, of course)
2) the testing and regression doesn't have the dependency matrix that Word does, and it's likely that if there was a link, it could be both understood and remedied quickly thru an open code supply chain
3) multiple hackers (oops, I mean coders) would likely offer variances of a patch, of which perhaps several would/could be part of the subsequent 'patched' tree
4) eight weeks is a travesty, and that the State Department of the United States of America didn't have an IDF that could detect the abberant traffic is just plain malfeasant. Heads should roll.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
At first, the hackers did not immediately appear to try stealing any U.S. government data. Authorities quietly monitored the hackers' activity, then tripwires severed Internet connections
If you find evidence of a break-in, its possible the attackers are also connecting in a way you haven't yet detected. Hope they know what they're doing. Given their reputation, I doubt it.
What magical office software do you use that is apparently 100% bug free?
Emacs
*ducks and runs*
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
I had an interesting discussion the other day with some colleagues and we came to a consensus that many Microsoft products were and still are, or at least inherit, a design philosophy similar to that of the Internet when it was first created. The Internet was built on a basis of implied trust and as we have seen in present times, particularly with e-mail and the SMTP protocol, this model of design is a poor foundation. To counter these issues we need to design more and cleverer countermeasures in an escalating war with miscreants; a parallel we also see in Microsoft products with never ending cycle of Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware updates and patches required to deal with both programming flaws are poor design choices that assumed trust (recall the ILOVEYOU debacle). The real kicker is that you could argue that many of the problems we now face on the Internet are largely due to poor design in Microsoft software which as I noted parallels an original design methodology of the Internet. We've had several articles earlier in the week pushing a view that the Internet needed to be re-architected due to its flawed security design (although I think it's more about commerce and control but I won't go there for now) - is it not also time to re-architect Microsoft and their approach to developing products? Would we even have these problems if not for Microsoft? My two cents.
...knowing that your products were banned from the State Department for some theoretical and highly unlikely exploit, while Microsoft Word continues to be used there despite a documented (no pun intended) security breach attributed to it.
Most people who are not familiar with IT in the US Government have NO IDEA how dependent even the military is on MS products. Think MS based virii, worms and exploits aren't on classified networks? Networks that don't even share a common hardware link to the internet...