Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Admits XP Has Same Bug As Win2K
Arashtamere sends in a Computerworld story on a security flaw in the Windows 2000 pseudo-random number generator published by Israeli researchers earlier this month. Microsoft has now admitted that the flaw is present in XP too. Microsoft denies that the bug is a security vulnerability, since an attacker would have to have gained administrative access to a system before exploiting it. (The Israeli researchers point out that many common exploits provide admin access.) This stance apparently lets them off the hook for patching Win2K, which is in "extended support" mode, though it powers about 9% of US and EU business computers. Microsoft said that XP SP3, due in the first half of next year, will fix the bug. The company said that Vista, Windows Server 2003 SP2, and the new Windows Server 2008 are not vulnerable.
if you already have admin access via another "exploit" why would you bother attacking via random number generator, seems like its a lot of fuss over nothing, Windows has alwayss been vunerable locally (luckily for admins whose users forget passwords etc) so the most worry is over a remote exploit which this flaw isnt. But iam sure some million dollar company will sell a solution for this, paranoia is a great sales tool in the murky world of snake oil, cough i mean computer security
If you have admin access, the battle's already lost. What's the point of running a complex process to obtain their password when you have full access to everything on their computer? Might as well just drop in a keylogger and get the same info much easier.
Comment of the year
This article refers to this summary of this paper
I fail to see why you would need administative privelidges however. You would only need to run in the userspace of the process that did run the random number generator before. Having administrative privs would be nice to inject code into that userspace, but is not needed i think.
It can get even worse if from a public key part the random number that was used to generate it can be extracted, what was done in early ssl implementation attacks.
Why is this flamebait? Surely the original post and the pathetic summary was flamebait?
As lots of people have commented, if you have admin rights you own the box.
Microsoft claims this is not a "security vulnerability" because the machine has to already have been cracked to exploit it.
That is not 100% correct.
It is still a "security vulnerability".
It just cannot be exploited to increase your access on that machine.
That we know of. Today. So the code still needs to be patched. Security is not an "either / or" situation. You have to reduce the effectiveness of threats.
While in general I think open-source and closed-source software can coexist, I think this is a pretty good example of why anything related to crypto should be open. All of public key cryptography relies on the secrecy of private keys, not on the secrecy of the algorithm itself. And while they might have faithfully implemented the algorithm, who knows what kinds of arguments/whatever to the crypto functions might cause undesired results -- it's just too hard to test.
In any case, the thing that surprised me most from the article was that Windows 2000 users would be left out in the cold: "Because the company has determined that the PRNG problem is not a security vulnerability, it is unlikely to provide a patch [for Win2K]." Wow. Especially when it's something this easy to fix. This bug also solves any attacker's problem of trying to sort valuable from non-valuable information, since presumably any valuable information (credit cards used online, etc) will use encryption. And while someone suggested that a program should use its own random number generator, there is a problem because, in general, your application (not running as Admin) shouldn't have access to nearly the same amount of entropy sources (like network activity, GUI inputs, etc).
--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation -- great gift!
It's flamebait because the GP didn't have to call people retarded, in order to get his or her point across.
They also could have worded this a lot more diplomatically than they did. So yes, the GP is flamebait.
No tyrant thrives when every subject says no.
No worries about whether or not it's even legal to fix a machine that I'm using to run my business.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Knowing someone's password can be handy. Most folks use the same password on multiple machines or entire networks. Moreover they seldom change them.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.