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1 In 3 Windows PCs Still Vulnerable To Worm Attack
CWmike writes "The worm that has infected several million Windows PCs, Downadup or 'Conficker,' is having a field day because nearly a third of all systems remain unpatched 80 days after Microsoft rolled out an emergency fix, security firm Qualys said. Downadup surged dramatically this week and has infected an estimated 3.5 million PCs so far, according to Finnish security company F-Secure Corp. The worm exploits a bug in the Windows Server service used in Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Server 2003, and Server 2008. Qualys' CTO said, 'These slow [corporate] patch cycles are simply not acceptable. They lead directly to these high infection rates.'" This is indicative of why some are calling for Microsoft to rethink Patch Tuesday, as reader buzzardsbay pointed out.
I know a lot of people who are afraid of updates because of the genuine advantage validation. They got student priced versions of the software 5 years ago and are no longer students. They don't want to risk losing Visio/Word/PowerPoint or having some other software disabled on their computer.
The fear factor of automated reporting/validation is stopping a lot of people from running the updates.
What drives me absolutely nuts is how people who are not computer professionals talk about patches with contempt. In any magazine article about an operating system, whether it be from the Windows family, Mac OS X, or Linux, when the subject of patches comes up, the writer will usually say something to the effect that a downside of using this operating system is the high frequency of patches.
In a perfect world, software would have zero bugs (security holes are bugs, too, if you think about it). No product would have any problems. Everything would be perfect. There would be no need for patches.
But unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world, and software does have bugs. When patches are available at a frequency such as daily (as is sometimes the case if you use Ubuntu, patches not only for the OS but for any programs you have installed too), or every few weeks as is the case with Mac OS X, you know that people behind the product are responsible, are continuing to develop and refine the software, and you benefit from those refinements at the frequency of the patches.
We all know this, yet because many people feel contempt toward software patches, and because magazines and newspapers write inaccurately about this subject, many boxes out there are vulnerable to many types of attack, and this won't change any time soon. I think some effort needs to be expended by the marketing departments of various software companies to convince people that patches are good, not bad.
I just had one additional thought about this Windows patch. Perhaps some of these boxes are using illegitimate copies of Windows and are therefore ineligible for the patch?
That works well in home scenarios where the router is the only possible entry point of a worm. In office environments, you have laptop users that travel. They may or may not connect from home, often with mobile access or from their private line. Something you cannot shield, and more often than not is not shielded.
I've been lobbying in various consulting sessions that laptops from traveling workers are to be seen as "semi-trustworthy", if that. Because they can and do connect not only from within the trusted and firewalled network, but because of this very reason, they can connect in insecure scenarios and may be infected when they connect to the company networks. I have been lobbying to put them in a separate network ("separate but equal" has such a bad ring, but in this case it's pretty much what the idea is). If the worst case happens, it would at least only infect a usually very manageable number of computers instead of the whole corporate network.
Well, I guess I finally have a real life example of what happens when you don't heed it. Companies are like little kids, you have to let them touch the stove once before they believe you it's hot. But fortunately, some companies are willing to learn from the mistake of others...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
yes, yes, and yes.
when something malicious got through AVG, spybot, and adaware i was clued in when fdsb423.exe started trying to connect with the internet. a software firewall is not a defense, but it is a good way to tell that you have something going on. i also agree it is fun to turn off the dial-home on software that doesn't need to talk to it's mommy. HP printer drivers, i am looking at you.