US-CERT Says Microsoft's Advice On Downadup Worm Bogus

CWmike writes "Microsoft's advice on disabling Windows' 'Autorun' feature is flawed, the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) said today, and it leaves users who rely on its guidelines to protect their PCs against the fast-spreading Downadup worm open to attack. US-CERT said in an alert that Microsoft's instructions on turning off Autorun are 'not fully effective' and 'could be considered a vulnerability.' The flaw in Microsoft's guidelines are important at the moment, because the 'Downadup' worm, which has compromised more computers than any other attack in years, can spread through USB devices, such as flash drives and cameras, by taking advantage of Windows' Autorun and Autoplay features."

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Re:Even if it doesn't work...

[afidel]

The problem is the Microsoft solution doesn't really disable autorun fully because they didn't think of all codepaths by which the behavior can be launched. The solution CERT gives is beautiful in its simplicity:
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\Autorun.inf]
@="@SYS:DoesNotExist"

Basically it just associates autorun.inf with a NULL system function as the default handler.

Re: what's a worm?

[http]

Did nothing?? What planet were you on?
The machine took out more than a lot of mail servers, bringing them to a grinding halt for the duration.

Re:Non-Windows User Here

[KindMind]

The Register says that the US-CERT article is based on an old MS article, and has since updated.
There's a right and wrong way to disable Windows Autorun
How to correct "disable Autorun registry key" enforcement in Windows

Re:Windows itself is a vulnerability.

[betterunixthanunix]

"Or you could, oh I don't know, not let morons near your computer?"

Which is just not feasible sometimes. Every few weeks, someone I am working with -- yes, some of us must work with others on our computers -- brings me some files on a thumb drive. I have no choice but to plug that drive into my computer and deal with it, other than not getting my work done at all.

"Putting them in a limited user account and putting a good AV to scan whatever folder they are downloading crap to usually does the trick."

When I used to repair computers, I found that doing this invariably led to questions like, "Why can't I install [insert well known program name here]?" Windows systems really are not oriented toward this sort of security for single users who cannot just call up their helpdesk whenever they need some software installed.

"If you put these types on OSX or Linux they would break just as much as they do on Windows. They would just be loading "Hot_Pron_codec.dmg" or "killer_tune.sh" instead of an .exe."

Except that in OSX and Linux (and BSD and Solaris and all *nix systems) files have to be explicitly declared executable. A user receiving LatestPopSong.mp3.sh would just sit there confused and asking, "Why does it keep opening this song in a text editor? Why does my music player keep getting confused?" In distros that enable SELinux, you can have even more security -- for example, a policy that prevents programs which are not part of Firefox from writing to the Firefox configuration, which would prevent typical virus-installing-keylogger-in-web browser attacks that seem to be so common today; such a policy could be maintained by the distro packagers themselves; in fact, Fedora already gives the .mozilla/ folder a different context. Sure, you can create such a security policy in Windows, but it is not done by default.

Yes, if administered by experts, Windows can remain secure even when connected to the Internet, I will not deny that. Most single user Windows installations are not administered by experts, and unlike big name Linux distros, Microsoft does not have thousands of people tuning the Windows security policies, nor do they have tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of people fixing bugs.