Microsoft Eyes PC Isolation Ward To Thwart Botnets

CWmike writes "In a paper published Wednesday (PDF), Scott Charney, who heads Microsoft's trustworthy computing group, spelled out a concept of 'collective defense' that he said was modeled after public health measures like vaccinations and quarantines. The aim: To block botnet-infected computers from connecting to the Internet. Under the proposal, PCs would be issued a 'health certificate' that showed whether the system was fully patched, that it was running security software and a firewall, and that it was malware-free. Machines with deficiencies would require patching or an antivirus update, while bot-infected PCs might be barred from the Internet."

Comments

A better PC health idea

[h4rr4r]

I have a simpler pc health idea, stop installing the disease that is windows.

Re:A better PC health idea

[Moryath]

While your response was flip, I can see a number of ISPs - who already have policies of "sorry all we support is Windows" if you call in because of trouble on the line, and who have script-following Indian monkeys who will demand to know your OS before talking about anything else to replace ACTUAL customer service - using this at Microsoft's behest.

"Ohh, sorry. You're running OSX or Linux? We can't scan those for their patches so we're just going to block you off. Come back when you have a nice Win7 box. Oh, you signed a contract for a year of service? If you read the 4-point fonted small type on page 37 you'll see it clearly states in paragraph 18 line 3 that only systems with fully updated Windows 7 and an active virus scan package from an approved vendor such as Symantec or McAfee will be allowed access to the internet in order to keep the service trouble-free..."

Maybe Apple would be able to cry foul and get their systems allowed too, but home Linux users would pretty much be out of luck. And so much for anyone who responsibly has a home system with a hardware NAT and their ports properly firewalled too...

Re:A better PC health idea

[postbigbang]

I double dog dare you to vet a wifi-connected smartphone. No bases covered *at all*. Your idea only works on flat networks, rather than multi-tiered, as well. It isn't as easy as it looks.

And when you get close, your help desk lines light up with people that can't get logged on because you set your criteria too tightly and they don't have remediation for their Ubuntu 10.10.... or even their freaking Macs. The whole rubric here is to sell more Microsoft stuff underneath the perceived goodwill proffered by trying to vet then shackle machines whose state is unknown.

Re:A better PC health idea

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

"Microsoft only clients" pretty much adequately describes the malware-bearing portion of the Internet!

You only need to block access to a protected resource - who's management ELECTS this level of defense.

The real play is NOT to protect the Online Bank or Payment Portal.

It is to create a "forcing function" by which the customer remedies his client - also to helpfully cooperate on making those remedies accessible.

Why? Because Internet business models rely heavily on trust and reputation. As occurrences like "account takeover" and fraudulent transactions become more common, consumer trust in online modes for business and commerce will erode.

Your AmEx's, Amazon's and Turbo Tax's (Names from a hat - not my customers) are vested in margins that are supportable through online delivery. Their CSOs are charged with not only safeguarding their own applications and infrastructure, but mitigating the negative effects of client vulnerability on the online business model. This is a big enough problem that it drives enterprises together, at the CSO and CTO levels. They want a solution that raises the general level of trust and confidence in Internet uses.

They all see this as a problem with Microsoft - if not at fault - at its hub.

Now, Corporate Microsoft wants to use this reasonable, cooperative approach to deny service in the broadest possible way. In light of this week's failure of the Internet blacklist bill (COICA) to be ratified, without vote, in committee? I smell an agenda.

Microsoft are just the stalking-horse for Congressional supporters of COICA to use: "See, if we don't act with responsible legislation, then Industry will take the matters into its own hands!"

Trust me. I have seen how these guys work.

Re:A better PC health idea

[bloodhawk]

isolating different machines has never been a problem, the problem is that isolation is not what people are after, they want to read documents and access their apps on their portable devices, they want to use whatever they prefer external to the organisation and still have their connectivity. isolating and blocking is easy, safely permitting is the problem here.

Re:A better PC health idea

[DAldredge]

Windows 7 isn't have "horrible uptake numbers" It is actually doing very well.

Re:A better PC health idea

[Your.Master]

After three years? Are you posting from a time warp? Windows 7 general availability was October 22, 2009. It hasn't even been 1 year. And yet its install base is about a third of a product that has been on sale for almost *9* years, of which for less than 3 of those years there was another OS product (which did not do so well in the marketplace).

Even if you decided to change the subject by combining Vista and Windows 7, they combine to well over 1/3 of XP's marketshare in well under 3 years.

So let's replace that by something that makes more sense:

"Failing to replace more than a third of a previous OS product before 1 year".

I'd say that this does not contradict doing well *at all*.

Pay for it?

[headkase]

And who exactly is going to pay for this? If your system is not infected can you be exempted from a "monthly fee" or is it punishing everyone when Windows is the majority of infections? Maybe Microsoft should pay for it all?

Further proof

[Darkenole]

There is no cure for stupid.

File under "Dumb Ideas"

[vtcodger]

If Microsoft or anyone else were capable of certifying a computer to be malware free, and being right about it, malware wouldn't be much of a problem, now would it?

File under "Dumb Ideas"

Re:File under "Dumb Ideas"

[MightyMartian]

Not if the core idea is to cripple any competing operating system by depriving them of Internet access, under the guise of "security".

Re:File under "Dumb Ideas"

[adjuster]

It's worse than that. The idea is to introduce pervasive and potentially legally-mandated "trusted computing".

Re:Modelling real disease?

[girlintraining]

Sigh. They don't want vaccinations. They want their client base spending money on half-baked security solutions. So in addition to the license, you have to pay for a certificate, pay for software certification (goodbye open source), pay for the software, pay for the bandwidth to keep your system online all the time, pay pay pay pay pay....

And nothing will change except you'll be paying more.

This would get abused

[erroneus]

Being anti-virus protected and updated sounds like a great idea until you ask questions like "which vendors of antivirus are excluded?" and "which updates will Microsoft push as critical that are just another piece of crapware or something that would break compatibility with something important to the user?"

Microsoft should be responsible. They should push out adblockers and javascript blockers. It makes browsing a lot safer. Oh no... commercial interests would be pissed and we know those interests are of more importance/significance than the end users are... remember Vista and all that DRM encumbered crap? We all know they had the consumer in mind when they did that.

Predicated on "trusted computing"...

[adjuster]

It seems like most everybody doesn't understand (or notice footnote 14 on page 5) that, in order for this to work, all the subject devices must have trusted processing capability. That means "TPM" chips, signed OS kernels / hypervisors, and the inability to run untrusted root-level code. Take a second to laugh at the idea that anyone will be able to introduce a bug-free hypervisor / TPM environment that can't run unsigned and untrusted code. After you're done laughing at that I'd recommend being angered at the notion of such a thing, since it will effectively eliminate control of the devices owned by consumers.. turning every device with a "clean bill of health" into a walled-garden appliance. As long as consumers own and control their general purpose devices there will never be a way to do what this paper describes. Frankly, I'm alright with that. We'd do a lot better to just assume that every device is untrusted and act accordingly.

Two Words: "Microsoft's trustworthy"

[tomhudson]

They lost me at "Microsoft's trustworthy $INSERT_ANYTHING".

Sorry, but Microsoft lost my trust more than a decade ago. Microsoft is like an abusive boyfriend who says "Trust me - I've changed, this time is really different ..."

The only right response to both is "Drop dead!"

-- Barbie

Re:Two Words: "Microsoft's trustworthy"

[Hylandr]

What this really boils down to is:

We are sorry, XP is no longer supported and a patch is not available. You will not be allowed to connect to the Internet. Here's a $7 Rebate for Windows 7.

- Dan.