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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."
I have a simpler pc health idea, stop installing the disease that is windows.
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?
Shh.
Every connected device will be mandated to have the bottom 64 bits of its ipv6 address store a pc health certification identifier which will link to their owner's unique citizen identifier. I told you this was coming...
If you want to model how our body recognises and deals with disease, you need to concentrate on whitelists, rather than blacklists. Vaccinations are similar to a community blacklist, but for most pathogens our own immune system can work out what things are appropriate to reject.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
This is a not-at-all-terrible idea that will ensure people are up to date with such security patches as WGA. Bravo, Microsoft, bravo.
RUN NORTON OR NO INTERNET
If those are my only two choices, I'll take NO INTERNET please.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Can you imagine the hysterics if the government had proposed this! But it's a company, so I'm sure it's all OK.
There is no cure for stupid.
while bot-infected PCs might be barred from the Internet.
Or rather, machines that don't have the right "health certificate". You know, like ones running discontinued operating systems, or "unsupported" operating systems.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I don't think they are after linux but after XP equipped old pcs, whose users are more likely to buy a new pc if they have issues with "health certificates".
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
M$ should be bared from the Internet.
Why do you make me think of naked Ballmer? What did I ever do to you?
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"
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
They just want to lock out Open-Source OSes, which won't have such a procedure due to the fact that it doesn't use binary-only distros with checksums built into the low-level OS.
Where is the USDOJ when you need them to remind Microsoft about their recent trip down anti-trust lane? Not to mention a nasty little thing called "collusion" - whichever AV and PKI vendors are selected naturally benefit, and I imagine all the ISPs will have to agree to enforce this as well or suffer some consequence.
A framework like this makes two assumptions that spell doom for future innovation by free thinkers: Microsoft Windows on every consumer device that connects to the Internet and every device using "Microsoft approved/recognized security software." Not a bad approach at first blush since that describes a large part of the marketplace and at least 100% of the problem, but honestly - there are better ways to solve this than trying to fit the future Internet ecosystem into Ballmer's limited imagination.
Read the paper. Please. And look for it soon as a key exhibit at the next anti-trust action against Microsoft.
First; who will be administering this program? Under what authority could an organization possibly 'certify' systems that are located around the world?
Next; How often would these certificates need to be updated? Every time a vendor issues a new patch?
Third; What kind of crazy-ass DRM would be needed to keep folks from just spoofing the certificates?
Unfortunately, this is the kind of simplistic easy-to-follow proposal that our congress-critter really go for... yeesh.
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.
I've been running since the early 80s, and have yet to have anything of that sort found on any machine under my control. Which is more than I can say for the networks I've seen "protected" by the major security vendors, every single one of them has regular problems with malware infections. So, when Microsoft can show me a network that's been running under their system for say 5 years with no machine on it ever needing to be cleaned of malware, then I'll take their recommendations seriously. Until then, well, I'll stick with the procedures and policies that've given me a 25+-year clean track record.
Oh, and one of those policies? No Microsoft software unless absolutely necessary, and when necessary it's use should be heavily controlled and restricted to only those things it's necessary for.
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.
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
At least in the U.S. it's hard to see how MS can justify anything because of pirates. Unless you build your own PC you are paying for Windows anyway. Even if you specifically look for a prebuilt PC without Windows it's hard (it is a small fraction of the market) to find one where you don't pay for Windows whether or not it's already installed. It is a travesty how hard they make it for legitimate users to reinstall Windows.
:) ) and then one day came up with the WGA crap. He typed in his valid COA key on the bottom and Vista rejected.
In countries where MS doesn't already have a contract to license Windows for every PC sold by a company it's hard to argue that people would pay for Windows separately if they couldn't pirate it.
My roommates laptop came with Vista Home. It has a COA key sticker on the bottom. Unfortunately he didn't make a restore disk before his computer crashed. He got a Vista Home CD from a friend. It installed fine(fine meaning I had to find wireless drivers that would work. Ubuntu sees it out of the box
Now I have a few options to help him.
Call MS for support I should never need to activate a valid license.
Install a cracked version of Windows
Give him another reason to use Linux.
Why would MS even create a situation where 2 and 3 look like the least hassle? In the many closed vs open debates that go on here I often see people ask why anyone would complain about a system that is closed and marketed as such. I don't care how it's marketed closed proprietary systems are bad for technology and society. No matter how you market cigarettes they are bad for you. No matter how you market closed proprietary systems they are bad for society. Won't anyone think of the children? Our culture is being DRM'd, manipulated, and controlled by the golden calf instead of by people.
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
Why in the devil do you have ssh available to the world?
I almost automatically moderated this up, but decided instead to respond.
ssh is Secure Shell. It is supposed to be a secure method of accessing a system (remote or otherwise). It does this job well.
So well, in fact, that there are computers out there whose job it is to bounce username/password combos off machines, slowly, in order to attempt to compromise them. Some (most?) of these machines are simply poorly secured systems that have been previously compromised, and are now doing the bidding of an outside force. Many of these "compromised hosts" can act in concert, spreading the attacks out not only over time, but also over IPs, making them difficult to detect and/or block.
One solution is to watch vigilantly for these attacks, and block the IP addresses of those machines from your ssh port, or (as is more common) to block them from touching your network at all. Those machines will get lonely, eventually...
Another solution is to implement some other form of security, either replacing the default security (using ssh keys instead of passwords, for example), or augmenting (read: hiding) it (using port-knocking, non-standard ssh ports, etc). These methods can be combined, to make an even more secure system.
Unfortunately for all of these methods, the average user is unable or unwilling to perform them, due to complexity. Unfortunately for all of us, the moment it becomes simple enough for the average user to figure out (and thus use) these methods, there will be an exploit that attacks the newly-simplified access method.
In short, having sshd open to the world, on the standard port, is probably an indication that a system can be broken into more easily than one which does not appear to be running sshd on the standard port. This really says not much about the security of the system itself, and the only reason to secure your ssh more than the default configuration already is (valid username/password required) is to keep from having huge log files full of failed attempts to crack into your system.
Personally, I use a combination of several of the ideas I offered above, because I am lazy and hate reading logfiles, especially when it seems critical that I must do so (30 attempts to crack my ssh key in an hour? bad monkey, no cheeto!) It is much easier, less stressful, and not time-consuming in the slightest to have my firewall simply drop all packets destined for port 22.
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Every single time I see the stupid little popup telling me my Windows machine is possibly infected, I click on it.
WHAT ELSE DOES MICROSOFT WANT FROM ME?!?!
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book