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Windows 8 Changes Host File Blocking
An anonymous reader writes "Windows 8 has been confirmed to not only ignore, but also modify the hosts file. As soon as a website that should be blocked is accessed, the corresponding entry in the hosts file is removed, even if the hosts file is read-only. The hosts file is a popular, cross-platform way of blocking access to certain domains, such as ad-serving websites."
So, after reading the article this can be summarized as "Microsoft gives you one more reason to disable Windows Defender and use a third party AV app."
Just add the hosts file to the Defender's white list. If you know how to edit the hosts file, you should know how to add it to the white list.
Otherwise, who says the edits to that file were not malicious.
As comments in the article point out, this behavior can be turned off by going to the Windows Defender settings... But by and large this make sense for 95% of Windows users as they will have NO clue about the hosts file, and even less of a clue if it has been modified for a phising attack. Nice to see microsoft take another step forward in protecting the blindingly ignorant and inept.
Yeah, this is basically a cack-handed way of fixing malicious hosts redirects.
It'll prevent malicious programmes from sending you to fake Facebook, but at the expense of entirely overriding any preferences YOU as tthe computer owner might wish to make via the Hosts file.
It's a staggering level of incompetence that this is their solution. It needs to be changed and they need to find either another way of solving it or allow some form of granulation and user input.
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Hope you enjoy your new 'media consumption appliance'. Its becoming less and less of a 'general purpose computer' every day.
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Linux isn't an operating system, just a kernel. Fedora 17 is an operating system. Windows is an operating system. All of windows is developed and produced by microsoft.
I think the point you were tryign to make is that its an optional part of windows.
Considering that one of the sites they are unblocking is ad.doubleclick.net (which is often blocked because the user wants it blocked) then Microsoft is taking away an option from the user.
What will be interesting will be when someone compiles a list of the sites that will be unblocked ... and finds how many BANKS will still be subject to phishing like this ... but ad.doubleclick.net will be protected.
This is a stupid move by Microsoft done in a stupid fashion.
The hosts file can only be modified by administrators. Any additional protection is useless because if malware has gotten itself running as administrator, it can just kill or modify windows defender anyway.
This is another good reason to stick with Windows 7, giving Windows 8 a miss.
One common use of the hosts file is to test staging servers, particularly web servers before pushing them live, and without the complexity and time it takes to set up an additional DNS server.
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Yes, but among the vast majority of users (i.e., not Slashdot readers), the hosts file is an attack vector rather than an adblocker or development tool. All of that security training people should receive around double-checking what's in the address bar goes out the window when the hosts file has been compromised.
It sounds like MS's security tools have been a bit overzealous in trying to protect this file and can't determine what's a legitimate versus non-legit edit. But it's better to err on the side of being more rather than less secure here, especially with the amount of damage a maliciously-edited hosts file can do.
Basically: yes, it's Windows 8's fault that this happens, but it's not Microsoft trying to screw you over like the headline makes out. There should be a tool that can edit, save, and sign the hosts file to make this distinction, not entirely unlike visudo - and all operating systems should have something similar. My Cisco VPN client straight-up replaces my hosts file every time I connect, and while I was able to find and update the file it uses to make that less annoying (I have hosts for a lot of VMs in there), the fact that a non-privileged application can do that is quite scary.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Basically: yes, it's Windows 8's fault that this happens, but it's not Microsoft trying to screw you over like the headline makes out.
No, it's Microsoft being stupid and ignoring its own security. If a non-privileged program is permitted to ignore the fact that a file is set to be Read-Only, you have absolutely no protection against malicious code changing anything it wants. All it has to do is infect Windows Defender and it can do anything it wants. If I were still a Windows user, I'd be very reluctant to trust Windows 8 at this point because of this obvious lack of common sense in how it handles this.
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Hardly. At the enterprise level there are multiple different ways of handling situations such as this. Which one(s) you choose depends upon how you've organized Active Directory and your network.
But a different point is that this is an OLD way of phishing. The phisher is publishing the IP addresses that need to be blocked. So, again, at the enterprise level this kind of phishing would not be an issue.
If a phisher really needed to redirect traffic like that he'd have an easier time just getting the information in the local machine's DNS cache. That way it would never show up in the hosts file which means that it would be that much harder to spot. Then just keep updating the DNS cache.
So this is the wrong solution to the wrong problem and it is implemented in the wrong way. And it will probably cause more issues in the future as 3rd party developers have to work around not having the hosts file as a reliable option any more.
Nice way to remove a useful tool that's been around for decades.
From the article, Two of the sites that you can’t block using the hosts file are facebook.com and ad.doubleclick.net
I started using the hosts file over a decade ago, when I traced crashes that I was having to doubleclick.net. Ad supported software that I was using was receiving files from them, but it was doing a lot more than just displaying the ads (which I would not have objected to). Many users were experiencing this, but the author would not fix it so I and others started blocking the site (which resolved the problem, although the author lost some small amount of revenue).
More recently I have also started blocking facebook. I never use it, have no account there, but I've noticed an awful lot of network traffic going to and from my site with facebook.com. I'm not even a member, so I don't feel the need for them to track most of the sites that I visit. The hosts file has so far worked very well for this.
And argument that this feature is in any way for the benefit of the clueless user is bogus. The common way to block a site via the hosts file is to equate it to the IP address 127.0.0.1, which is the local machine. If Microsoft were doing this for the benefit of their users then they would simply look at the hosts file and, if they found redirects for sites that they were concerned about that were not pointed to the local machine, they might well conclude that it was potentially an attempt to hijack a domain name and then, after warning the user (and even asking him) correct the problem. This would even show the user that Microsoft was doing something good for the user for a change. But if the address is redirected to the local machine, the only reasonable conclusion that I can see is that the user wanted it that way (as it provides no attack vector). It took me about 30 seconds to realize that changing 127.0.0.1 redirects was user unfriendly and could easily be avoided if Microsoft were really concerned about their users who paid for the software. They just have to look at the IP address that the hosts file contains and if it is 127.0.0.1 then allow it to stay! Clearly Microsoft realized this too. The only reasonable conclusion is that they are doing this because they have a motive that is against customers interests.
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The answer is simple enough:
If you're already smart enough to edit the hosts file, you should be smart enough to add hosts to Windows Defender exclusion list.
Is this a change from the way that things were done in the past? Of course it is. This is how systems become more secure for the average user. Average Joe isn't messing with hosts.
Chicken Little, the sky is not falling.
Within NTFS permissions, an explicit "Deny" will take priority over an explicit "Allow". Have they even tried flagging the file with deny writes? In theory, that should prevent modifications to the file.
It's a pain in the ass, but you could always reset the NTFS permissions via ownership and inheritance each time you wanted to make or change an entry to the host file.
Life is not for the lazy.
the Hosts file is targeted my malware to redirect to malicious sites and to keep under the radar to infect systems after they have been clean. (or even to a locally hosted proxy to infect sites like Facebook) Personally, I've seen facebook and myspace targeted in it. Never seen doubleclick but my guess is doubleclick is a target so that they can redirect to their own profit generating ads, or more malware to attempt to extort money out of people.
My guess is that the sites defender removes from hosts are sites that have been targeted by malware in the past. Frankly, I'd like to see the list of domains it looks for, but I'm sure that I woudn't want any of them redirected to some scumware site trying to pawn off fake antivirus.
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