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Microsoft Blasts Spy Agencies For Leaked Exploits Used By WanaDecrypt0r (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader shares Engadget's report about Microsoft's response to the massive WanaDecrypt0r ransomware attack:
Company president Brad Smith has posted a response to the attack that roasts the NSA, CIA and other intelligence agencies for hogging security vulnerabilities instead of disclosing them to be fixed. There's an "emerging pattern" of these stockpiles leaking out, he says, and they cause "widespread damage" when that happens. He goes so far as to liken it to a physical weapons leak -- it's as if the US military had "some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen"... Microsoft had already floated the concept of a "Digital Geneva Convention" that required governments to report security holes, but the idea has gained a new sense of urgency in light of the recent ransomware chaos... While Microsoft makes its own efforts by rushing out patches and sharing concerns with other companies, it also chastises customers who could have closed the WannaCry hole two months earlier but didn't.
BrianFagioli shared a BetaNews article arguing Microsoft "should absolutely not shoulder any of the responsibility. After all, the vulnerability that led to the disaster was patched back in March." But troublemaker_23 notes that ITwire still faults Microsoft for not planning ahead, since in February 150 million people were still using Windows XP.
BrianFagioli shared a BetaNews article arguing Microsoft "should absolutely not shoulder any of the responsibility. After all, the vulnerability that led to the disaster was patched back in March." But troublemaker_23 notes that ITwire still faults Microsoft for not planning ahead, since in February 150 million people were still using Windows XP.
Any weapon ban treaty has a problem of detecting violations. If one cannot easily detect violations, one cannot enforce the treaty effectively. For pretty much every nuclear weapons treaty the biggest stumbling block has almost always been verification that people are adhering to it. At least there, there's infrastructure to look at. Trying to determine that governments aren't holding back tiny little files stored away somewhere would be much more difficult. In that context, such a treaty would be unlikely to succeed.
Nobody is perfect, all software has vulnerabilities. Had our relevant TLAs bothered to tell the relevant companies about the holes they found we would all be a hundredfold safer. But no, they kept them secret, figuring they could hack Some Bad Guy's computer and Stop Some Low Level Bad Thing.
The fault here lies in our countries TLA's deciding it was better to leave 100% of the country at risk hoping they would be able to exploit a hole before someone else could exploit that same hole against us.
Fuck the NSA, CIA, FBI, and everyone else that finds security issues and keeps them private. They are the problem, not Microsoft.
Please forward me your bug-free code for review and then we'll talk.
This exploit exists in an old protocol no one uses any more. Is any vulnerability avoidable? Sure. Should this one have been fixed, or the code deprecated earlier, absolutely. Could /you/ write a hundred million lines of code and not have a critical vulnerability? In case it's not obvious (to you), that was a rhetorical question.
I am no fan of Microsoft. I never have been. But in this case, the real evil was perpetrated (and there is no other word for it) by the NSA. An agency of the United States government, one specifically tasked with the protection of US citizens, learned of a vulnerability in an operating system used in critical applications throughout the country, used by the majority of its citizens, and not even accidentally sat on it - they purposefully, with consideration and intent, sat on that information. Not only that, but they then developed a weapon to exploit it, lost control of that weapon, and it is now in the wild where it can do the most damage.
This is a combination of willful dereliction of duty, and gross negligence. This shouldn't be Microsoft complaining, this should be the director of the NSA hauled in handcuffs before congress.
This hacking provides the perfect argument against built-in backdoors that would enable the government to spy on people (but only when they wanted). All it takes is one leak and *boom* you have out of control hacking by everyone but the government.
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This is something a compiler will usually show a warning. If it did not, then the compiler is to blame.
Guy in India writing the outsourced Microsoft code: "That stupid compiler always generates so many warnings I just turned the warnings off. The code compiles fine I don't see what the problem is."
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Wait until one of these leaked/lost TLA tools becomes used by a 3rd party in such a way that it looks like a state-sponsored attack on one of their enemies. Or, equally likely, a 'leaked/lost' tool used by a 1st party, with a '3rd party did it' plausible deniability argument. It's like separating a 'rogue terrorist group' from a 'state-sponsored terrorist group'.
I imagine soon, a major power will say "all attacks by tools that could only have been created by a state actor, will be responded to as if actually used by that actor" and then the "oops, my WMD fell off the back of a truck, my bad" excuse will no longer work. It may soon be considered too dangerous to hoard these exploits, as their inevitable leak will harm their creator more than if they had never been created in the first place. Taking bets on if that happens before or after the IT world figures out how to secure their shit.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
One of the problems is that MS poisoned any good will about upgrading with their own actions... first by more or less tricking people into upgrading to Windows 10, and second, by making that upgrade (and all other upgrades) less trusted by pushing telemetry as required updates, and by making Windows 10 updates incredibly annoying, disruptive, and on occasion, simply broken.
I don't blame MS for not writing perfect code, especially older code. No OS used today has zero exploits, so I think it's disingenuous to bash Microsoft with each new bug found but somehow give Linux a pass when the same damned things happen. But I'm sure as hell going to blame them for encouraging so many people to distrust Microsoft's own security patches in the first place, even going so far as to actively block them. That was all because of their OWN tone-deaf policies of "we know what's best for you, so shut up and update. Oh, and don't mind the telemetry we're slurping up. We promise its benign. What? No, there's no way to turn it off."
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
secure Win10
+1 Funny
You're also ignoring the huge elephant in the room - that Microsoft probably knew about that vulnerability or even better, created it in conjunction with the NSA et al. By the way - WINDOWS 10 ALSO REQUIRED A "FIX". This is not a "zero day vulnerability", it's a back-door plain and simple.
The other elephant is that a lot of very expensive hardware still runs on WinXP (and other less-recent but still old versions), can't be upgraded to the new version, and is too expensive to replace.
Microsoft will still support WinXP, but basically it means a) they have the patches to prevent malware, but b) they'll only give it to you if you pay them.
Oh, and the price for WinXP support doubles yearly (someone else said that - don't know if it's true).
So effectively Microsoft is saying that you have to throw out and repurchase all of your medical equipment, all of your research equipment, and all of your manufacturing equipment - even if it's still working - because they want you to purchase a new version of their OS.
Oh, and the new version pushes adware on you and installs whatever the fuck Microsoft wants and reboots the system whenever it damn well pleases.
Yeah, I think Microsoft can shoulder at least *some* of the blame for this.
They're patching XP for chrissakes.
No, they're patching a very old product that they told people - for years straight - to stop using, and they explained why. You do get this, right?
It's hard to stop using a system when it requires repurchasing the $100,000 hospital X-ray machine that it runs.
Did you think every hospital should just throw out all it's working equipment and purchase new ones? For hospitals in Africa and India as well?
"While Microsoft makes its own efforts by rushing out patches and sharing concerns with other companies, it also chastises customers who could have closed the WannaCry hole two months earlier but didn't." If Microsoft didn't dress up Windows 10 deployment campaigns as security patches maybe people would have applied important updates, instead, many people got fed up of cleaning up the Windows 10 installer so turned of auto update instead. Glad I'm no longer dependent on Windows.
"If it's lost, it'll turn up. Things always do" "I love it when a plan comes together"
Windows NT was built with VMS in mind, not OS/2, MS hired VMS's main architect. When MS and IBM were in bed together, MS had the UI front end to do. They didn't like the back end from IBM because it made their front end run like shit. So they decided they needed their own back end.
After NT was thrown together, MS discovered their front end still ran like shit so they went into their back end and knackered the bits that made their front end look bad. Unfortunately, that also meant they had to include stuff in the kernel where from a security standpoint it didn't belong. And so MS's proud tradition for lack of security persisted.
VMS had 4 security levels and that was supported by the VAX architecture. OpenVMS is merely the successor to VMS. I'm unsure what is open about OpenVMS, last I checked it was owned by HP. It probably won't be long before they screw it up like everything else they touch.