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How Microsoft's Windows Red Team Keeps PCs Safe (wired.com)
Wired has a story on Windows' red team, which consists of a group of hackers (one of whom jailbroke Nintendo handhelds in a former life, another has more than one zero-day exploit to his name, and a third signed on just prior to the devastating Shadow Brokers leak), who are tasked with finding holes in the world's most used desktop operating system. From the story: The Windows red team didn't exist four years ago. That's around the time that David Weston, who currently leads the crew as principal security group manager for Windows, made his pitch for Microsoft to rethink how it handled the security of its marquee product. "Most of our hardening of the Windows operating system in previous generations was: Wait for a big attack to happen, or wait for someone to tell us about a new technique, and then spend some time trying to fix that," Weston says. "Obviously that's not ideal when the stakes are very high."
[...] Together, the red teamers spend their days attacking Windows. Every year, they develop a zero-day exploit to test their defensive blue-team counterparts. And when emergencies like Spectre or EternalBlue happen, they're among the first to get the call. Again, red teams aren't novel; companies that can afford them -- and that are aware they could be targeted -- tend to use them. If anything, it may come as a surprise that Microsoft hadn't sicced one on Windows until so recently. Microsoft as a company already had several other red teams in place by the time Weston built one for Windows, though those focused more on operational issues like unpatched machines. "Windows is still the central repository of malware and exploits. Practically, there's so much business done around the world on Windows. The attacker mentality is to get the biggest return on investment in what you develop in terms of code and exploits," says Aaron Lint, who regularly works with red teams in his role as chief scientist at application protection provider Arxan. "Windows is the obvious target."
[...] Together, the red teamers spend their days attacking Windows. Every year, they develop a zero-day exploit to test their defensive blue-team counterparts. And when emergencies like Spectre or EternalBlue happen, they're among the first to get the call. Again, red teams aren't novel; companies that can afford them -- and that are aware they could be targeted -- tend to use them. If anything, it may come as a surprise that Microsoft hadn't sicced one on Windows until so recently. Microsoft as a company already had several other red teams in place by the time Weston built one for Windows, though those focused more on operational issues like unpatched machines. "Windows is still the central repository of malware and exploits. Practically, there's so much business done around the world on Windows. The attacker mentality is to get the biggest return on investment in what you develop in terms of code and exploits," says Aaron Lint, who regularly works with red teams in his role as chief scientist at application protection provider Arxan. "Windows is the obvious target."
Let me guess - "not very well". Wait, is that a trick question?
Are these the nice people that call me all the time from Microsoft who want to help fix my computer?
I would have thought Cisco was the obvious target given how often Cisco is used in major internet infrastructure and that there are CVEs for hard coded credentials in Cisco products just about every month.
so the NSA can collect on you.
All that effort kept the very best security experts guessing at what PRISM was for years.
MS kept NSA collection safe on your PC.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Oh I feel safe knowing that my corporate data is protected by some 0-day gameboy hackers.
Are the members of the Red and Blue teams sure they're actually doing what they've been told that they're doing? Is the head of Red team a super gung-ho moron? Is there a Spanish-speaking robot somewhere in the mix?
#DeleteChrome
It is now official. Netcraft has confirmed: *BSD is dying One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test. You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying. Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers. OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts. Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house. All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Totally paid. Did slashdot get included with the gitub snatch?
HAAAA, nice one :]
The Microsoft cyber attack DW Documentary
Let me guess too :
"Red Team" - also known as, the team at Microsoft with the highest stress-related burnout and suicide rates ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
>> How Microsoft's Windows Red Team Keeps PCs Safe
Windows.
Safe.
Yeah, right.
aaaaaaa
They found the "off" switch?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The only way the blue team can beat the red team is to turn off their computers...
Nope, thanks to the Intel IME bullshit, not even turning off will help
an exploit a day? they've been awefully quit about it, all big vulnerabilities on windows i read about are found by other teams outside MS.
right now, i got the impression Google is doing a better job finding vuls in Windows, and i can assume the 'red team' has access to the source code!
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.