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Google ditches Windows on security concerns

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Re: Google ditches Windows on security concerns

#131

Post by RyanMcGreal »

microkid wrote: post #77
jimbokun wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the Chinese government has Windows source code, and Google does not. The Darwin and BSD layers of Mac OS X are open source, so Google can at least study the code to understand the security implications of using OS X. In other words, with open source Google is on a more level playing field against potential attackers.

No offense, but level playing field is ridiculous. Think about what you're saying, you're saying Google is going to sit there and review all of the source code, and all patches and new releases to that source code. Really? Do you actually believe this... As per China having the source, do you really think it matters? If someone wants to break in, they're going to get in... (regardless if its Windows/Linux/Mac) why...…

>Think about what you're saying, you're saying Google is going to sit there and review all of the source code, and all patches and new releases to that source code. Really? Do you actually believe this...

Maybe not Google by itself, but the sum total of everyone reviewing all the source code and sharing what they know is that it's far easier to develop a more complete security profile for Linux than it is for a proprietary system we can only study by reverse engineering.

Re: Google ditches Windows on security concerns

#132

Post by Perceval »

melling wrote: post #51
memoryfault wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what happens when someone exploits Linux?

You have a nice ecosystem of Unix OS's. Solaris, OpenBSD, NetBSD, ... and a handful of major Linux distros: Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, Gentoo, Debian, etc. Once you've gone Unix you have lots of choices, including the Mac. Did Google roll their own Linux? Which kernel do you target? which apps?

Google reportedly has a modified version of LTS Ubuntu used internally: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goobuntu

Re: Google ditches Windows on security concerns

#133

Post by steveklabnik »

pedrocr wrote: post #96
yason wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core difference between Unix and Windows, that has persisted since the beginning, is that by default on any Unix you get a user account which is different from the root account. On Windows, this hasn't even been possible until a few years ago (Vista? 7?), and AFAIK you still have to specifically configure Windows to give you a user account that really, really has no administrator rights. My parents wouldn't know…

On Linux, if someone hacks my browser all I could ever lose is the stuff on my home directory. Of course these tend to be precisely the only things you actually care about in the whole system. Assuming it's a desktop machine of course.

Which is why he talked about backups, and why they're important.

This doesn't mean your backup couldn't get infected...

Re: Google ditches Windows on security concerns

#134

Post by tptacek »

beagle3 wrote: post #116
melling wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market share: Windows 90%, Mac 9%, Linux 1%. Where are virus writers going to put most of their effort? Windows being as secure as Mac wouldn't help make it safer because a lot more implemented exploits are going to exist in the wild.

And yet, when you looked at e.g. the web server data back in the early 2000's, you had 70% apache 25% IIS -- and yet about 20 times as many exploits (and much more effective at that) for IIS. The reason was, to put it bluntly, that IIS was designed without any regard to real security, whereas Apache had _some_ regard to security. That's also the case for Windows through its history; it has been making leaps recently,…

I would like to hear the specific ways in which you think that Apache was designed for security in ways that IIS wasn't, and how those things persist into modern IIS.

Re: Google ditches Windows on security concerns

#135

Post by tptacek »

butterfi wrote: post #82
melling wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market share: Windows 90%, Mac 9%, Linux 1%. Where are virus writers going to put most of their effort? Windows being as secure as Mac wouldn't help make it safer because a lot more implemented exploits are going to exist in the wild.

I, for one, am pretty bored by the market share defense. There are millions of macs out there, owned by people who could drop a little coin on their hardware, and that make them less of a target? There's not one virus writer out there who doesn't want the cred and the potential gain of a new audience of victims, many of whom are probably pretty complacent about security because they've never had to worry about it? Th…

Until we hit "peak oil" for Windows malware, there is no real incentive for a malware author to target anything but the most popular platform. I'm guessing you have very little insight into the motives of malware authors, and so I'm not going to address that part of your argument.

Re: Google ditches Windows on security concerns

#136

Post by tptacek »

jimbokun wrote: post #68
yummyfajitas wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this move may prevent infection by FR33_PR0N.wmv.exe, I don't see how it will prevent being hacked by China (the major concern).

I believe the Chinese government has Windows source code, and Google does not. The Darwin and BSD layers of Mac OS X are open source, so Google can at least study the code to understand the security implications of using OS X. In other words, with open source Google is on a more level playing field against potential attackers.

The source code to Windows, while not public, is some of the best studied in the world both inside and out of Microsoft. Even though MSFT doesn't publish it, they do release complete debug symbols for most of the operating system; there isn't a pro vulnerability researcher on the Internet that can't navigate Windows with a copy of IDA Pro and a couple of PDBs. The openness of the Windows source code is a red herring.

Meanwhile, most bugs aren't discovered in careful source code review or by static analysis tools. Instead, we write programs to exercise the code, either by sending random dumb buffers to the target or by working out the expected format and varying messages until we cover every basic block in the target. You can do this with or without any source code.

I think you would have a hard time finding a professional to say that they trust Mac OS X dramatically more than they trust WinAPI in 2010, and I say this as a full-time Mac user.

Re: Google ditches Windows on security concerns

#137

Post by tptacek »

yason wrote: post #95
ori_b wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9129978/Researcher_cr... Mac isn't significantly more secure. In fact, after all the bad press, Microsoft has invested significant amounts of money on intrusion mitigation systems like address space randomization, non-executable stacks, and so on. Linux is playing catch up to Windows in some regards there, and from what I know about OSX, it's also far behind in intrusion mitigat…

The core difference between Unix and Windows, that has persisted since the beginning, is that by default on any Unix you get a user account which is different from the root account. On Windows, this hasn't even been possible until a few years ago (Vista? 7?), and AFAIK you still have to specifically configure Windows to give you a user account that really, really has no administrator rights. My parents wouldn't know…

This argument is a load of baloney. Desktop machines, whether Linux, Mac, or Windows, are single-user machines. Attackers don't want "root". They want your documents and they want access to your network, both of which they get just peachy with your user account.

The only thing you can do with root that you can't do with a user account is write vanity malware that persists in ways that are harder to detect. But the most effective malware isn't written as a vanity exercise.

In Google's case, it's even less important to have root; what Google is protecting is access to their corporate network.

Re: Google ditches Windows on security concerns

#138

Post by tptacek »

ori_b wrote: post #34
maukdaddy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

?! Are you missing the part where OS X is based on BSD?

That's a myth. There are some parts like libc and the command line apps that were ported from BSD, the the kernel is a mach-that-isn't-anymore hybrid oddity, and the user interface is an Apple-only system. So, to a good approximation, you can say that the command line is based on BSD, and the rest came from NeXT and Apple, with a bit of GNU mixed in. The BSD heritage is rather insignificant when it comes to security,…

xnu's BSD code isn't a myth. Have you ever actually read any of it? Which parts?

I had to dive into it headfirst for a Black Hat presentation in 2007, in which we loaded probes into a running xnu kernel to detect hypervisors. I was surprised by how easy it was to navigate based on my familiarity with FreeBSD's kernel. Obviously, there's quite a bit of non-BSD code in OS X, but for anyone who has worked with a BSD kernel before, the similarities are impossible to miss.

Hell, even if you can't read kernel code, the fact that OS X has sysctl, doesn't have proc, and debugs with ptrace() doesn't tell you anything?

Re: Google ditches Windows on security concerns

#139

Post by tptacek »

megaman821 wrote: post #14

Is there any evidence that Windows 7 is less secured than Snow Leopard? Windows employs more advanced security techniques. IE has outlasted Safari in Pwn2Own since IE8. Windows releases security fixes much faster. If they favor OS X over Windows that is completely fine, but I think they are implying something that isn't true in regards to security. If someone exploits OS X on them, is everyone moving to Linux next?

No. There is no evidence that Windows 7 is less secure than Mac OS X Snow Leopard --- at least, not clear evidence (we could certainly spend a few days tit-for-tat'ing about this disclosure or that, but it wouldn't amount to a coherent argument).

Re: Google ditches Windows on security concerns

#140

Post by adolph »

tptacek wrote: post #134
beagle3 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, when you looked at e.g. the web server data back in the early 2000's, you had 70% apache 25% IIS -- and yet about 20 times as many exploits (and much more effective at that) for IIS. The reason was, to put it bluntly, that IIS was designed without any regard to real security, whereas Apache had _some_ regard to security. That's also the case for Windows through its history; it has been making leaps recently,…

I would like to hear the specific ways in which you think that Apache was designed for security in ways that IIS wasn't, and how those things persist into modern IIS.

Not a serious reply: Well, for one, IIS was designed to run on Windows servers rather than *nix.
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