Microsoft have signed multiple rootkits
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Microsoft have signed multiple rootkits
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Re: Microsoft have signed multiple rootkits
#2With the offensive posture of the NSA, I would be highly surprised if this weren't true. They can be compelled to do anything, and compelled to keep it secret.
Re: Microsoft have signed multiple rootkits
#3With the offensive posture of the NSA, I would be highly surprised if this weren't true. They can be compelled to do anything, and compelled to keep it secret.
Incompetence is more likely than malice. I am sure they have done both.
Re: Microsoft have signed multiple rootkits
#4Less likely Microsoft has signed multiple rootkits and more likely that someone has either stolen the certificate, they have someone at Microsoft signing the malware for them or they have found a vulnerability in the signing process imo.
Re: Microsoft have signed multiple rootkits
#5With the offensive posture of the NSA, I would be highly surprised if this weren't true. They can be compelled to do anything, and compelled to keep it secret.
While it's true that the NSA could feasibly compel them to do this, I would be reasonably surprised if they exerted that capability so casually that this many ended up uploaded in e.g. VirusTotal.
If everyone thinks random signed drivers can be malicious, then they're more cautious about them, looking for them. If everyone thinks signed drivers are a sign of trustworthiness, it's much more likely that your malicious driver can wind up where it needs to be, and stay there without being noticed.
My personal bet is heavily on malware getting signed either through a stolen cert/compromised signer or simple incompetence.
Re: Microsoft have signed multiple rootkits
#6Less likely Microsoft has signed multiple rootkits and more likely that someone has either stolen the certificate, they have someone at Microsoft signing the malware for them or they have found a vulnerability in the signing process imo.
Not necessarily. Driver QA & signing is not malware exorcising magic.
If you are a genuine hardware vendor, giving them an actual, working driver binary so they can run whatever QA and static static analysis test suite on the binary, you might have the benefit of a doubt and get it signed once it passes.
That assumption of good faith mixed with "Betriebsblindheit" is probably all it takes to get a signed driver with a backdoor/rootkit/whatever in it.
For comparison: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26887670
EDIT: I'm not trying to imply that's what happened here, we don't have enough details yet. Just trying to point out, that binary signing isn't a panacea and doesn't require Ethan Hunt cable dangling into a secure computer room to work around.
Re: Microsoft have signed multiple rootkits
#7Looks like a signed driver, it’s not particularly hard to turn any driver into a rootkit especially a networking one.
If you manage to say install npcap on a machine which is also signed these days you can pretty much capture the entire network traffic and send it w/e you want… heck both the capturing and the “sending” can be done from within the npcap driver itself since it can both capture and send packages the logic however needs to reside somewhere else.
The biggest issue here looks to be that MSFT changed their signing protocols.
> In the past, Microsoft only signed the .cat file. Starting with Windows 10, Microsoft now signs all of the portable executables in the returned payload. For example, the .dll file is also signed by Microsoft.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/da...
They used to sign only CAT files now they’ll sign pretty much anything that was submitted, I’m guessing their review process can’t actually validate what these things do other than they meet the compatibility requirements.
So what they do is that they base their process on “validating” the partner which these days with 100,000 hardware vendors especially in China is pretty darn hard, and even if the process is quite strict it still leaves them open to supply chain attacks.
While it might look bad it’s still better than the alternative, if getting your driver signed would be too hard then it would be the same as the early Windows 7 days during which even relatively large and reputable hardware vendors asked you to disabled driver the mandatory driver signature checks because they were too slow in getting their software signed.
Also note that this doesn’t impact other signing protection such as smart screen for that Microsoft has a much stricter process however I’m also guessing it would quite possible to sneak something past that too since plenty of small even one man shop commercial software managed to get through the red tape for that.
Re: Microsoft have signed multiple rootkits
#8I wonder what would happen if Microsoft required drivers to be redistributable at least by Microsoft and hosted them on a server for download by independent researchers, similar to how fwupd is doing it. Then the researchers could find ways to identify malware and point it out to Microsoft. As a bonus it might make the life of fwupd easier too.
Re: Microsoft have signed multiple rootkits
#9With the offensive posture of the NSA, I would be highly surprised if this weren't true. They can be compelled to do anything, and compelled to keep it secret.
I do not suspect this is a complete analysis of the risk.
Re: Microsoft have signed multiple rootkits
#10The real purpose of all these so-called 'security measures' which many Operating System software companies have implemented (e.g. dev licences, requiring programs to be signed) is to restrict users' ability to use software written by third party entities in favor of software designed by the OS's parent company. The irony is that these big corporations have become some of the least trustworthy entities on the planet - They have become hotbeds for hackers, white collar criminals and psychopaths. Any random software you can download online is more likely to be trustworthy than a signed software developed by big tech. With big tech, the chance of software being malware (e.g. spying on you) is almost 100%.