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Windows: Insecure by Design

theregister.com

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Re: Windows: Insecure by Design

#21

Post by akira2501 »

cjk2 wrote: post #9

Even as a well known "windows hater", this is hyperbole. It's not insecure by design really. In fact in principle it's a lot better than anything Unix side due to the ACL and security model. It did however exist before anyone gave a crap about security, was implemented in a vastly insecure language and runtime and grew to a huge size and surface area and that is hard to fix retrospectively. I'll give Linux a stab her…

> it's a lot better than anything Unix side due to the ACL and security model.

Better is subjective. It's maybe more capable. It's also easier to create confusing DACL structures that do not do what you think they do or leave surprising gaps in coverage.

> and grew to a huge size and surface area and that is hard to fix retrospectively.

We added network cards to everything at the same time networks finished moving from being isolated to being permanently globally interconnected. Machines that had a multi user capability (that didn't cost thousands) fared this transition better than those that did not.

> Anything which can read ~ is a problem because there's where all my important shit is...

It wouldn't matter if it's ~ or not. The software runs as you and so can access anything anywhere you have rights to. Which is why chroot, namespaces and pledge all exist, and windows really does not have equally secure equivalents to these technologies. To the extent it does, commercially available software does not seem to take any advantage of it.

Then again, running an agent that actively screen shots your desktop periodically and then saves those unencrypted to any part of the hard drive is a bad idea regardless of the imputed confidence you have in the security of the operating system itself.

Re: Windows: Insecure by Design

#22

Post by firebaze »

cjk2 wrote: post #20
pdonis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not insecure by design really. Sure it is. Features like Recall, which the article mentions, are insecure by design. > the ACL and security model I'm not sure how this is any more secure than "Unix side". But in any case the security holes in Windows are not problems with its filesystem (at least not now that FAT is no longer used). > Anything which can read ~ is a problem Which in a properly configured Unix s…

> Sure it is. Features like Recall, which the article mentions, are insecure by design. I'm going to be honest: I'm not bothered about Recall security. It'd be on a single user machine which contains my data anyway. There are many more tasty morsels out there if a keylogger gets on it. Like the contents of my Keepass DB or my online banking PIN, neither of which Recall would be party to but anything that runs as my u…

Do you think that Microsoft won't use that data in their telemetry somehow? Probably not as raw data, but as a locally AI-distilled version of it? Linked to your microsoft account, which is almost impossible to not link nowadays if you're not an expert?

Don't you agree that the data was in the initial version accessible by all local users on the same machine? Would you consider that a security leak?

Anything which could be exploited will be exploited, the only question is how long it takes.

Re: Windows: Insecure by Design

#23

Post by worksonmine »

cjk2 wrote: post #20
pdonis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not insecure by design really. Sure it is. Features like Recall, which the article mentions, are insecure by design. > the ACL and security model I'm not sure how this is any more secure than "Unix side". But in any case the security holes in Windows are not problems with its filesystem (at least not now that FAT is no longer used). > Anything which can read ~ is a problem Which in a properly configured Unix s…

> Sure it is. Features like Recall, which the article mentions, are insecure by design. I'm going to be honest: I'm not bothered about Recall security. It'd be on a single user machine which contains my data anyway. There are many more tasty morsels out there if a keylogger gets on it. Like the contents of my Keepass DB or my online banking PIN, neither of which Recall would be party to but anything that runs as my u…

> So I'll have to create another user account to run a web browser, my mail client, a software package manager or a compiler?

If you can't trust those you have bigger problems than them reading your home directories. If you're paranoid use flatpak.

Re: Windows: Insecure by Design

#24

Post by Felger »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #17

It IS a national security concern, one that worsens every year. The US government should be investing billions in Linux to harden it and make it more usable and appealing. So should Intel, amd, Qualcomm, because that keeps their processors compatible with a rapidly patched mainstream os. So should the EU. But... They won't. Surely as long as 90 year old presidents are what we are stuck with.

Chuckles. Intel and AMD provide ME/AMT/SPS and PSP respectively on their whole x86-64 CPU range, which are embedded SOC : a CPU (based on quark for intel) and basic OS (said to be from Minix 3 for intel as well), nested within the CPU in the way they cannot be disabled as they are serialized to logical CPU init, "microcode style". Add obfuscated code modules, cannot be completely removed whatever everyone could do up to now. It can access to the network stack and has an "always on" behavior once the system is simply plugged to the power.

If you're security concerned, the OS stack is quite a... secondary issue to you.

You will have to consider switching to an open RISC architecture (Risc-V someone ? Strangely enough or not, EU seems quite fan of this on-the-rise-again architecture) AND a linux distribution.

For sure, for sensitive applications, having a cheap, secure and versatile architecture would be better than making DSPs or issuing hardly scalable and pricy FPGA solutions (well, lots of communication equipements' mainboards still uses them)

Re: Windows: Insecure by Design

#25

Post by phendrenad2 »

100% nonsense. Windows itself is as secure as Mac or Linux, and the other points (OneDrive, Recall) are security tradeoffs that make way for features (sort of like how you don't keep your computer in an air-gapped fallout shelter in a file cabinet with a note that says "beware of the leopard". You traded security for convenience, congratulations!)

Re: Windows: Insecure by Design

#26

Post by Felger »

Felger wrote: post #24
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #17

It IS a national security concern, one that worsens every year. The US government should be investing billions in Linux to harden it and make it more usable and appealing. So should Intel, amd, Qualcomm, because that keeps their processors compatible with a rapidly patched mainstream os. So should the EU. But... They won't. Surely as long as 90 year old presidents are what we are stuck with.

Chuckles. Intel and AMD provide ME/AMT/SPS and PSP respectively on their whole x86-64 CPU range, which are embedded SOC : a CPU (based on quark for intel) and basic OS (said to be from Minix 3 for intel as well), nested within the CPU in the way they cannot be disabled as they are serialized to logical CPU init, "microcode style". Add obfuscated code modules, cannot be completely removed whatever everyone could do up…

Even though for REALLY sensitive applications (defence and space), DSP stay the gold standard.

Re: Windows: Insecure by Design

#27

Post by shiryel »

cjk2 wrote: post #9

Even as a well known "windows hater", this is hyperbole. It's not insecure by design really. In fact in principle it's a lot better than anything Unix side due to the ACL and security model. It did however exist before anyone gave a crap about security, was implemented in a vastly insecure language and runtime and grew to a huge size and surface area and that is hard to fix retrospectively. I'll give Linux a stab her…

Fortunately tools to fix this issue on Linux exist, like Bubblewrap and Dbus-Proxy, but they require custom configuration per software, so almost no distro uses them directly, but we do have Flatpak that basically uses both of these tools under the hood, unfortunately, it also has its own "limitations", like the amount of packages and some weird behavior in some packages.

I'm trying to solve this issue by using both of these tools with NixOS [1], where I can choose how much security I want for each package, like limiting the files that they can access and/or the entire dbus (practically simulating Flatpak). I mostly use it on proprietary software, like Games, as they have a history with RCEs...

In the end, security is a tradeoff with convenience.

[1] - https://github.com/shiryel/nixjail

Re: Windows: Insecure by Design

#28

Post by cjk2 »

akira2501 wrote: post #21
cjk2 wrote: post #9

Even as a well known "windows hater", this is hyperbole. It's not insecure by design really. In fact in principle it's a lot better than anything Unix side due to the ACL and security model. It did however exist before anyone gave a crap about security, was implemented in a vastly insecure language and runtime and grew to a huge size and surface area and that is hard to fix retrospectively. I'll give Linux a stab her…

> it's a lot better than anything Unix side due to the ACL and security model. Better is subjective. It's maybe more capable. It's also easier to create confusing DACL structures that do not do what you think they do or leave surprising gaps in coverage. > and grew to a huge size and surface area and that is hard to fix retrospectively. We added network cards to everything at the same time networks finished moving fr…

> Better is subjective. It's maybe more capable. It's also easier to create confusing DACL structures that do not do what you think they do or leave surprising gaps in coverage.

There is nothing confusing about it at all. The problem tends to be poor understanding and poor default configuration in all these things. I mean the same can be said for the average linux user, who ambles on in and 777's everything.

We added network cards to everything at the same time networks finished moving from being isolated to being permanently globally interconnected. Machines that had a multi user capability (that didn't cost thousands) fared this transition better than those that did not.

I've run windows terminal services for about 20 years on and off. They did fine. Hell half our clients are still running citrix and terminal services.

It wouldn't matter if it's ~ or not. The software runs as you and so can access anything anywhere you have rights to. Which is why chroot, namespaces and pledge all exist, and windows really does not have equally secure equivalents to these technologies. To the extent it does, commercially available software does not seem to take any advantage of it.

Windows has full virtualization at service and process level if you want to have it. Device guard/credential guard and app-v for example. I agree with your last point that commercial software doesn't take any advantage of it, but neither does firefox which will quite happily shit on your ~/.profile...

Hey I rather like the idea of taking screenshots and dredging them for info. It'll immediately stop MSPs writing all their clients' passwords in a .txt file on their desktop (I've seen this several times)...

Re: Windows: Insecure by Design

#29

Post by cjk2 »

worksonmine wrote: post #23
cjk2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure it is. Features like Recall, which the article mentions, are insecure by design. I'm going to be honest: I'm not bothered about Recall security. It'd be on a single user machine which contains my data anyway. There are many more tasty morsels out there if a keylogger gets on it. Like the contents of my Keepass DB or my online banking PIN, neither of which Recall would be party to but anything that runs as my u…

> So I'll have to create another user account to run a web browser, my mail client, a software package manager or a compiler? If you can't trust those you have bigger problems than them reading your home directories. If you're paranoid use flatpak.

They're all written by idiots in C. Why would I trust them?

Re: Windows: Insecure by Design

#30

Post by cjk2 »

firebaze wrote: post #22
cjk2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure it is. Features like Recall, which the article mentions, are insecure by design. I'm going to be honest: I'm not bothered about Recall security. It'd be on a single user machine which contains my data anyway. There are many more tasty morsels out there if a keylogger gets on it. Like the contents of my Keepass DB or my online banking PIN, neither of which Recall would be party to but anything that runs as my u…

Do you think that Microsoft won't use that data in their telemetry somehow? Probably not as raw data, but as a locally AI-distilled version of it? Linked to your microsoft account, which is almost impossible to not link nowadays if you're not an expert? Don't you agree that the data was in the initial version accessible by all local users on the same machine? Would you consider that a security leak? Anything which co…

I don't disagree with any of those, other than those I have already caveated, but they are additional points.
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