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Lessons from last week’s cyberattack

blogs.microsoft.com

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Re: Lessons from last week’s cyberattack

#91

Post by pharrlax »

josephg wrote: post #80
Kholo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complete BS. This is what happens when you have top class PR at your disposal to define the narrative. Microsoft is responsible for their shit software getting exploited first and foremost. Seriously fine Microsoft and by day after tomorrow that 3500 security engineer number will jump to something realistic. Instead what will happen is more tightening of the walled garden, overcharging of support/security contracts a…

> Instead what will happen is more tightening of the walled garden You know what? I'm starting to get excited for the walled garden to get more walls. Native desktop applications get far too many permissions by default - its crazy that any desktop application, once running can register itself at startup, see all my files (created by any application), register system-wide keyloggers, take screenshots of other applicat…

>You know what? I'm starting to get excited for the walled garden to get more walls.

Yep. What developer types don't like to admit is that for the average user, who doesn't use the features excluded by the walled garden anyway, the tradeoff is well worth the security gains.

Re: Lessons from last week’s cyberattack

#93

Post by panzer_wyrm »

josephg wrote: post #80
Kholo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complete BS. This is what happens when you have top class PR at your disposal to define the narrative. Microsoft is responsible for their shit software getting exploited first and foremost. Seriously fine Microsoft and by day after tomorrow that 3500 security engineer number will jump to something realistic. Instead what will happen is more tightening of the walled garden, overcharging of support/security contracts a…

> Instead what will happen is more tightening of the walled garden You know what? I'm starting to get excited for the walled garden to get more walls. Native desktop applications get far too many permissions by default - its crazy that any desktop application, once running can register itself at startup, see all my files (created by any application), register system-wide keyloggers, take screenshots of other applicat…

Walled garden is fine only if you build the walls. Please let the iOS stay the only such corporate build travesty.

It is good to have the ability to raise the walls. It is not good for apple and MS to decide what to use their OS for...

Re: Lessons from last week’s cyberattack

#94

Post by gggmaster »

shitloadofbooks wrote: post #32
Kholo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complete BS. This is what happens when you have top class PR at your disposal to define the narrative. Microsoft is responsible for their shit software getting exploited first and foremost. Seriously fine Microsoft and by day after tomorrow that 3500 security engineer number will jump to something realistic. Instead what will happen is more tightening of the walled garden, overcharging of support/security contracts a…

And who do we fine for all the bugs in Open Source software then. The most serious vulnerabilities of late have all been in Open Source packages: - ShellShock - Heartbleed - etc Do we fine the person who committed the faulty logic, the reviewers, the entire community who "peer reviewed" it?

Thanks for the transparency of open source you have learnt those buzzwords. Wish you the best of luck with your black boxes.

Re: Lessons from last week’s cyberattack

#95

Post by josefx »

ssdfe wrote: post #70

There's a lot of blame being thrown around, and I think it's all merited, but an inordinate amount needs to be on the users. I don't know how many times I've heard things like: "I don't think I'll update to Windows 10" or "That update has been nagging me for months" or even security advocates saying "Windows 10 is a privacy nightmare, I'll stay on 7". Being on the latest secure upstream isn't a nicety, it's what you…

> Being on the latest secure upstream isn't a nicety, it's what you have to do if you want any semblance of a secure environment.

Windows 7 is in extended support to 2020. So as far as I know security wise still up to date.

> There's a grocery store that just went up nearby that I saw Windows XP splash screen on when one of the cashiers rebooted.

The cash register may be even running with a user interface written in VB6. Don't attach it to an external network and it will work just fine. No need to invest in new hardware/software when you can get it old, working and cheap.

> Windows XP computers that handle money.

In what way do they handle money? A computer virus isn't going to steal paper money and the device operating the card reader should have been sufficiently separated to begin with.

Re: Lessons from last week’s cyberattack

#96

Post by drvdevd »

Kholo wrote: post #26
loteck wrote: post #11

The quote bombshell here, and what hasnt yet gotten much attention since sysadmins the world over are busy dealing with fallout, is that the NSA and therefore the US government is directly responsible for the current global cyber-carnage. We developed the capability, we chose to keep it unpatched, we tried to keep it secret, we lost control of it. This has similarities in type, if not in horror, to the development an…

Complete BS. This is what happens when you have top class PR at your disposal to define the narrative. Microsoft is responsible for their shit software getting exploited first and foremost. Seriously fine Microsoft and by day after tomorrow that 3500 security engineer number will jump to something realistic. Instead what will happen is more tightening of the walled garden, overcharging of support/security contracts a…

I think without: 1) Open Source software AND especially 2) significant financial incentives for finding and reporting bugs, it will be business as usual for the foreseeable future.

Re: Lessons from last week’s cyberattack

#97

Post by muricula »

codedokode wrote: post #38

One of the reasons why such attack was possible is poor security in Windows. Port 445 that was used in an attack is opened by a kernel driver (at least that is what netstat says on WinXP) that runs in ring 0. This driver is enabled by default even if the user doesn't need SMB server and it cannot be easily disabled. Most of services in Windows are run under two privileged user accounts (LocalService or NetworkService…

The thing is there really isn't a production ready alternative. Rust in ring 0 isn't production ready -- a lot of language features needed to run in ring 0 are nightly only. There are no widely used microkernels. Ironically, of the widely used operating systems in the world, Windows does the best job of running drivers in userland.

Re: Lessons from last week’s cyberattack

#98

Post by muricula »

flukus wrote: post #72
cm2187 wrote: post #10

One thing that strikes me with this malware is that it hits pretty much every single country. Don't hackers try to follow the proverbial "don't shit where you eat" proverb? They have nowhere to hide if they are identified now.

You're assuming it was released on purpose and worked on the intended scale, I'm not sure either are true.

This malware was first released as part of a massive spam campaign, and then from there wormed its way onto other systems. It was definitely released on purpose.

Re: Lessons from last week’s cyberattack

#99

Post by muricula »

mastax wrote: post #27
CydeWeys wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The margin would've been much wider still with responsible disclosure from the NSA, however. This means that fewer people would have been affected.

Unless the NSA reported it to MS back when XP was still supported, not much would change. People can (and do) reverse-engineer exploits from windows updates, and they could still take advantage of the large number of unpatched XP machines.

In an unusual move, after the worm statrted spreading MS released a patch to XP for this exploit.
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