Usability guru Jakob Nielsen opened up a can of worms when he made the case for unmasking passwords in his blog. I chimed in that I agreed. Almost 165 comments on my blog (and several articles, essays, and many other blog posts) later, the consensus is that we were wrong.
I was certainly too glib. Like any security countermeasure, password masking has value. But like any countermeasure, password masking is not a panacea. And the costs of password masking need to be balanced with the benefits.
The cost is accuracy. When users don't get visual feedback from what they're typing, they're more prone to make mistakes. This is especially true with character strings that have non-standard characters and capitalization. This has several ancillary costs:
The benefits of password masking are more obvious:
In some situations, there is a trust dynamic involved. Do you type your password while your boss is standing over your shoulder watching? How about your spouse or partner? Your parent or child? Your teacher or students? At ATMs, there's a social convention of standing away from someone using the machine, but that convention doesn't apply to computers. You might not trust the person standing next to you enough to let him see your password, but don't feel comfortable telling him to look away. Password masking solves that social awkwardness.
I believe that shoulder surfing isn't nearly the problem it's made out to be. One, lots of people use their computers in private, with no one looking over their shoulders. Two, personal handheld devices are used very close to the body, making shoulder surfing all that much harder. Three, it's hard to quickly and accurately memorize a random non-alphanumeric string that flashes on the screen for a second or so.
This is not to say that shoulder surfing isn't a threat. It is. And, as many readers pointed out, password masking is one of the reasons it isn't more of a threat. And the threat is greater for those who are not fluent computer users: slow typists and people who are likely to choose bad passwords. But I believe that the risks are overstated.
Password masking is definitely important on public terminals with short PINs. (I'm thinking of ATMs.) The value of the PIN is large, shoulder surfing is more common, and a four-digit PIN is easy to remember in any case.
And lastly, this problem largely disappears on the Internet on your personal computer. Most browsers include the ability to save and then automatically populate password fields, making the usability problem go away at the expense of another security problem (the security of the password becomes the security of the computer). There's a Firefox plugin that gets rid of password masking. And programs like my own Password Safe allow passwords to be cut and pasted into applications, also eliminating the usability problem.
One approach is to make it a configurable option. High-risk banking applications could turn password masking on by default; other applications could turn it off by default. Browsers in public locations could turn it on by default. I like this, but it complicates the user interface.
A reader mentioned BlackBerry's solution, which is to display each character briefly before masking it; that seems like an excellent compromise.
I, for one, would like the option. I cannot type complicated WEP keys into Windows -- twice! what's the deal with that? -- without making mistakes. I cannot type my rarely used and very complicated PGP keys without making a mistake unless I turn off password masking. That's what I was reacting to when I said "I agree."
So was I wrong? Maybe. Okay, probably. Password masking definitely improves security; many readers pointed out that they regularly use their computer in crowded environments, and rely on password masking to protect their passwords. On the other hand, password masking reduces accuracy and makes it less likely that users will choose secure and hard-to-remember passwords, I will concede that the password masking trade-off is more beneficial than I thought in my snap reaction, but also that the answer is not nearly as obvious as we have historically assumed.
Good essay -- "The Staggering Cost of Playing it 'Safe'" -- about the political motivations for terrorist security policy.
Senator Barbara Boxer has led an effort to at least put together a public database of ash storage sites so that people can judge the risk to the areas where they live. However, even this effort has been blocked not by coal companies or utilities, but by the DHS. How could it possibly be a national security interest to cover up the location of material that's "not toxic or anything?" It's not. In fact, even if the ash turns out to be as bad as its worst critics fear, blocking the database is far more dangerous than revealing the location of these sites. Not only has there not been any threat against these sites by terrorists, and no workable scenario by which they might cause a problem, coal slurry impoundments are already failing with regularity, dousing parts of America with millions of gallons of this material. It doesn't take terrorists to make this happen.Blocking the release of this information doesn't protect the citizens of the United States in any way. It's just another example of the same creeping secrecy that makes cities more difficult to manage because of secrecy over facilities. The same creeping secrecy that "blurs" national monuments from images and puts intentional gaps in public information. The same creeping secrecy that increasingly elevates the most unlikely attack -- the shoe bombers of the world -- above our right to know what's going on around us so that we can make informed decisions. The same secrecy that defends torturers.
Can anyone guess the entry codes for these door locks?
There are 10,000 possible four-digit codes, but you only have to try 24 on these keypads. The first is most likely 1986 or 1968. The second is almost certainly 1234.
The plant caladium steudneriifolium pretends to be ill so mining moths won't eat it.
She believes that the plant essentially fakes being ill, producing variegated leaves that mimic those that have already been damaged by mining moth larvae. That deters the moths from laying any further larvae on the leaves, as the insects assume the previous caterpillars have already eaten most of the leaves' nutrients.
Cabbage aphids arm themselves with chemical bombs:
Its body carries two reactive chemicals that only mix when a predator attacks it. The injured aphid dies. But in the process, the chemicals in its body react and trigger an explosion that delivers lethal amounts of poison to the predator, saving the rest of the colony.
The dark-footed ant spider mimics an ant so that it's not eaten by other spiders, and so it can eat spiders itself:
M.melanotarsa is a jumping spider that protects itself from predators (like other jumping spiders) by resembling an ant. Earlier this month, Ximena Nelson and Robert Jackson showed that they bolster this illusion by living in silken apartment complexes and travelling in groups, mimicking not just the bodies of ants but their social lives too.Now Nelson and Robert are back with another side to the ant-spider's tale - it also uses its impersonation for attack as well as defence. It also feasts on the eggs and youngsters of the very same spiders that its ant-like form protects it from. It is, essentially, a spider that looks like an ant to avoid being eaten by spiders so that it itself can eat spiders.
My previous post about security stories from the insect world.
British Security Minister Lord West says that Britain faces cyber threats from China, Russia and Al-Qaeda.......
Lt.......
Known computer criminal Max Ray Butler, a.......
Matthew Weigman has been sentenced to 135 months in prison for hacking phone systems and harassing a Verizon investigator.......
James Reno and his company ByteHosting Internet Services have agreed to pay US $1.......
The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) is taking quick action to block access to the Wikileaks website from its computers.......
Verified Identity Pass's (VIP) defunct Registered Traveler program Clear said it could sell the personal information it collected from customers to another provider of expedited airport security services if the government approves of the arrangement.......
The California software company that says some of its code was used in the Green Dam Internet filtering software without permission is under attack.......
Researchers have discovered a server hosted in China that contains more than 68,000 FTP passwords, including a number for well-known sites such as the BBC, Cisco, Amazon and Bank of America.......
For a short time last Thursday afternoon, the spike in Internet searches about Michael Jackson following the news of his death caused Google to think that it was the target of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.......
Former US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) National Cybersecurity Center director Rod Beckstrom has been chosen to take over for Paul Twomey as CEO and president of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) when Twomey steps down at the end of the year.......
Category: Widely Deployed Software
Affected:
Category: Widely Deployed Software
Affected:
Category: Widely Deployed Software
Affected:
Category: Widely Deployed Software
Affected:
Category: Widely Deployed Software
Affected:
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: BSD
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2009-1203
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2009-1201
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2009-1163
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2009-2045
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2009-1202
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2009-1628
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2009-1394
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2009-0689
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2009-1889
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Linux
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Linux
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2009-2046
Platform: Network Device
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Solaris
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Solaris
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Solaris
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Solaris
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Third Party Windows Apps
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Third Party Windows Apps
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2009-1887
Platform: Web Application
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2009-2171
Platform: Web Application
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application - Cross Site Scripting
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application - Cross Site Scripting
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application - Cross Site Scripting
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application - Cross Site Scripting
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2009-2170
Platform: Web Application - Cross Site Scripting
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application - Cross Site Scripting
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application - SQL Injection
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application - SQL Injection
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application - SQL Injection
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application - SQL Injection
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application - SQL Injection
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application - SQL Injection
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application - SQL Injection
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application - SQL Injection
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2009-2144
Platform: Web Application - SQL Injection
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application - SQL Injection
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Web Application - SQL Injection
China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology says the Green Dam mandate has only been delayed. Publisher Jinhui Computer System Engineering is reportedly testing a version of Green Dam for Apple's Mac computers, which have been exempt. Tests found Green Dam to be vulnerable to malware and ineffective, even blocking images of Garfield.
Charlie Miller, a well-known security researcher who specializes in Mac and iPhone security, yesterday revealed information about a new vulnerability in iPhone that allows remote code execution via SMS. Not a lot is known about the vulnerability, which was announced at the SyScan conference in Singapore, except that Charlie is working with Apple to get it fixed as soon as possible.
This is about as bad as it gets as the vulnerability seems to allow unsigned code to run which circumvents a core part of iPhone's security model. It's usually only able to run signed code, i.e. Apps that have been approved by Apple. No user-interaction is required which is unlike current mobile malware.
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001714.html
So Comodo?s promise to remove SafeSurf Toolbar happened but not to finish their agreement with A$k/IAC. Instead, the new version of Comodo is now bundled with HopSurf Toolbar which is IAC/Ask.com too. The installer become worst because there?s no EULA presented in addition to known method of misleading people by offering unnecessary third party service/component in a SECURITY software. Note that it is a security software that should offer clean installer no?
Screenshots at http://www.calendarofupdates.com/updates/index.php?s=&showtopic=19279&view=findpost&p=83848
Their announcement says:
What's New In 3.10.101801.529?
==============================
NEW! COMODO Secure DNS is introduced as a new free service
NEW! COMODO HopSurf Toolbar - COMODO SafeSurf Toolbar has been discontinued and superseded by COMODO HopSurf Toolbar
NEW! CIS now allows the users to change the URL for the program and virus updates
IMPROVED! CIS now has a better support for Windows Security Center integration in Windows Vista SP1 and later
IMPROVED! AV engine now supports more archives and has better detection capabilities
IMPROVED! Direct disk access false alerts have been reduced
FIXED! Some applications do not run when CIS is installed in Vista 64 bit
FIXED! Antivirus scans excluded folders
FIXED! Firewall does not show some connections under high load
FIXED! Firewall sometimes causes the PC to freeze in windows XP 32
FIXED! cfp.exe crashes when HIPS alerts timeout
That NEW! COMODO Secure DNS is introduced as a new free service is from DNSadvantage.com/Neustar, Inc. and again, this NEW! COMODO HopSurf Toolbar - COMODO SafeSurf Toolbar has been discontinued and superseded by COMODO HopSurf Toolbar means you need to agree with (not included EULA in the installer) the EULA in using Ask Toolbar/IAC/Ask.com service. See HopSurf EULA online: https://accounts.comodo.com/hp/management/eula or http://www.hopsurf.com/license.jsp
New partner, new site reports
We?re very pleased to announce that, as of today, Sunbelt Software has joined Google as a data partner, providing updated data about badware websites to our Clearinghouse. (See the press release.) Sunbelt?s research director, Eric Howes, has helped us out for a long time as part of our working group, and it?s great to have the company on board in a more formal way. The new data allow us to extend and deepen our analysis of, and insight into, the badware website landscape.
http://blog.stopbadware.org/2009/06/30/new-partner-new-site-reports
http://www.stopbadware.org/home/pr_06302009
http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Press/Releases/?id=291
Kaspersky Lab court ruling sets precedent for the anti-malware industry
Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content management systems, informs that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in Kaspersky Lab's favor in claims brought by Zango.
In a precedent-setting case for the Internet security industry, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that Kaspersky Lab is entitled to immunity under the safe harbor provision of the Communications Decency Act from a suit claiming that its software interfered with the use of downloadable programs by customers of Zango.
The court ruled that Kaspersky Lab, which classified online media company Zango's software as malware and "protected" users from it accordingly, could not be held liable for any actions it took to manufacture and distribute the technical means to restrict Zango software?s access to others, as Kaspersky Lab deemed it ?objectionable material.?
Zango sued Kaspersky Lab to force the company to reclassify Zango's programs as nonthreatening and to prevent Kaspersky Lab's security software from blocking Zango's potentially undesirable programs. In a landmark ruling for the anti-malware industry, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that Kaspersky Lab is a provider of an ?interactive computer service? as defined in the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
The court decision stated: ?Kaspersky contends that Zango's software is adware, and possibly spyware. Spyware, which is often installed on a computer without the user's knowledge or consent, covertly monitors the user's activities and exposes the user to the risk that his or her passwords and confidential information may be stolen? As its software qualifies, Kaspersky is entitled to Good Samaritan immunity.?
The ruling protects a consumer?s choice to determine what information and software is allowed on their computing systems, and protects the ability of anti-malware vendors to identify and label software programs that may be potentially unwanted and harmful to computer users. Kaspersky Lab's software is designed to do just that. Users can adjust the settings to allow certain programs of their choice to come through at all times.
http://www.kaspersky.com/news?id=207575851
Our friend Steven Burn is now a Microsoft MVP. He received the award today for Consumer Security category in Microsoft MVP Program.
My Congrats to you Steven!
http://www.calendarofupdates.com/updates/index.php?showtopic=21050
Windows Live Messenger Team blogs the 10th anniversary of Windows Live Messenger ?> July 22, 2009
The Countdown to the Windows Live Messenger 10th Anniversary begins
My wish: Happy Advanced Anniversary!
My wishlist: Please release a standalone installer of Windows Live Messenger without the need for people to get it one by one: http://messengergeek.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!E3785B1281BBDA1!1723.entry (Thanks to Microsoft MVP Jonathan Kay for the nice work!)
Finally, as a way of saying thank you to our loyal Windows customers, we are excited to introduce a special time limited offer! We will offer people in select markets the opportunity to pre-order Windows 7 at a more than 50% discount. In the US, this will mean you can pre-order Windows 7 Home Premium for USD $49.99 or Windows 7 Professional for USD $99.99. You can take advantage of this special offer online via select retail partners such as Best Buy or Amazon, or the online Microsoft Store (in participating markets).
This program begins tomorrow in the U.S., Canada and Japan. The offer ends July 11th in the U.S. and Canada and on July 5th for Japan or while supplies last. Customers in the UK, France and Germany, can pre-order their copy of Windows 7 starting July 15th and will run until August 14th (or supplies last) to ensure folks don?t miss out on this. Act fast if you want to be the first in line to get Windows 7 at this screaming deal! Note: The special low pre-order price will vary per country.
I missed the above message. Thanks to CoU member, Weasel for noting it!
Many people are not happy to receive a new PC with many crapplications. What they do is they reformat the new hard-drive to fresh install the system or they will use PC Decrapifier to remove the crapplications.
Many of us are not happy to see installers of software that have add-ons. Those add-ons are either third party or from the same vendor that is not always needed to run or operate the program that you want to install. See the growing number of software with add-ons at Calendar of Updates.
Today, I decided to check for updates for Windows (I have it turn off as I check for updates all the time anyway). What WU offered to me is an optional Office Live add-in with add-on!
People have to deal or watch for some much add-ons and add-ins already :(
The beta version of Microsoft 's security software is a hit. The software giant announced Wednesday on its Web site that it had reached the U.S. limit on downloads for Microsoft Security Essentials -- which was only made available Tuesday.
The general release of the free software is expected this fall.
"Alert!" said a posting on the Web page for the security software. "Thank you for your interest in joining the Microsoft Security Essentials Beta. We are not accepting additional participants at this time. Please check back at a later date for possible additional availability."
Limit Reached Within 24 Hours
The beta became available Tuesday morning and reached the limit for the U.S. and Israel within twenty-four hours. Microsoft had said it would allow 75,000 downloads for users in the U.S., Israel and Brazil.
According to news reports , the limit for the U.S. and Israel was reached at about 5 a.m. PDT Wednesday. The limit of 20,000 downloads for Brazilian users hadn't been reached, meaning 55,000 downloads were reserved for U.S. and Israel.
It's a dangerous combination: 140,000 followers and a Twitter account that generates its Tweets from other pages via auto feeds. Unknown attackers have exploited the Twitter account of venture capitalist and former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki to spread links to malware. The link in a Tweet allegedly lead to sex videos involving American actress and singer-songwriter Leighton Meester: "Leighton Meester sex tape video free download!"
Leighton Meester sex tape lure spreads Mac and Windows malware to Twitter users
http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/06/24/leighton
Microsoft Corp. today announced the start of the Windows 7 Upgrade Option program enabling consumers and small businesses to receive Windows 7 when they purchase a qualifying Windows Vista personal computer starting June 26, 2009. Under the program, designated PCs pre-installed with premium versions of Windows Vista will qualify for licenses of the equivalent Windows 7 product.
For more details on Windows 7 pricing and offers please see the company's announcement at www.windowsteamblog.com
http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2009/jun09/06-25Windows7UpgradeOptionPR.mspx
Check out the New Windows 7 Packaging
Microsoft Corp. today announced Microsoft Hohm, a new online application that enables consumers to better understand their energy usage, get recommendations and start saving money. Microsoft Hohm uses advanced analytics licensed from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy to provide consumers with personalized energy-saving recommendations. Microsoft Hohm is an easy-to-use tool that helps consumers lower their energy bill and reduce their impact on the environment. The beta application is available at no cost to anyone in the United States with an Internet connection and can be accessed directly by visiting http://www.microsoft-hohm.com
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/jun09/06-24EnergyUsagePR.mspx
The new version 2010 products incorporate the advantages of advanced Host-based Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS) technology in the Application Control module that assigns a security rating to previously unknown malware; unique Sandbox technology embodying virtualization technologies and providing a dedicated secure runtime environment; and the innovative Kaspersky Security Network that uses information from millions of users to dramatically reduce response times to new threats and replenish reputation databases with the most up-to-date information about clean and infected files.
The version 2009 products that were released last summer for personal use have won recognition from tens of millions of users all over the world, demonstrated their efficiency and reliability in hundreds of comparative tests, and established themselves as leaders in the global market. They are now succeeded by the new Kaspersky Lab products Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 and Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010, based on the very latest developments in IT security.
An even more secure environment is provided in Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 as the product integrates the ?Safe Run? functionality based on the new Sandbox technology ? unique for Internet Security Suites product range. ?Safe Run? enables the user to run new software in an isolated environment that protects the operating system from all malicious changes. Statistically, it has been demonstrated that vulnerabilities in operating systems and trusted applications are often exploited by hackers to attack applications that make use of the Internet.
The ?Safe Run? function makes surfing the Internet using various web browsers much safer and easier, as well as allowing any number of other applications to be run simultaneously. A green border around the application window also makes it easy for the user to see that it is protected.
http://www.kaspersky.com/news?id=207575849
I?m so interested with that Safe Run feature!
NOTE: Existing users of 2009 and v7 editions is eligible for Free upgrade to 2010 editions as long as the license/subscription is active. http://www.kaspersky.com/support/kis2010/license?qid=208280369
BING-VS-GOOGLE.COM (that?s http://www.bing-vs-google.com/)
Search or compare the search results using two engines - the popular one vs the new decision 'search' engine.
Thanks to Tom Kelchner @ Sunbelt Blog
Vulnerable:
Office OCX Word Viewer 3.2.0.5
Office OCX Word Viewer 3.2
Word Viewer ActiveX control is prone to multiple denial-of-service and code-execution vulnerabilities.
Exploiting these issues allows remote attackers to crash applications that employ the vulnerable controls (typically Microsoft Internet Explorer). Attackers may also execute arbitrary code in the context of an affected user.
Word Viewer ActiveX Control 3.2.0.5 is reported vulnerable; other versions may also be affected.
http://www.officeocx.com/Word_ActiveX.htm
http://blog.trendmicro.com/another-messy-mass-compromise-emerges/
http://moaxb.blogspot.com/2007/05/moaxb-03-wordviewerocx-32-multiple_03.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/23784/discuss
A Security Bulletin has been posted for Shockwave Player. Adobe is not currently aware of any exploits in the wild for this issue.
http://blogs.adobe.com/psirt/2009/06/security_bulletin_adobe_shockw.html
http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb09-08.html
Make sure you have the latest version of Adobe Shockwave Player. The current version is 11.5.0.600. You can get it from http://get.adobe.com/shockwave/
We have this update in the calendar of updates: http://www.calendarofupdates.com/updates/index.php?showtopic=20544
As Twitter becomes increasingly abused by hackers, Finjan Software has released a free browser add-on with a new feature that scans links and warns if they point to a page containing malware.
The SecureTwitter component is wrapped into SecureBrowsing, a plug-in for either the Firefox or Internet Explorer browsers, said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, Finjan's CTO.
SecureTwitter is designed to warn people about links that people post on the micro-blogging service. Because of Twitter's 140-character limit, most of the URLs posted have been shortened using services such as Bit.ly or TinyURL.
http://securebrowsing.finjan.com/
http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?NewsID=117948
http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/
Download via Connect (survey is offered to you before you can download): http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=153446
# cutter 192.168.2.55 3400
What do you think of your antivirus company, the one that didn't notice Sony's rootkit as it infected half a million computers? And this isn't one of those lightning-fast internet worms; this one has been spreading since mid-2004. Because it spread through infected CDs, not through internet connections, they didn't notice? This is exactly the kind of thing we're paying those companies to detect -- especially because the rootkit was phoning home.
But much worse than not detecting it before Russinovich's discovery was the deafening silence that followed. When a new piece of malware is found, security companies fall over themselves to clean our computers and inoculate our networks. Not in this case.
Forget the outdated hacker image of a spotty anarchic teenager holed up in his bedroom defacing the Web sites of global organisations, today's hackers are not only older but more determined than ever to claim your cash and identity.
...ran a heroin distribution ring that was violent and tightly knit, making it difficult for informers to penetrate it, federal authorities say.
The gang also had a secret weapon: It cultivated a police officer to dig into a law enforcement database to figure out which of its customers might be undercover informers...
"This case personifies exactly the effectiveness of the system," the chief said. "We had intelligence that somebody was running people's names involved in narcotics cases without a legitimate reason, and we ran those names and found out who it was, and took the appropriate action."
Mokwa said officers use REJIS on a daily basis, and tightening security would be burdensome. "You have to rely upon the integrity of officers to use the system properly," he said. "To change it, you would have to restrict their access."
Michael Lynn, the hacker who hit the headlines in July for exposing a Cisco router flaw is now employed by arch-rival Juniper, according to the vendor. Juniper declined to reveal what role Lynn is occupying.
The security researcher was dramatically sued by Cisco earlier in the year after he discovered a Cisco router IOS flaw and defied the networking giant and then-employer ISS to publicise the flaw at a hacking convention in Las Vegas.
Lynn was widely regarded as a hero by many in the internet community in the wake of the scandal but many doubted if he could again find gainful employment as a security researcher.
For its part, Cisco was widely castigated for its heavy-handed tactics in stopping Lynn from further publicising his findings, with some commentators suggesting that the internet could be at threat if similar whistle-blowers are discouraged to come clean on flaws.
I've written twice (here and here) about the relationship between the "old" event IDs (5xx-6xx) in WS03 and earlier versions of Windows, and between the "new" security event IDs (4xxx-5xxx) in Vista and beyond.
In short, EventID(WS03) + 4096 = EventID(WS08) for almost all security events in WS03.
The exceptions are the logon events. The logon success events (540, 528) were collapsed into a single event 4624 (=528 + 4096). The logon failure events (529-537, 539) were collapsed into a single event 4625 (=529+4096).
Other than that, there are cases where old events were deprecated (IPsec IIRC), and there are cases where new events were added (DS Change). These are all new instrumentation and there is no ?mapping? possible- e.g. the new DS Change audit events are complementary to the old DS Access events; they record something different than the old events so you can?t say that the old event xxx = the new event yyy because they aren?t equivalent. The old event means one thing and the new event means another thing; they represent different points of instrumentation in the OS, not just formatting changes in the event representation in the log.
Of course I explained earlier why we renumbered the events, and (in the same place) why the difference is "+4096" instead of something more human-friendly like "+1000". The bottom line is that the event schema is different, so by changing the event IDs (and not re-using any), we force existing automation to be updated rather than just misinterpreting events when the automation doesn't know the version of Windows that produced the event. We realized it would be painful but it is nowhere near as painful as if every event consumer had to be aware of, and have special casing for, pre-Vista events and post-Vista events with the same IDs but different schema.
So if you happen to know the pre-Vista security events, then you can quickly translate your existing knowledge to Vista by adding 4000, adding 100, and subtracting 4. You can do this in your head.
However if you're trying to implement some automation, you should avoid trying to make a chart with "<Vista" and ">=Vista" columns of event ID numbers, because this will likely result in mis-parsing one set of events, and because you'll find it frustrating that there is not a 1:1 mapping (and in some cases no mapping at all).
Eric
I've written before on noise reduction in the Windows security event log. I've also written to describe how object access auditing works. But, I still get questions on how to reduce noise from object access events. The other day I got that question, specific to Directory Service objects, on an internal discussion list so I thought I'd clean up the answer a bit and share it with the world. In general the same is true for any type of object, although there are a few more knobs to control for DS objects.
Object access audit is generated when the system access control list (SACL) on the object matches the access that was performed on ALL of the following conditions:
The specific auditing algorithm is discussed here.
So the way to reduce the number of audit events (566 on Windows Server 2003, 4662 on Windows Server 2008, or one of the new DS Change events on Windows Server 2008) is to cause one or more of those conditions to fail, except in the specific cases that you care about.
The SACL which will generate the most audit events is "Everyone:Success & Failure:All accesses" on the domain head with OI,CI (object inherit & container inherit flags) for all object types. This SACL matches all of the above conditions in all cases. (Incidentally I think that this is pretty close to the default SACL- with the exception of failures- for Windows 2000 Active Directory installations, and SACLs are not updated when DCs are upgraded from version to version. Windows Server 2003 has much more conservative SACLs for new installations of AD.)
To reduce noise, I offer the following suggestions, addressing each of the above conditions:
I get the question fairly often, how to use the logon events in the audit log to track how long a user was using their computer and when they logged off.
As I have written about previously, this method of user activity tracking is unreliable. It works in trivial cases (e.g. single machine where the user doesn't have physical access to the power switch or power cord), and it works most of the time in simple cases where there is good network connectivy and the user is not trying to evade detection. If the user has physical access to the machine-- for example, can pull out the network or power cables or push the reset button-- and if the user is actively trying to evade time tracking, then the only reliable solution is to surreptitiously put a video camera (subject to local laws) in a place that can monitor the user's presence in front of the keyboard (yes I am aware of research done to track sound of keyboard clicks, etc.).
There is no way to instrument the OS to account for someone who just backs away from the keyboard and walks away. The screen saver, if configured, will come on after a configurable delay since the last keypress or mouse movement. Yes, if you know the SS delay then you could just work that into your calculations. However the workstation does not lock until the screen saver is dismissed (some of you might have noticed that when you bump the mouse to dismiss the screensaver, sometimes you see your desktop for a fraction of a second- that?s because your machine isn?t locked while the screen saver is being displayed). And the events don't tell you whether the workstation was locked or auto-locked so you don't really know whether to add in the screen saver delay factor. Plus, prior to Windows Vista, there is no workstation lock event at all, only an unlock event, which is constructed in a way which makes it difficult to correlate with the original logon event.
So the bottom line is, I don't advocate or recommend this method for tracking the time a user spends at the keyboard. If I were hypothetically called as an expert witness, I would testify that such a method is unreliable and trivially circumvented. You have been warned, I've beaten that dead horse enough I guess.
Given that you are disregarding all my contrary advice, how are you going to accomplish this?
First, we need a general algorithm.
Use time (for a given logon session) = Logoff time - logon time
Now, what about the cases where the user powers off the machine, or it bluescreens, or a token leak prevents the logoff event from being generated, etc.? We can use the BEGIN_LOGOFF event to handle token leak cases. We can use the shutdown event in cases where the user does not log off. And in case of crashes, the only event we can use is the startup event. Note that each of these introduces increasing levels of uncertainty.
Logoff time = (logoff time | begin_logoff time | shutdown time | startup time)
This is good, but what about the time the workstation was locked?
Workstation lock time = unlock time - lock time
Total workstation lock time (for a given logon session) = SUM(workstation lock time)
How about remote desktop & terminal server sessions, and fast user switching? You can connect and disconnect from logon sessions, during which time the user technically isn't using the computer.
Session idle time = session connect time - session disconnect time
Total session idle time (for a given logon session) = SUM(session idle time)
How about times when the machine was idle? We can estimate that by looking at the time the screen saver was in place and adding the screen saver timeout.
Console idle time = (screen saver dismiss time - screen saver invoke time + screen saver delay)
Total console idle time = SUM(console idle time)
Putting all of this together and modifying our original formula, we get:
Use time (for a given logon session) =
Logoff time - logon time
- SUM(workstation lock time)
- SUM(session idle time)
- SUM(console idle time)
When we expand it, it is not quite so pretty:
Use time (for a given logon session) =
( (logoff time | begin_logoff time | shutdown time | startup time) - logon time )
- SUM(unlock time - lock time)
- SUM(session connect time - session disconnect time)
- SUM(screen saver dismiss time - screen saver invoke time + screen saver delay)
You have to be very careful that you only look at events that are properly contained chronologically between two other appropriate events, to avoid accidentally pairing the wrong logon and logoff events, or pairing a lock workstation event from one logon session with a different logon session. The best correlation field is the Logon ID field, the next best are timestamp and user name. At various times you need to examine all of these fields.
Now, which event IDs correspond to all of these real-world events?
They are all found in the Security event log. The pre-Vista events (ID=5xx) all have event source=Security. The Vista/WS08 events (ID=4xxx) all have event source=Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing.
512 / 4608 STARTUP
513 / 4609 SHUTDOWN
528 / 4624 LOGON
538 / 4634 LOGOFF
551 / 4647 BEGIN_LOGOFF
N/A / 4778 SESSION_RECONNECTED
N/A / 4779 SESSION_DISCONNECTED
N/A / 4800 WORKSTATION_LOCKED
* / 4801 WORKSTATION_UNLOCKED
N/A / 4802 SCREENSAVER_INVOKED
N/A / 4803 SCREENSAVER_DISMISSED
* prior to Windows Vista, there was no event for locking the workstation. Unlocking the workstation generated a pair of events, a logon event and a logoff event (528/538) with logon type 7. These events had the same user name as the "original" logon session and were completely enclosed chronologically by the logon/logoff events for the "real" logon session, but did not contain the Logon ID of the original logon session or other unambiguous correlator. This makes correlation of these events difficult.
All of these events are generated in the Logon/Logoff audit policy category, although on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 they are scattered among the various subcategories in this audit policy category. The audit event spreadsheet that Ned wrote has all the policy subcategory mappings as well as the event descriptions.
Sorry that this is more of a do-it-yourself than a solution-in-a-box, but this is pretty difficult to script and so far I haven't worked on a project that required this.
Eric
I get a lot of questions about how ACS event retention works. So here you go, I'm blogging it so I can just answer with a link :-)
There are two DWORD registry values which affect backlog transmission. Both are on the collector machine under HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\AdtServer\Parameters.
EventRetentionPeriod, if present, is expressed in hours (I forget the default). It takes precedence over MaximumEventAge, which is in days (default=1). Both of these values control the backlog of events that will be sent from agents to the collector on agent connect, but as mentioned, EventRetentionPeriod wins any conflict. MaximumEventAge used to control database retention in early beta builds but does not anymore, since the database moved to a partitioning mechanism. You might encounter MaximumEventAge if you are migrating from ACS beta to Operations Manager 2007 ACS.
Grooming is now governed entirely by the grooming algorithm. The grooming algorithm is simple: partitions will be deleted by the next grooming job as soon as they are eligible for deletion.
Eligible for deletion means:
Think of (partitionDuration * numPartitions) as the retention period before data is groomed from the database.
Note that dtPartition[<partitionId>].LastCreationTime defaults to 12:00am 1/1/2000 (collector local time). After successful execution of the close partition script, this field?s value is set to max(dtEvent_<partitionId>.CreationTime) for the partition in question. There is an implication here that if you update status to 2 without updating LastCreationTime, then the partition is immediately eligible for grooming assuming your clock is accurate.
The partition switch offset (time of day to switch partitions) value in dtConfig has no effect on grooming, other than that grooming will not occur during a partition switch.
Grooming runs at startup and immediately after checkpointing. The default checkpoint interval is 198 seconds but this interval can be configured by the DWORD registry value CheckPointInterval on the collector, in the same location as the other registry values. A successful checkpoint logs an event in the database, event ID 0 with a source of ?_acs? (you might have seen these on an ?idle? ACS and wondered how they got there?)
We got several reports recently of a bug in ACS that certain DS Access events, primarily for dnsNode and dnsZone objects, don't properly get looked up.
Some background: the event log in Windows prefers to log invariants such as message IDs, parameter message IDs, SIDs (security IDs which represent users and groups, etc.), and GUIDs (globally unique IDs which represent objects in Active Directory), rather than the actual names of the objects. At view time the viewing application is expected to look up the name associated with the invariant and display it to the user.
The reasons that Windows does this are (1) that it enables localization, so that English speakers can see "Administrator" and French speakers can see "Administrateur", and (2) that it provides rename safefy- many objects are rename-able, such as domain accounts and other AD objects.
Anyway in ACS we had to solve the problem of how to store mountains of log data in a database, make it queryable in meaningful ways, preserve original format, present to users in a recognizable/understandable format, etc.
The way we chose to solve our several problems was to take strings that contained an invariant and append the translated name or string.
For example:
%{e0fa1e8c-9b45-11d0-afdd-00c04fd930c9}
would be translated to:
%{e0fa1e8c-9b45-11d0-afdd-00c04fd930c9}=?dnsNode?
and
%%7685
becomes:
%%7685=?Write Property?
As I mentioned, though, we ran into a problem recently. Some of our customers were monitoring AD objects with ACS and noticed that ACS was not translating the GUIDs for certain objects. When they manually looked up the GUIDs they noticed that they were for AD-integrated DNS objects.
After investigation, we found that AD was logging certain audit events for the objects, before all the attributes of the objects had been populated- DNS was populating the objects in multiple operations per object and each operation causes a separate event. So ACS, which operates as close to real-time as we could get, was actually noticing the first event and asking AD "what's this?" before DNS had finished updating AD with things like the object's name. The difference in time was literally only milliseconds.
Anyway I didn't really feel it was an ACS bug and wanted to file a bug against Windows DNS Server. However the Operations Manager team has prototyped a configurable behavior for the ACS agent that lets it wait a very short time (configurable number of ms) and retry, when it fails to look up an AD object because the object doesn't exist. This might be released as a public patch and/or in a future Service Pack.
I thought you might appreciate stories of the kinds of weirdness we run into.
A judge in New Zealand declined to convict the admitted (guilty plea) botherder of a million-bot botnet, citing the negative consequences a conviction would have on the young man's future prospects. See the story here.
Well duh. The whole theory of crime and punishment is that if you do something bad, you get punished, and punishment is something that is unpleasant, so you try to avoid it, hopefully by not doing the crime. See? One would hope that a judge would understand this concept.
I could understand if the judge said "this is just a stupid kid, he doesn't deserve to do 20 years", and gave the kid probation, community service and a big fine. I don't know if New Zealand has such options, or if the judge has latitude in sentencing. There is probably more to the story than is being told. But you don't take over a million computers that don't belong to you, personally making tens of thousands of dollars, and not realize that you're doing something wrong. Unless you're a sociopath. And in either case, you either need punishment (for doing something you know is wrong) or separation from society for the protection of society while you get treatment (if you are a sociopath). So whatever the case, the judge got it wrong, and as a result is practically encouraging future behavior of the same sort.
If you haven't used wevtutil.exe to script event log tasks in Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, you're missing out. The new tool makes getting events out of the log pretty easy, but the main thing is that it doesn't suffer from any of the drawbacks around getting field delimiting correct.
The tool's command to query events from a log is "qe", and takes a log name as a parameter.
If you want to specify a query expression, then you can use XPath with the /q switch. The easiest way to do this is to use Event Viewer to build a filter for just the events that you want, and then copy just the XPath expression out of the XML tab of the filter dialog in Event Viewer. Be careful to copy only the filter expression and not the XML that surrounds it.
Finally, the default output format of wevtutil is XML. However it dumps each event as XML, but does not include a root element- in other words it's not well-formed XML by default. To include a root element you need to include the /e switch and a root element name.
I put this all together in a batch file, with an example XPath filter that just gathers interactive logon events (event ID=4624, logon type=2). You can save this as a .cmd file and run it as an administrator on Vista or WS08 and it will pull up a list of your interactive logons in Internet Explorer (or your default XML handler application if you've changed the registration). It has to run as admin because it accesses the security event log.
If you're really good (better than me, which is not hard) you could write an XSL style sheet and put this into a report format.
Good luck!
@echo off REM (C) 2008 Microsoft Corporation REM All Rights Reserved REM The next command is all one line and has no carriage returns REM The only spaces in the XPath are around the AND keywords
set outputfile=%temp%\interactive-logon-events.xml
if "%1" NEQ "" set outputfile=%1
wevtutil qe Security /q:"*[System[Provider[@Name='Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing'] and Task=12544 and (EventID=4624)] and EventData[Data[@Name='LogonType']='2']]" /e:Events > %outputfile%
start %outputfile%
set outputfile=
I often talk about Ned, who is the current subject matter expert in Microsoft product support for the auditing feature in the US (Fadi is your guy in the Middle East and we have a couple of guys in Europe). Well, Ned has a blog and I thought I'd point you guys there. His recent posts on auditing include a description of how to deploy the special groups logon auditing feature with group policy.
Fadi, Ned and Brian of the auditing team have documented all the auditing events by audit policy category and subcategory for your reference.
Check it out in the Knowledge Base.
Even better, they documented all the events in spreadsheet format, and that's propagating to the Microsoft Download Center. I'll publish the link when it's online.
2008-04-17 UPDATE: Brian just sent me the link: here is the spreadsheet.
There's one topic that I know is on everyone's mind- no, not American Idol- it's "What's new in Auditing in Windows Server 2008?"
Well, funny that you brought that up. My friend Jesper Johanssen just wrote a new book, the Windows Server 2008 Security Resource Kit, and he invited me to write a chapter about auditing for it, which I did. So you, dear reader, are getting information straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
Anyway I think the book hits store shelves on March the 10th. A number of distinguished individuals contributed to the book: Susan Bradley, Darren Canavor, Kurt Dillard, Roger Grimes, Brian Komar, Alun Jones and others.
I'd also like to send out special props to my auditing posse: Raghu (who was the primary developer for auditing for Vista & WS08) and Ned (who is the resident guru for auditing in Microsoft Customer Support Services), both of whom made significant contributions. Raghu introduces the new "special group logon tracking" feature, and Ned contributed a spreadsheet mapping all the events (360-ish) to the policy category and subcategory and giving other key information about each event; this is included on the CD bundled with the book, along with an XML file defining the schema for all the events and event messages. Ned's also working on getting a version of the spreadsheet available for download from the Microsoft download site.
In other news, the Windows Server 2008 Security Guide is also out, and yes, yours truly contributed in small part to the auditing guidance in there too, although I seem to have been overlooked in the credits (in all fairness my work delta from the Vista Security Guide was really small so maybe it did not meet their "credits bar").
Anyway, download the security guide and buy a copy of the book. Buy more than one copy of the book, and give copies to your friends and loved ones. Nothing says "Happy Anniversary, Honey" quite like a book or white paper about computer security. OK, so maybe I should stick to computer security and stay away from relationship advice. Flowers work well in my experience.
I've decided to start dumping my knowledge of ACS for posterity's sake. My first installment is here, and it's an excerpt from an external email I put together which describes how event transformation works on ACS.
Transformation is performed on the agent (using instructions provided at connect time by the collector) and on the collector. Transformation instructions are all stored on the collector in a file called EventSchema.xml which is in the AdtServer directory (%windir%\system32\security\adtserver). This file is pointed to in the collector?s registry and is read during startup of the collector service; failure to successfully read and parse this file at startup is a fatal error for the collector (the debug log will complain about parsing).
The collector reads EventSchema.xml and builds in-memory binary tables of event transformation instructions and event string types by OS version/event log/event source.
The collector (as explained elsewhere) also reads AcsConfig.xml to get its persistent state and configuration for all known agents, to know what logs/sources to collect for each agent/agent group, etc. This is all read into in-memory state for each agent.
At connect time, the agent sends version information- what the OS and agent version and service pack are, etc. The collector first looks in its in-memory agent state to see what configuration applies to the agent. Then it looks in its transformation tables and extracts the appropriate version-specific transformation instructions for the events that the collector is configured to collect from that agent. Then it packages these instructions and sends them to the agent.
The agent starts reading events, transforming them according to its instructions from the collector, and sending the transformed events to the collector. The collector finishes the transformation, services real-time subscriptions and loads the events into the database as appropriate.
If the agent encounters an event that is it configured to send (by log/source) but does not have transformation instructions for, then it simply builds a copy the event string for string and sends the copy of the event to the collector as an ?unschematized? event. The collector will handle this event without problems but will not extract non-header user fields (no primary/client/target user fields) and will not add string type information.
I?ll take Windows Server 2003 (build 3790), Event Log: Security, Event Source: Security, Event ID: 644 as an example.
Here?s the WS03 schema for 644 (excerpt from %systemroot%\system32\security\adtserver\EventSchema.xml in the path ?Schema\Log[@Name=?Security?\Source[@Name=?Security?]\Version[@MinBuild=?3790?]\Event[@SourceId=?644?]?).
<Event SourceId="644" SourceName="SE_AUDITID_ACCOUNT_AUTO_LOCKED">
<Call Name="AppendString" Param1="1" Param2="0" />
<Call Name="AppendString" Param1="3" Param2="0" />
<Call Name="AppendString" Param1="2" Param2="0" />
<Call Name="AppendString" Param1="4" Param2="0" />
<Call Name="AppendString" Param1="5" Param2="0" />
<Call Name="AppendString" Param1="6" Param2="0" />
<Call Name="AppendSidFromNames" Param1="4" Param2="5" />
<Call Name="AppendNamesFromSid" Param1="3" Param2="0" />
<Param TypeName="typeUserDn" />
<Param TypeName="typeComputerName" />
<Param TypeName="typeTargetSid" />
<Param TypeName="typeClientUser" />
<Param TypeName="typeClientDomain" />
<Param TypeName="typeClientLogonId" />
<Param TypeName="typeClientSid" />
<Param TypeName="typeTargetUser" />
<Param TypeName="typeTargetDomain" />
</Event>
The instructions are all applied in order. ?Call? instructions are executed agent-side; ?Param? instructions are executed server-side.
These instructions can be translated as:
· Take string 1 from the original event and make it string 1 in the new event. It is of type ?typeUserDn?.
· Take string 3 from the original event and make it string 2 in the new event. It is of type ?typeComputerName?. Note that we are doing reordering here by appending original string #3 before original string #2. Nifty, eh?
· Take string 2 from the original event and make it string 3 in the new event. It is of type ?typeTargetSid?.
· Take string 4 from the original event and make it string 4 in the new event. It is of type ?typeClientUser?.
· Take string 5 from the original event and make it string 5 in the new event. It is of type ?typeClientDomain?.
· Take string 6 from the original event and make it string 6 in the new event. It is of type ?typeClientLogonId?.
· Take string 4 from the original event and treat is as a user name, and take string 5 from the original event and treat it as a domain name, look up the associated SID and make it string 7 in the new event. The new string is of type ?typeClientSid?.
· Take string 3 from the new event, treat it as a SID, look up the user/domain name associated with it and append the user name as string 8 to the new event and the domain name as string 9 to the new event. String 8 is of type ?typeTargetUser? and String 9 is of type ?typeTargetDomain?.
See the reordering? Now here is an instance of the event with the original event data. If you?re not familiar with the XML, it?s the XML output of Crimson, the new eventlog service introduced in Vista/WS08, but this is a WS03 [pre-Crimson] machine; we're looking at a saved event log (evt) file.
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Security" />
<EventID Qualifiers="0">644</EventID>
<Level>0</Level>
<Task>7</Task>
<Keywords>0xa0000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2007-12-17T15:50:14.000Z" />
<EventRecordID>28003981</EventRecordID>
<Channel>C:\Users\ericf\AppData\Local\Temp\SERVER34_SecEvts.evt</Channel>
<Computer>SERVER34</Computer>
<Security UserID="S-1-5-18" />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data>user09</Data> // String 1 ? user name
<Data>SERVER34</Data> // String 2 ? looks like a machine name, confirmed by string 4
<Data>%{S-1-5-21-5998314728-109421381-169156293-611111}</Data> // String 3 ? definitely a SID
<Data>SERVER34$</Data> // String 4 ? definitely an account name (machine account)
<Data>CONTOSO</Data> // String 5 ? looks like a domain name
<Data>(0x0,0x3E7)</Data> // String 6 ? definitely a logon ID
<Data>-</Data> // String 7 ? empty null string at the end of the event (ignored by ACS)
</EventData>
When the event arrives at the collector, type information is applied, and then the user fields (typePrimary*, typeClient*, typeTarget*) are extracted from the string data section and the strings that are left are re-numbered starting at 1 (no reordering occurs).
Here?s a chart of what the event looks like at the various points in the system. The changes at each step are shown in red.
|
Original Event in Event Log |
Client-Side Transformation at Agent |
Server-Side Normalization (WMI/SQL output) | |||
|
Field |
Content Description (implicit) |
Field |
Content Description (implicit) |
Field |
Content Description (explicit) |
|
|
|
Client User |
|
Client User |
typeClientUser |
|
|
|
Client Domain |
|
Client Domain |
typeClientDomain |
|
|
|
Client Sid |
|
Client Sid |
typeClientSid |
|
|
|
Client Login Id |
|
Client Login Id |
typeClientLogonId |
|
|
|
Target User |
|
Target User |
typeTargetUser |
|
|
|
Target Domain |
|
Target Domain |
typeTargetDomain |
|
|
|
Target Sid |
|
Target Sid |
typeTargetSid |
|
String01 |
typeUserDn |
String01 |
typeUserDn |
String01 |
typeUserDn |
|
String02 |
typeTargetSid |
String02 |
typeComputerName |
String02 |
typeComputerName |
|
String03 |
typeComputerName |
String03 |
typeTargetSid |
String03 |
|
|
String04 |
typeClientUser |
String04 |
typeClientUser |
String04 |
|
|
String05 |
typeClientDomain |
String05 |
typeClientDomain |
String05 |
|
|
String06 |
typeClientLogonId |
String06 |
typeClientLogonId |
String06 |
|
|
String07 |
|
String07 |
typeClientSid |
String07 |
|
|
String08 |
|
String08 |
typeTargetUser |
String08 |
|
|
String09 |
|
String09 |
typeTargetDomain |
String09 |
|
To finish off a description of transformation, there are 7 transformation functions, each of which can optionally take 2 integers as parameters. Note that there is no ?destination event? field specifier; all references are only to the original event. That?s because when constructing the destination event, any data added to the event is always appended- it is constructed from beginning to end- so the implicit destination field is ?at the end of the event as it is now?.
|
Function |
Parameter 1 |
Parameter 2 |
Description |
|
AppendString |
Reference to a string parameter in the source event in the event log |
Unused |
Appends the referenced string to the event which will be sent to the collector |
|
AppendStringFromTable |
Reference to a constant string in the statically defined <Strings> table (1-based) in the relevant Source\Version element in EventSchema.xml |
Unused |
Appends the referenced constant string to the event which will be sent to the collector |
|
AppendProcessNameFromPid |
Reference to a string parameter in the source event in the event log (source string is expected to be a numeric process ID) |
Unused |
Looks up the process image path name for the referenced PID and appends it to the event which will be sent to the collector |
|
AppendTimeFromDatetime |
Unused |
Unused |
Not Implemented/No Action |
|
AppendSidFromNames |
Reference to a string parameter in the source event in the event log (source string is expected to be a user name) |
Reference to a string parameter in the source event in the event log (source string is expected to be a domain name) |
Looks up the SID for the account represented by the specified user and domain names, and appends the SID to the event which will be sent to the collector |
|
AppendNamesFromSid |
Reference to a string parameter in the source event in the event log (source string is expected to be a security ID) |
Unused |
Looks up the user name and domain name for the account represented by the specified SID, and appends the user name and the domain name as separate strings to the event which will be sent to the collector |
|
AppendNumber |
Unused |
Unused |
Not Implemented/No Action |
Out of range params cause the transformation instruction to be ignored and skipped. Non-integer params or other XML formatting/malformation problem (including non-UTF8 formatting) cause an EventSchema.xml parsing error at collector startup which in turn causes collector startup failure.
So that?s ACS transformation in a nutshell. I hope this helps you guys understand ACS functionality a little better.
Shortly I will finish my write-up on AcsConfig.xml but that is a simple file and not too hard to figure out if you are into experimentation.
Here are some cool things that you can try with the event schema file if you are adventurous:
1. Drop fields. We have modified eventschema.xml successfully to cause it not to collect certain fields (e.g. logon GUIDs) of certain events:
<Call Name="AppendString" Param1="1" Param2="0" />
<Call Name="AppendString" Param1="2" Param2="0" />
<Call Name="AppendString" Param1="3" Param2="0" />
// try deleting a line here
// or, to preserve ordering of subsequent strings
// try replacing ?AppendString? with ?AppendStringFromTable (param1=1)?
<Call Name="AppendString" Param1="4" Param2="0" />
<Call Name="AppendString" Param1="5" Param2="0" />
<Call Name="AppendString" Param1="6" Param2="0" />
2. Add an event source. Some caveats are:
· You must have a unique, well-formed GUID for the new source
· You have to get events of the new source into the log (try ?AuthzReportSecurityEvent? from MSDN)
· You have to modify AcsConfig.xml to tell the agent(s) to collect the new source
NB I have used the C/C++ comment syntax throughout this post but note that ACS does not support either C/C++ nor XML style comments in the XML config files it uses
Today I encountered something new in the logon event- I thought that was old hat and I knew all there was to know about that but I guess I was wrong.
The logon event (528/540 prior to Windows Vista, 4624 in Vista and Windows Server 2008) has a field called a Logon Type. This is a code that is passed into the logon API that tells the authentication system in Windows which policy to check the logon against. Windows has separate policy checks for network logons, interactive logons, etc., so that you can allow users to access a system in some ways but not in others.
The logon type code is, in C/C++ parlance, an enumerated value- it's an ordered list of numeric values, each with an associated name, and these are defined in a publicly available file in the source code (ntsecapi.h). In the source code, the values are always referenced by name.
Today on one of the internal aliases someone actually found a logon event with a logon type of 0- I have never personally seen one of these before and 0 is not defined in the SECURITY_LOGON_TYPE enumeration, so I would have assumed that it was a bug- but it turns out that we are aware of this case and use it occasionally for system logons.
So there you are.
Well there has been a lot happening on my old project, ACS (Audit Collection Services, a feature of SystemCenter Operations Manager 2007).
Two more of our partners, Enterprise Certified and NetPro, have released compliance solutions on top of ACS.
Another of our partners with ACS-based compliance solutions, SecureVantage, has started a new blog where ACS is a frequent topic.
Anyway I'm pleased to see that ACS is becoming a successful platform and I'm happy to answer ACS questions! To you ISV's out there, Joseph and I welcome your questions as well (if we aren't already talking to you). Let us know who you are so we can stay in touch with you!
OK here's something I just remembered today. I may be the last person who remembers this so it's important that I record this somewhere.
In the RTM bits of Windows NT 4.0, for the German language release only, someone snuck in a string resource into the auditing message file. I'm guessing that it was one of our localization engineers, but I don't know- I was over in the support side of things at the time. I stumbled across the message one day while looking at source code.
Here's Björn's momentous message: "Björn grüßt den rest der welt". Basically Björn says hi to everyone. He's a friendly guy.
This is string resource zero in the message table resource- it's not a code resource, it's properly formed and it's not used by the code anywhere. You would not know it exists unless you slog through source code (like me) or use a hex editor or string dumper to analyze binaries AND happen to be so bored that you pull out an NT 4.0 RTM German CD and examine msaudite.dll. NT4 RTM CD's are pretty rare, btw, because we replaced them with slipstream SP1 CD's very shortly after release.
If I remember correctly somebody else came along in a later service pack and changed Björn's name to their own (maybe it was Ulli? I can't remember and I'm too lazy to find the source- it requires a lot of effort to dig that far back). I do remember that shortly thereafter there was a huge Easter Egg crackdown here at Microsoft probably brought to a head by the Excel 97 Flight Simulator. Björn's message of goodwill to mankind was erased forever.
I did a search using the Officially Santioned Search Engine and the other one too; evidently the internet has forgotten Björn's message. But I still remember, Björn.
Anyway I thought you might like this bit of arcana. If you are bored, have a hex editor and a German NT4 CD, knock yourself out...
I got the question last week, why there are so many logon failure events on Windows XP when it is not domain joined.
The short answer is, by design. (Yes, bad design.)
The longer answer is that the shell team is working around the fact that there is no "tell me if this user account has a blank password" API.
When in a workgroup (not domain joined), Windows XP displays a welcome screen that has little pictures (called "tiles") for each user who is permitted to log on to the computer.
The shell team wanted the experience that when you click on a tile, that you will immediately be logged on if your password is blank (we have good data that a large percentage of home users have blank passwords). They only want you to be prompted for a password if you actually have a password. Fair enough, and it also helps with accessibility for people for whom typing is challenging.
The XP Welcome Screen, when it is initialized each time it is to be displayed, attempts to log on each user for which a tile will be displayed, using a blank password. Users with non-blank passwords will cause failures in this case (other users will cause logon success events followed by logoff success events). [2007-11-21 correction]
The Welcome Screen uses the result of these logon attempts to decide whether to display a password box when you select a user's tile. If the user has a blank password, they will be logged on instead of being prompted for a password.
Why are they logging on the account? Well it turns out to be the easiest way to tell if your password is blank. We don't have a "is your password blank" API- that would be a security disaster- and we would prefer that the shell team not go mucking about in the SAM, retrieving hashes and computing the blank password hash for each account so that it could compare them.
I asked for this behavior to be changed prior to XP's release. Specifically I asked that the blank password check be moved from Welcome screen initialization to tile selection- this would still cause logon failures but many fewer of them. I was declined. I asked for fixes to it in SP1 and SP2 and was declined. At this point we will not be revisiting this "feature"; the Welcome Screen was redesigned to eliminate this problem.
The shell team who designed the Welcome Screen did not feel that auditing was a common scenario for workgroup machines, and I didn't (and still don't) have any business case to dispute that.
During the security bulletin webcast for June 2009, we answered a wide array of questions around the 10 bulletins we released. Of primary interest to customers, based on the number of questions we received on the topic, is the RPC issue addressed by MS09-026. As this issue affects third party products that utilize RPC in Windows, customers wanted to know if there is a way to tell if their third party product was vulnerable. First, we are not aware of any applications that are vulnerable to this issue at this time. Second, we recommend that you consult with your application developer as they are in the best position to analyze their code for this issue. To help with this, the Security Research & Defense team posted guidance to their blog on ?How a developer can know if their RPC interface is affected?.
The complete list of questions and answers from the webcast is now posted here:
http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/pages/monthly-security-bulletin-webcast-q-a-june-2009.aspx
Also, here is the link to the Q&A index page in case you want to view previous months:
http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/pages/microsoft-security-bulletin-webcast-q-a-index-page.aspx
The video of this month?s webcast is just over an hour long as we had 10 bulletins and a couple of advisories to cover. The Q&A portion starts at around 39 minutes in if you want to skip to that portion.
| More listening and viewing options: |
Every month in the webcast, we cover an aggregate severity and exploitability index ratings slide that we think is useful as a quick reference when doing a risk assessment. Here is that slide for your reference in case you were not able to attend the webcast or print the slides out during the webcast:
Finally, there are two additional items I want to mention that we covered in the webcast this month:
First, we put out a call for feedback on the Exploitability Index. The index provides customers with guidance on the likelihood of functioning exploit code being developed in the first 30 days for vulnerabilities addressed in our bulletins. This index has been available now for 9 months and we want to get your feedback on it positive or negative and how you use it in your risk assessments. To submit your feedback, simply email it to msrcteam@microsoft.com.
The second thing we covered that I wanted to mention here is that Office Update is retiring. Starting August 1, 2009, we will discontinue support for Office Update and the Office Update Inventory Tool. At that time, to continue receiving updates for Office products, you will need to use Microsoft Update. For more information see the FAQ (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/FX010402221033.aspx).
As always, customers experiencing issues installing any of the updates this month should contact our Customer Service and Support group:
Customers in the U.S. and Canada can receive technical support from Microsoft Customer Support Services at 1-866-PCSAFETY. There is no charge for support calls that are associated with security updates.
International customers can receive support from their local Microsoft subsidiaries. There is no charge for support that is associated with security updates. For more information about how to contact Microsoft for support issues, visit the International Support Web site.
Please join us for our next live webcast on July 14, 2009 at 11:00 am PDT (UTC ?7). Follow this link to pre-register:
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032407482
Hope to see you then!
Jerry Bryant
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
Summary of Microsoft?s monthly security bulletin release for June 2009.
Today we released 10 new security bulletins. 6 of those affect Windows with two rated as critical, three rated as important and one as moderate. The remaining four all have an aggregate rating of critical and affect Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Works Converters.
In addition to these new bulletins, we are releasing the remaining updates for MS09-017 which now includes updates for Microsoft Office for Mac (versions 2004 and 2008) and Microsoft Works 8.5 and 9.0. You may recall that we released this bulletin last month with updates only for versions of PowerPoint that run on Windows. Please refer to last month?s bulletin blog post for more information.
This month we are also releasing two security advisories. The first advisory, 969898, is for a new set of ActiveX kill bits. The list of kill bits in this rollup includes an update for Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 SP6, and ActiveX controls developed by Microgaming, eBay, and HP (click the company names to view their security release for these kill bits).
The second advisory, 971888, is providing a non-security update for DNS devolution. While this is a non-security update, it changes the security configuration of systems it is applied to and that is why we are releasing it with an advisory. This advisory is also related to the WPAD issue for which we originally released Security Advisory 945731 and subsequently Security Bulletin MS09-008. With the release of this new advisory, we are closing out Security Advisory 945731. Security Advisory 971888 and the associated KB article go in to detail on DNS devolution and how the update changes the configuration. If you have any follow up questions, our live webcast tomorrow would be a great place to ask them.
Concerning open advisories going in to this month, with the release of MS09-020, Security Advisory 971492, which discusses an issue with Internet Information Services, specifically in WebDAV, is now closed. And, as we noted in our Advance Notification (ANS) blog post last week, we do not yet have an update ready for the DirectShow vulnerability discussed in Security Advisory 971778. Our security teams are working hard on this issue but the update has to meet the right quality bar before we can release it. We continue to monitor the threat landscape through our Software Security Incident Response Process (SSIRP), and will provide updates to the advisory if needed. We continue to encourage customers to review the mitigations and workarounds in the advisory and check out the ?Fix It For Me? solution in Knowledgebase Article 971778. Additionally, please refer to these blog posts for more information on this issue:
On the Anti-Malware front, the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC) has added one new malware family: Win32/InternetAntivirus which is a fake online scanner that leads to a rogue downloader. For details, please refer to the MMPC Blog.
In the video below, Adrian Stone from the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) and I go in to a little more detail on issues customers should be thinking about when considering the deployment of this month?s updates.
| More viewing and listening options: |
This month?s release addresses 31 total vulnerabilities with 15 rated as ?1? on our Exploitability Index, meaning there is a high likelihood that reliable exploit code may be developed in the next 30 days.
Some of these vulnerabilities are already publicly known. For example, CVE-2009-1532 addresses the first IE 8 vulnerability. This vulnerability in a pre-release version of IE 8 was first revealed in March 2009 at CanSecWest in the Pwn2Own contest. In the final release, a mitigation was put in to place to protect against ASLR+DEP .NET bypass used in the contest, so right now, there is no known way to attack this issue in the default configuration of IE 8 on Windows Vista (see the write up in our Security Research & Defense blog for details). Regardless, MS09-019 addresses the underlying vulnerability which is rated as Critical on Windows XP and Windows Vista but due to IE 8?s built in mitigations, it only rates as a ?3? for Windows Vista on the Exploitability Index while Windows XP is rated as ?1?.
The IE 8 vulnerability does not affect Windows 7 RC (build 7100) but does affect Windows 7 Beta. Updates for beta versions of Windows 7 will be available via KB969897.
Customers running Windows 2000 domains should pay particular attention to MS09-018 as CVE-2009-1138 affects Windows 2000 domain controllers and LDAP server. This is a remote code execution vulnerability that is reachable over the network. While this vulnerability was privately disclosed, we give it a ?1? on the Exploitability Index.Finally, the three Office related updates (Excel, Word and Works Converters) all have an aggregate severity rating of Critical due to the Office 2000 platform. All other affected platforms are rated as Important. If you are still on the Office 2000 platform, please note that it reaches the end of its product lifecycle on July 14, 2009. That is the last day we would release security updates for Office 2000 if there are any to release at that time.
As always, check the Security Research and Defense blog for additional technical information on these updates. If you have questions or would like more information about this month?s release, please plan to attend our regularly scheduled security bulletin webcast tomorrow, Wednesday, June 10, 2009, at 11:00 a.m. PDT (UTC ?7). Click HERE to register.
Thanks!
Jerry Bryant
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights*
May 10, 2009: Updated to correct third party ActiveX control company names.
Advance Notification for the June 2009 Security Bulletin Release
Today, we published our Advance Notification indicating that next Tuesday, June 9 at 10:00 a.m. PDT (UTC -8), we will be releasing a total of 10 security bulletins consisting of:
· Six updates affecting Windows. Two Critical, three Important, and one Moderate.
· One Critical update affecting Internet Explorer.
· One Critical update affecting Word.
· One Critical update affecting Excel.
· One Critical update affecting Office.
You may have noticed that we are not announcing an update for the DirectShow vulnerability addressed in Security Advisory 971778. Our security teams are working hard on a security update that addresses this issue to protect customers, but we do not yet have an update that has reached the appropriate level of quality for broad distribution. We continue to monitor the situation closely and suggest customers follow the guidance provided in the advisory. This includes the ?Fix It For Me? solution in the associated Knowledge Base article, which provides a quick and easy workaround to protect customers from possible attacks. If this doesn?t work in your environment, please reference the KB article for several other possible workarounds.
In addition to the new bulletins, we will also release updates for the remaining affected products in security bulletin MS09-017. In May, we released this bulletin with updates for the Windows platform due to active attacks and available updates for the entire platform to protect customers immediately. Updates for affected versions of Office for Mac and Microsoft Works had not yet reached the quality bar for release but will be ready to go on Tuesday. For more information on this decision, please reference last month?s MSRC and SRD blogs.
On release day, look for additional information on both this blog and the Security Research and Defense blog. If you have questions or would like more information about this month?s release, please plan to attend our regularly scheduled security bulletin webcast on Wednesday, June 10, 2009, at 11:00 a.m. PDT (UTC ?7). Click HERE to register.
As always, this preliminary information is subject to change.
Thanks!
Jerry Bryant
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights*
We?ve just released Microsoft Security Advisory 971778 today. This discusses a new vulnerability in Microsoft DirectShow affecting Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 that is under limited attack. The advisory outlines information about the vulnerability and steps customers can take to protect themselves while we?re working on a security update to address the issue.
Our investigation has shown that the vulnerable code was removed as part of our work building Windows Vista. This means that Windows Vista and versions of Windows since Windows Vista (Windows Server 2008, Windows 7) are not vulnerable.
The vulnerability is in the QuickTime parser in Microsoft DirectShow. An attacker would try and exploit the vulnerability by crafting a specially formed video file and then posting it on a website or sending it as an attachment in e-mail. While this isn?t a browser vulnerability, because the vulnerability is in DirectShow, a browser-based vector is potentially accessible through any browser using media plug-ins that use DirectShow. Also, we?ve verified that it is possible to direct calls to DirectShow specifically, even if Apple?s QuickTime (which is not vulnerable) is installed.
Our investigation has found three workarounds that you can implement to protect yourself and we?ve documented these in the security advisory. In addition, we?ve got more technical details on the workarounds and the issue over at the Security Research and Defense (SRD) blog.
Most importantly, we have found one workaround in particular that is simple and effective and protects against the vulnerability with limited impact. In fact, this particular workaround is simple enough that we?ve been able to give you a way to automatically implement the workaround with the click of a button. Our Customer Service and Support (CSS) group has a new capability called ?Fix it? that can automatically apply simple solutions to your system. We?ve gone ahead and built a ?Fix it? that implements the ?Disable the parsing of QuickTime content in quartz.dll? registry change workaround. We have also built a "Fix it" that will undo the workaround automatically.
To automatically implement the workaround, go to the KB article for the advisory. In the KB article, there?s a section titled ?Fix it for me?. Click on the ?Fix this problem? button under "Enable Workaround" in that section. You will then be offered an installer package from the Microsoft website. After you?ve confirmed that you trust the source of this package, run it on your system. The package will automatically set the appropriate registry keys on your system to implement the workaround. When you want to undo the workaround, click on the "Fix this problem" button under "Disable Workaround" in the same section.
We?re also sharing information about this vulnerability and the limited attacks that we?ve seen with partners in our Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP) and our Microsoft Security Response Alliance (MSRA) program to provide information that they can use to provide broader protections to customers.
As always, we?ll continue monitoring the situation and providing more information through the security advisory and the MSRC weblog.
Thanks
Christopher
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights*
I wanted to let you know that we have just posted Microsoft Security Advisory (971492).
This advisory contains information regarding public reports of a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) that could allow Elevation of Privilege. Products affected are IIS 5.0, IIS 5.1, and IIS 6.0. The advisory contains guidance and workarounds that customers can use to help protect themselves. We will continue to monitor the situation and post updates to the advisory and the MSRC Blog as we become aware of any important new information.
At this time, we are not aware of any known attacks that attempt to use this vulnerability.
An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists in the way that the WebDAV extension for IIS handles HTTP requests. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by creating a specially crafted anonymous HTTP request to gain access to a location that typically requires authentication.
Microsoft will take the appropriate action to protect our customers, which may include providing a solution through our monthly security update release process, or an out-of-cycle security update, depending on customer needs.
To better help understand the issue, Microsoft security experts have provided additional technical details on the Microsoft Security Research & Defense blog.
We have activated our Software Security Incident Response Process (SSIRP) and we are continuing to investigate this issue. In addition, we are actively working with partners in the Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP) and the Microsoft Security Response Alliance (MSRA) program to provide information that they can use to provide broader protections to customers.
Christopher Budd
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
In the May 2009 security bulletin webcast, we addressed several questions relating to MS09-017 in addition to questions about WSUS and MBSA. For those questions that came in after we concluded the webcast, we have provided answers in the published Q&A which you can find here:
http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/pages/monthly-security-bulletin-webcast-q-a-May-2009.aspx
Also, here is the link to the Q&A index page in case you want to view previous months:
http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/pages/microsoft-security-bulletin-webcast-q-a-index-page.aspx
Here is the video of the session that includes our detailed look at the bulletin and the live questions and answers session:
| More listening and viewing options: |
As always, customers experiencing issues installing any of the updates this month should contact our Customer Service and Support group:
Customers in the U.S. and Canada can receive technical support from Microsoft Customer Support Services at 1-866-PCSAFETY. There is no charge for support calls that are associated with security updates.
International customers can receive support from their local Microsoft subsidiaries. There is no charge for support that is associated with security updates. For more information about how to contact Microsoft for support issues, visit the International Support Web site.
Please join us for our next live webcast on June 10, 2009 at 11:00 am PDT (UTC ?7). Follow this link to pre-register:
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032395225
Hope to see you then!
Jerry Bryant
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
Summary of Microsoft?s monthly security bulletin release for May 2009.
Today we released one security bulletin, MS09-017, affecting our PowerPoint products. This update addresses several vulnerabilities including the issue described in Microsoft Security Advisory 969136. In that advisory, we noted that we were aware of limited, targeted attacks.
The security of our customers is important to us and due to these active attacks, we have released the updates for one product line (all versions of Microsoft Office for Windows) so that the majority of our customers can protect their systems. We are able to do this because the updates were ready within the predictable release cycle for the entire product line. Updates for the additional products (Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac, Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, Open XML File Format Converter for Mac, Microsoft Works 8.5 and Microsoft Works 9.0) will be released when testing is complete and we can ensure high quality. When ready, we will revise the bulletin and notify customers.
Risk and Impact
To help with risk assessment and impact analysis, Microsoft provides detailed information in the vulnerability information section of the bulletin as well as the Exploitability Index. The aggregate severity of the bulletin is critical and we give it a 1 on the Exploitability Index which means consistent exploit code is likely (and indeed already in the wild for one vulnerability in this update). Of the 14 vulnerabilities being addressed, there are some things to note:
Mitigations and Workarounds
For mitigations and workarounds, I will simply reiterate the information previously stated in the Security Research & Defense blog:
There are a couple workarounds you can apply in your environment to protect yourself from potential attacks. If your environment has mostly already migrated to using PPTX, you can temporarily disable the binary file format in your organization using the FileBlock registry configuration described in the MS09-017 security bulletin. Alternatively, you can temporarily force all legacy PowerPoint files to open in the Microsoft Isolated Conversion Environment (MOICE). The steps to enable MOICE are listed in the MS09-017 security bulletin.
More Information
In the following 8 minute video, I sit down with Adrian Stone from the MSRC to cover this release in a little more detail:
| More viewing & listening options: |
As always, our friends in the MSRC have provided further analysis in the Security Research and Defense blog so have a look at that and if you have questions, please join us for our regular live webcast tomorrow (Wednesday May 13, 2009) at 11:00 am PDT (UTC ?7). Click HERE to register.
On the malware front, the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC) has added two new items to the Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT): Win32/Winwebsec and Win32/FakePowav.B. Customers can download the Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) here. Additional details can also be found on the Microsoft Malware Protection Center blog.
Support
Customers in the U.S. and Canada can receive technical support from Security Support or 1-866-PCSAFETY. There is no charge for support calls that are associated with security updates. For more information about available support options, see Microsoft Help and Support.
International customers can receive support from their local Microsoft subsidiaries. There is no charge for support that is associated with security updates. For more information about how to contact Microsoft for support issues, visit the International Support Web site.
Thanks,
Jerry Bryant
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights*
Summary of the May 2009 Advance Notification for the 5/12/2009 security bulletin release.
Today we are letting customers know that next week we will be releasing one security bulletin affecting Microsoft Office PowerPoint with an aggregate severity rating of critical. Customers should review the Advance Notification and prepare appropriately for deployment.
The update should not require a restart unless the updated files are in use at the time they are installed. Customers can also detect systems requiring the update using the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer. Note that since this is an Office related update, it will not be available via Windows Update but will be available through the Microsoft Update service.
We are also planning to release at least one high priority, non-security update and additional detections to the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool.
After the bulletin is released, look for additional information on both this blog and the Security Research and Defense blog. If you have questions or would like more information about this month?s release, please plan to attend our regularly scheduled security bulletin webcast on Wednesday, May 13, 2009, at 11:00 am PDT (UTC ?7). Click HERE to register.
As always, this preliminary information is subject to change.
Thanks!
Jerry Bryant
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights*
Customers have heard us say over the years that the threat environment is an ever-evolving one. That means that one of our jobs in working to keep customers safe is to continually monitor the threat environment and make changes to adapt to it.
Today, we?re announcing modifications in Windows that adapts to recent changes in the threat environment. Specifically, we?re announcing changes to the behavior in AutoPlay so that it will no longer enable an AutoRun task for devices that are not removable optical media (CD/DVD.). However, the AutoRun task will still be enabled for media like CD-ROM. There are more details on the change over at the Windows 7 blog as well as at the Security Research and Defense (SRD) blog.
The reason we?re making this change is that we?ve seen an increase, since the start of 2009, in malicious software abusing the current default AutoRun settings to propagate through removable media like USB devices. The best known malicious software abusing AutoRun is Conficker, but it?s not alone in that regard: there is other malicious software that abuses this feature. You can get more details on this change and others in the threat environment from the Microsoft Malware Protection Center?s blog.
Because we?ve seen such a marked increase in malicious software abusing AutoRun to propagate, we?ve decided that it makes sense to adjust the balance between security and usability around removable media. We?ve tried to be very measured in this adjustment to maximize both customer convenience and protection. Since non-writable media such as CD-ROMs generally aren?t avenues for malicious software propagation (because they?re not writable) we felt it made sense to keep the current behavior around AutoPlay for these devices and make this change only for generic mass storage class devices.
This change will be present in the Release Candidate build of Windows 7. In addition, we are planning to release an update in the future for Windows Vista and Windows XP that will implement this new behavior.
Thanks.
Christopher
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
Hi,
During this month?s webcast we were able to address 15 questions in the time allotted, but have included the additional questions asked in this QA post. Most of the questions centered on the MS09-013: the Windows HTTP bulletin, MS09-014: Internet Explorer Bulletin, and MS08-015, the Blended Threat bulletin. We did address additional questions regarding the other bulletins, as well as, questions concerning Product Support Lifecycle.
Here is the link to the full Q&A so you can see all of the answers that were provided for these great questions:
http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/pages/monthly-security-bulletin-webcast-q-a-April-2009.aspx
Also, here is the link to the Q&A index page in case you want to view previous months:
http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/pages/microsoft-security-bulletin-webcast-q-a-index-page.aspx
As always, customers experiencing issues installing any of the updates this month should contact our Customer Service and Support group:
Customers in the U.S. and Canada can receive technical support from Microsoft Customer Support Services at 1-866-PCSAFETY. There is no charge for support calls that are associated with security updates.
International customers can receive support from their local Microsoft subsidiaries. There is no charge for support that is associated with security updates. For more information about how to contact Microsoft for support issues, visit the International Support Web site.
Thanks!
Al Brown
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
Hello again,
This is Jerry Bryant letting you know that we have published the security bulletin webcast video. As you know, on Tuesday, we published a quick overview of the 8 bulletins we released on that day. Yesterday we conducted a live, public webcast, where we went in to more detail on each bulletin. The recording from that webcast is embedded below. Usually we include the questions and answers portion along with this but this month we will point you to the transcript which should be published here by tomorrow.
| More viewing options: |
As always, we encourage you to register for and attend our monthly bulletin webcasts by going to http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/current.aspx where you will find the registration links and other valuable security update information.
Thanks!
Jerry Bryant
*Postings are provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
April is here and is turning out to be a typical, busy month, if one can call it that. In general, when we have a large release, the number of updates ranges from 7-12. With this in mind, we released eight security updates this month: 5 rated as Critical, 2 rated as Important, and one rated as Moderate.
This bulletin addresses two remote code execution vulnerabilities in Microsoft Excel. An attacker could exploit the vulnerability by sending a user a malformed Microsoft Excel file. Upon opening the file code can run in the context of the logged on user. We are aware of public exploits of these vulnerabilities. There are effective mitigations noted in the bulletin that are temporary measures until you test and deploy the updates.
A rating of Critical has only been assigned to Microsoft Office Excel 2000. The other applicable versions are rated as Important. If the Office Document Open Confirmation Tool has been downloaded and installed on a system with Microsoft Office Excel 2000, the user will first be prompted with a dialog box. This functionality is already built in to newer versions of Microsoft Office.
This bulletin addresses four remote code execution vulnerabilities in Microsoft WordPad and Microsoft Office text converters. An attacker could exploit the vulnerability by sending a user a malformed file. Upon opening the file code can run in the context of the logged on user. We are aware of public exploits of these vulnerabilities. There are effective mitigations noted in the bulletin that are temporary measures until you test and deploy the updates.
A rating of Critical has only been assigned to Microsoft Office Word 2000 Service Pack 3. The other applicable versions are rated as Important. If the Office Document Open Confirmation Tool has been downloaded and installed on a system with Office Word 2000 Service Pack 3, the user will first be prompted with a dialog box. This functionality is built in to newer versions of Microsoft Office. There are effective mitigations noted in the bulletin that are temporary measures until you test and deploy the updates. One of the mitigations is blogged about in greater detail than the bulletin. You can find this information on the Security Defense & Research blog.
The last thing I will mention is the fact that the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report Volume 6 provides insights into document file formats vulnerabilities and common exploitation techniques.
This bulletin addresses privately reported remote code execution vulnerability in Microsoft DirectX and is rated as Critical. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a malformed MJPEG file to a user of a system. If a user opened the file, code execution of the attacker?s choice would run in the context of the logged in user. Unregistering the quartz.dll or disabling the decoding of MJPEG content in Quartz.dll is a temporary measure that can be used while testing and deploying the update. Please see the bulletin to understand impact of the workarounds as they affect functionality.
This bulletin addresses several elevation of privilege vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows and is rated as Important. The elevation of privilege vulnerabilities are commonly known as Token Kidnapping and was first described in Microsoft Security Advisory 951306. A supplemental blog will be posted here as well as a technical deep dive on the Security and Research Defense blog. It can be found here: http://blogs.technet.com/srd/
Microsoft Windows HTTP Services (WinHTTP) contains three vulnerabilities, two of which could allow for remote code execution running in the context of the logged on user. The bulletin is rated as Critical. WinHTTP is a technology within itself. As such, Internet Explorer does not use WinHTTP services.
Internet Explorer contains several remote code execution vulnerabilities and is rated as Critical. The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer or if a user connects to an attacker's server by way of the HTTP protocol. This security update also addresses a vulnerability first described in Microsoft Security Advisory 953818. As you will see, MS09-015 also addresses this Advisory. Details as to why can be found in both bulletins.
This bulletin addresses a vulnerability in SearchPath which could allow for an elevation of privilege and is rated as Moderate. It?s worth mentioning here that this security update addresses the issue detailed in Advisory 953818: ?Blended Threat from Combined Attack Using Apple?s Safari on the Windows Platform?. Among other information in the bulletin I want to note that we added a new api as a defense in depth measure. It is called SetSearchPathMode. This new API allows for a per-process mode when using the SearchPath function to locate files. This allows applications to force the current directory to be searched after the application and system locations. This defense in depth measure is not enabled by default. Please see the bulletin for additional information.
This bulletin address vulnerabilities in Microsoft ISA Server and Forefront Threat Management Gateway (Medium Business Edition) and is rated as Important. These vulnerabilities could allow denial of service if an attacker sends specially crafted network packages to the affected system, or information disclosure or spoofing if a user clicks on a malicious URL or visits a Web site that contains content controlled by the attacker.
There are several mitigating factors noted in bulletin; one of which I will note here regarding the cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability. ISA Server 2006 and Forefront TMG MBE deployments that do not have any Web publishing rules are not vulnerable by default. If ISA Server 2006 or Forefront TMG MBE is installed in a traditional firewall role and is not publishing any internal Web sites to the Internet, the vulnerable Web Filter will not be exposed (the port will be blocked).
My colleague Jonathan, in the MSRC, is providing guidance as it relates to suggestions for prioritization of the security updates. This information can be found at the Security Research & Defense blog site.
As a postscript to this posting I want to share some thoughts with you regarding the advisories.
Of the eight updates, five address vulnerabilities that Microsoft has issued security advisories for:
· Excel vulnerability: Security Advisory 968272 was released Feb. 24, 2009,
· WordPad: Security Advisory 960906 was released Dec. 9 2008, more related information can be found at Security Research & Defense blog.
· CarpetBombing: Security Advisory 953818 was released May 30, 2008, more related information can be found at Security Research & Defense blog
· Token Kidnapping: Security Advisory 951306 was released April 17, 2008, more related information can be found at Security Research & Defense blog.
The question becomes, why does it take so long for Microsoft to release a security update?
When we here at Microsoft are asked this question: our answer is ?we want to get this right.? Or to put it another way, we are constantly asking ourselves during any given release cycle ?are we doing the right thing for our customers?? If as a result of any given investigation, we find a variant of a vulnerability we are fixing; do we dig deeper to make sure we cover all our bases, or do we just fix what we can see and ship the update because of external pressures? ?Are we doing the right thing for our customers??
If we find, at the 11th hour, an application compatibility issue that breaks third party software, do we ship anyway because we don?t want to get bad press? ?Are we doing the right thing for our customers??
Do we spread out the release of open advisories so no one notices, but not ship them when ready? ?Are we doing the right thing for our customer??
I will say that we will do the right thing for our customers; we will dig deeper; we will hold a low quality update; and we will release an update when it is ready for broad distribution; no sooner or no later.
*Postings are provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
April 14: Updated to include hyperlinks for bulletins
Hello everyone,
As you can see from the April 2009 release summary, we addressed the Token Kidnapping issue with bulletin MS09-012. This issue allowed an attacker to gain full control of a server if the attacker can first run malicious code on the server as a lesser privileged user.
This issue was originally presented by Cesar Cerrudo in March of 2008 at Hack in the Box (Dubai) 2008. In April of 2008, we released an advisory to inform customers of actions they could take to protect themselves. We also updated the advisory in October of 2008, alerting customers to the availability of proof-of-concept code that demonstrates how to attack systems using token kidnapping techniques. Today we?ve released an update that protects from these issues without having to deploy workarounds. This release has been a long time in the making, so I wanted to take a moment and provide some insight into what it took to resolve this issue for customers.
First, what is Token Kidnapping? This is an elevation of privilege vulnerability that could allow an attacker to go from authenticated user to LocalSystem privileges. An attacker can escalate their privileges on a system if they can control the SeImpersonatePrivilege token. An attacker would need to be executing code in the context of a Windows service to use this exploit. For a more detailed look at the issue, refer to the SRD blog found here.
This case presented some interesting challenges in preparing the update to address the issue. First, there are two updates included in this bulletin. The first update addresses service isolation, while the second addresses processes running as service accounts. In order to secure these items, we took the work we did in Windows Vista to provide additional service hardening and implemented it in older operating systems like Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. These changes are low-level and deeply engrained in the OS. When making these types of changes, many of the applications that have been written in the 5 to 10 years since the OS was released could be impacted as we are changing infrastructure. Typically, we only change code to this degree in a service pack release to ensure it receives the proper level of testing.
However, given the security risk, and even though we provided workarounds, we wanted to secure customers automatically. So we made the changes, and then did extensive testing to ensure this update is high-quality and did not impact existing implementations. For this bulletin, we ran over 600,000 different test scenarios, with over 6,000 variations tested in one configuration alone. We also needed to ensure we were not breaking 3rd-party applications by introducing this change. As a result, 2,500 application compatibility tests were also run. In addition to this testing, we selected over 1,000 systems within Microsoft to test the update before we released, and some key customers signed NDAs to do even more testing in their lab environments to make sure we didn?t break Line-of-Business application scenarios. One thing we did notice is that some 3rd-party applications may need to be updated to receive the same security benefits provides by this update. To facilitate this, the update also provides an infrastructure to 3rd-parties to isolate and secure their services. In Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, all processes running under the context of a single account will have full control over each other. This update provides 3rd-parties the ability to isolate and secure their services that hold SYSTEM token and run under the NetworkService or LocalService accounts. For more information on the usage of this registry key, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 956572.
While this update took some time to complete, our hope is that the majority of customers are protected either through the guidance we released a year ago or the update we released today. It is never an easy process to bring infrastructure from a newer OS to an older OS, but we considered this an important enough issue to do so. As you would expect, it wasn?t always an easy road, so I would like to thank all of the folks internally and externally that helped bring this update to the worldwide community. Specifically, I?d like to thank the following people who were key contributors in bringing this update to the world:
And special thanks go out to all of the many developers and testers who help made this release possible.
Thanks,
Dustin
MSRC
Links to related articles:
Service isolation explanation, SRD blog entry, Jonathan Ness, October, 2008
Token Kidnapping in Windows, Nazim?s IIS Security Blog, Nazim Lala, October, 2008
*Postings are provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
Hi Everyone,
Jerry Bryant again. Here is the overview video for the April 2009 bulletins. Please join us tomorrow at 11:00 am PDT (UTC ?7) for our bulletin webcast where we will cover this months updates in more detail and try to answer all of your bulletin related questions.
| More viewing options: |
Thanks!
Jerry Bryant
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
We?ve seen some activity in the Conficker space in the past two days and this has caused some questions from customers. Specifically, there have been reports of two possible new variants of Conficker. Our colleagues over at the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC) have done a thorough analysis of both of these and have determined that there?s really only one new variant, which they?re calling Conficker.E. Most importantly, the signatures that protect against Conficker.A are also effective at protecting against Conficker.E. The other possible new variant is only a slightly modified version of Conficker.D and our Conficker.D signatures protect against it. Also, our virus encylopedia entry for Conficker.D has been updated to include information about this slightly modified version.
There?s more detailed information on Conficker.E on the MMPC blog and in the encyclopedia entry. But at a high level, this has similar propagation methods to Conficker.B (attempting to exploit MS08-067, attacking weak passwords on administrative shares and spreading via removable media like
The important thing is that our guidance for protecting yourself remains the same. If your systems and security software are fully updated, you don?t need to be concerned about Conficker.
As always, we?re continuing our work with the Conficker Working Group and will update you as we have new, important information.
Thanks.
Christopher
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights*