This makes no sense to me, even though -- I suppose -- it's a squid cryptography joke.
This makes no sense to me, even though -- I suppose -- it's a squid cryptography joke.
This one on simple-talk.com.
Funny comic.
A hollowed-out U.S. nickel can hold a microSD card. Pound and euro coins are also available. I blogged about this about a year ago as well.
Over at Wikibooks, they're trying to write an open source cryptography textbook.
Testifying at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, deputy director of information sharing and knowledge development at the National Counterterrorism Center Russell Travers said that policy and privacy issues, not technology, are hindering the government's "ability to search and aggregate information" that might help identify terrorist suspects.......
LifeLock has agreed to pay the US Federal Trade Commission and 35 states' attorneys general US $12 million to settle charges that the Arizona-based company used phony claims to entice consumers to purchase its identity theft protection services.......
HSBC has revised the number of customer records compromised by a former employee upward to 24,000.......
An Estonian man has been sentenced to 31 months in prison for creating the Allaple worm that infected computers and used them to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.......
Humza Zaman has been sentenced to 46 months in prison for his role in the attacks on computer systems at TJX, Office Max, Heartland Payment Systems and other companies.......
Robert Maley, Pennsylvania's former chief information security officer (CISO), lost his job ostensibly because he spoke about a security incident with the Commonwealth's online driving test system without obtaining approval in advance.......
A former US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employee has been indicted by a federal jury in Denver for alleged database tampering.......
Less than a day after the outage of the Troyak ISP appeared to have hobbled the Zeus botnet by disabling 100 of its command and control servers, the ISP has found a new upstream provider and roughly one-third of the disabled command and control servers are again functioning.......
Ian Livingston, CEO of British Telecom, said that illegal file sharers should be fined instead of having their Internet service suspended.......
Google CEO Eric Schmidt said his company is in talks with the Chinese government, but did not elaborate on the content of those talks beyond acknowledging that it is discussing "the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all.......
Twitter has launched a new service to protect users from malicious links.......
On Tuesday, March 9, Microsoft released two security bulletins to fix a total of eight remote code execution vulnerabilities, one in Windows Movie Maker and seven in Excel.......
Microsoft has issued an advisory warning of a critical flaw in Internet Explorer (IE).......
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:
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: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2010-0434
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available2009.2 is affected.
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-2010-0728
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2010-0447
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2010-0624
Platform: Cross Platform
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Linux
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2010-0257
Platform: Microsoft Office
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2010-0258
Platform: Microsoft Office
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2010-0260
Platform: Microsoft Office
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2010-0261
Platform: Microsoft Office
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2010-0262
Platform: Microsoft Office
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2010-0263
Platform: Microsoft Office
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2010-0264
Platform: Microsoft Office
CVEs: CVE: CVE-2010-0806
Platform: Other Microsoft Products
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Third Party Windows Apps
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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 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: Not Available
Platform: Web Application - SQL Injection
CVEs: CVE: Not Available
Platform: Windows
Vulnerability in Internet Explorer Could Allow Remote Code Execution
Published: March 09, 2010Microsoft is investigating new, public reports of a vulnerability in Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7. Our investigation has shown that the latest version of the browser, Internet Explorer 8, is not affected. The main impact of the vulnerability is remote code execution. This advisory contains information about which versions of Internet Explorer are vulnerable as well as workarounds and mitigations for this issue.
Our investigation so far has shown that Internet Explorer 8 and Internet Explorer 5.01 Service Pack 4 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 are not affected, and that Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, and Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7 are vulnerable.
The vulnerability exists due to an invalid pointer reference being used within Internet Explorer. It is possible under certain conditions for the invalid pointer to be accessed after an object is deleted. In a specially-crafted attack, in attempting to access a freed object, Internet Explorer can be caused to allow remote code execution.
At this time, we are aware of targeted attacks attempting to use this vulnerability. We will continue to monitor the threat environment and update this advisory if this situation changes. On completion of this investigation, 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.
Complete details with work-arounds in http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/981374.mspx
http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2010/03/09/security-advisory-981374-released.aspx
As part of Microsoft's routine, monthly security update cycle, they released 2 new security updates:
References:
Please do not download security updates from other sources (email, other website). Get the security updates from Microsoft Update website. You can also get the updates using Automatic Update feature in Windows. Other sources of Microsoft security updates are Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog.
Don't forget to scan the system using Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) to check for missing and mis-configured patches.
While financial institutions still top the phishing radar, cybercriminals are now moving beyond to top brands, with one of the recent victims being a hardware manufacturer, according to the latest Anti-Phishing Work Group report.
Released on Sunday, the Anti-Phishing Work Group (APWG) Phishing Activity Trends Report for the fourth quarter of 2009 revealed that 356 brands were hijacked in October, an increase of 4.4 percent over the previous high of 341 recorded last August. The study was compiled using data from APWG and its members MarkMonitor, Websense and Panda Security.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,40079603,00.htm
PayPal is asking UK customers to download software from Iconix to help identify genuine e-mails sent by the eBay unit and weed out phishing messages.
PayPal, which has long been a favourite target for phishers, says Iconix eMail ID can help protect customers by visually identifying genuine messages. After a customer installs the software, they'll see an icon (a gold lock with a tick) next to a PayPal logo whenever they receive authentic e-mails from the firm.
The free program works with most of the major e-mail services like Gmail, MSN Hotmail, Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook and Outlook Express.
Garreth Griffith, head, risk and security, PayPal UK, says: "Staying safe online needn't be a headache. By taking a few simple steps you can outsmart the fraudsters and protect your money and your identity.
According to recent research carried out for PayPal by Opinium, 58% of Brits have responded or clicked on a phishing e-mail link while only 58% make sure they look for the padlock icon when carrying out financial transactions.
http://www.finextra.com/News/Fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=21165
Phone had three different types of malicious software programs on its internal memory
A Panda Security employee discovered three malware programs on a recently purchased HTC Magic phone when it was plugged it into a Windows computer.
Upon further investigation, Panda found that the employee's phone contained three malware programs: a client for the now-defunct Mariposa botnet, the Conficker worm as well as a password stealer for the Lineage game, said Pedro Bustamante, Panda's senior research adviser.
The malware programs were on the phone's 8GB microSD memory card, which mounts as an external drive when plugged into a PC, Bustamante said. When plugged into a Windows PC, the Mariposa botnet client would automatically run, Bustamante said.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/digitallifestyle/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=3214742
Security company McAfee has cut just under two percent of its global workforce.
ZDNet UK understands that about 100 people have been made redundant from various parts of the company. Before the cuts, McAfee employed about 6,100 staff. Most of the redundancies involved engineering employees. McAfee has over 350 researchers globally.
McAfee played down the cuts in an email statement sent to ZDNet UK on Friday.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,40077945,00.htm
Every so often we hear about a random blog or website that freaks out and claims that ad blockers are "stealing" or somehow damaging websites. But it's quite a surprise to see a similar argument from a site like Ars Technica -- one of the top techie sites out there, which is now owned by Conde Nast. Over the weekend, Ars wrote an odd post claiming that ad blocking "is devastating to the sites you love." Ars decided to run an experiment where it blocked access to its content to any user using an ad blocker (with no warning or explanation). Not surprisingly, this pissed off a bunch of readers, and Ars now admits that it was a mistake in how it was handled -- but that it still believes ad blockers are harming sites.
Frankly, such a position is insulting (though, even more insulting was the way Ars staff responded to complaints in its comments, dismissing people who don't like their ads as not adding anything and actively telling them to go away). If you're reading Techdirt, and the ads we serve are not good, you have every right to use an ad blocker. It's your browser, do whatever you want with it. I, personally, do not use an ad blocker because I don't find most ads annoying -- but if you do, more power to you. You're absolutely welcome here on Techdirt.
If the ads are bad, it's bad for the advertisers
Continue reading in http://techdirt.com/articles/20100306/1649198451.shtml
From Secunia Blog:
There has lately been some confusion about a vulnerability reported in the Opera browser and rightly so based on the different statements having been issued.
The vulnerability was reported as an integer overflow when processing the "Content-Length" header and accompanied by a PoC that always crashed when copying memory due to an overly large size. Based on the provided PoC and report, it immediately seemed like the crash would always occur and executing code would not be possible.
Before issuing a Secunia advisory, a security specialist was tasked with thoroughly analysing the vulnerability report, cause of the crash, and potential impact. It turned out that the vulnerability is not caused by an integer overflow error. Instead, in certain cases when a 64-bit "Content-Length" value is interpreted as negative, the higher 32-bit value is ignored and lower 32-bit value is used to copy data. It is, therefore, possible to manipulate the size value in a manner to successfully corrupt memory and occasionally cause conditions where it is possible to gain control of the execution flow. [...]
Adding to the confusion, Opera Software's initial analysis of the vulnerability concluded that it was not a vulnerability and this was communicated on the Opera Software forum and to the media. Opera Software also contacted Secunia, asking us to update our advisory or alternatively that we provide them with additional information.
During the past days, we have, therefore, been working with Opera Software and providing them with details to clarify that the threat is not just a crash, but has code execution potential. Opera Software has acknowledged to us that they are now handling it as a security issue and will be issuing an advisory and fix as soon as possible.
Google's Chrome OS Netbook will feature a host of built-in security technologies designed to protect users from malware and other threats, a Google engineer said at the RSA Conference last week.
Will Drewry, a Google software security engineer, said the fact that the company's Chrome OS is an open source project allows for constant feedback from developers regarding security design. This, he said, should reassure those acquiring a Google Netbook about the product's security.
Google plans to release a consumer version later this year and a business version featuring more management muscle in 2011, Drewry said.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/190950/google_defends_chromes_security.html
From F-Secure Blog:
Criminals like to attack the biggest target because BIGGER generally provides a better Return On Investment (ROI). Windows is a good example. Mac is indeed safer than Windows but it isn't necessarily because Mac is more secure. Windows has a larger market share and that equals more potential victims.
How about search engines? What is the biggest search engine on the block? Google ? and the bad guys know it. The result?
It's becoming less and less safe to search via Google.
The test result is in http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001897.html
Movie-lovers at risk of infection from fake anti-virus traps
IT security and control firm Sophos is warning that hackers are exploiting interest in last night's Oscar film awards ceremony to infect the computers of unsuspecting computer users.
Movie-loving internet users are searching the web for information and gossip about the Academy Award winners, making phrases like "Oscars Winners" one of the most commonly searched for phrases on the internet. However, using SEO (search engine optimisation) techniques, hackers have created webpages stuffed with content which appears to be related to The Oscars - but are really designed to infect visiting computers.
http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2010/03/hackers-exploit-oscars.html
China has pledged to punish hackers who attacked Google if there is evidence to prove it, but said it has yet to receive any complaint from the world's top search engine.
Google sent shockwaves across business and political circles in January when it declared it would stop censoring Chinese search results, and threatened to pull out of China - the world's largest online community with 384 million users at the end of last year - over hacking and censorship concerns.
Google had never filed a report to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology over the cyber attacks or sought negotiations, Vice Minister Miao Wei was quoted as saying by state news agency Xinhua late on Saturday.
"If Google has had evidence that the attacks came from China, the Chinese government will welcome them to provide the information and will severely punish the offenders according to the law," Miao said.
"We never support hacking attacks because China also falls victim to hacking attacks," he said.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/3422284/China-vows-to-punish-Google-hackers
Gamers playing Assassin's Creed 2 on their computers were locked out this weekend after hackers shut down servers required for the game to work.
Ubisoft, the game's publisher, on Monday confirmed it had been targeted by hackers waging a denial-of-service attack, which rendered Assassin's Creed 2 and lesser-known title Silent Hunter 5 unplayable over the weekend.
"Our servers didn't go down but five per cent of the overall people attempting to connect received denial of service errors," the company told website Ars Technica. "This is, of course, unacceptable and our teams are working around the clock to ensure it doesn't happen again."
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/03/08/assassins-creed-ubisoft-servers.html
A cybersecurity showdown is in the works.
Late last week cybersecurity firm McAfee and start-up Damballa both released new assessments of the high-profile hacking incident revealed by Google in January.
But while McAfee continues to describe the digital intruders as a sophisticated example of cyberespionage's "advanced, persistent threat," Damballa counters that the gang behind the so-called Aurora attacks were "amateurs" who used "old-school" techniques to create a run-of-mill collection of hijacked computers typically used for identity theft and spam. (See "Google Hackers' Unexpected Backdoor" and "Researchers Call Google Hackers Amateurs.")
One of those conclusions, it seems, must be wrong. But that doesn't mean the facts from the two companies aren't both accurate, says Nart Villeneuve, a researcher with the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab. Given the complexity of a modern cybercriminal operation, he says, the two reports might be looking at opposite ends of the same animal.
Villeneuve points out that McAfee has been most vocal about how the hackers accessed their victims' networks, moved between servers and planted hidden software. Damballa, meanwhile, says it has focused on the spyware samples themselves and the so-called "command and control" servers that the software communicated with to receive orders and steal data.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/08/google-damballa-mcafee-technology-security10-hackers.html
Software that can be downloaded for use with the Energizer Duo USB battery charger contains a backdoor that could allow an attacker to remotely take control of a Windows-based PC, Energizer and US-CERT is warning.
"The installer for the Energizer Duo software places the file UsbCharger.dll in the application's directory and Arucer.dll in the Windows system32 directory," the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team said in an advisory on Friday. "Arucer.dll is a backdoor that allows unauthorized remote system access via accepting connections on 7777/tcp. Its capabilities include the ability to list directories, send and receive files, and execute programs."
The Windows software was made available via a download with the Energizer Duo Charger, Model CHUSB, Energizer said in a statement.
For systems with the software installed, US-CERT recommends removing the Energizer Duo software and Arucer.dll file, as well as blocking access to port 7777 via network perimeter devices or firewall software.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10465429-245.html via CoU.
Wikipedia.
Last time I checked there's no such pages but now, there are. Not one but two!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook
Last I checked it is only http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Beacon but that is gone.
Too much to worry in using such no?
Somebody is trying to pose as us. If you see an email like the one below, please ignore it:
From: security@f-secure.com
Reply-To: securitysupport@hotxf.com
Subject: Security Maintenance.F-Secure HTK4S
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2010 18:11:05 -0000
To: undisclosed-recipients:;Dear Email Subscriber,
Your e-mail account needs to be improved with our new
F-Secure HTK4S anti-virus/anti-spam 2010-version.
Fill in the columns below or your account will be
temporarily excluded from our services.E-mail Address:
Password:
Phone Number:Please note that your password is encrypted
with 1024-bit RSA keys for increased security.Management.
Copyright 2009. All Rights Reserved.
Before you ask: No, we've never heard of "F-Secure HTK4S anti-virus" either.
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001901.html
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been accused of hacking into the email accounts of rivals and journalists.
The CEO of the world's most successful social networking website was accused of at least two breaches of privacy in a series of articles run by BusinessInsider.com.
As part of a two-year investigation detailing the founding of Facebook, the magazine uncovered what it claimed was evidence of the hackings in 2004.
In the first instance, it said that, when Zuckerberg discovered that Harvard's student newspaper The Crimson was planning on running an article on him in 2004, he used reporters' Facebook logins to hack into their accounts.
The Internet Industry Association (IIA) will press ahead with its new internet service provider security code, with plans to launch a "quarantine" proposal for infected computers by around June this year.
The voluntary code for internet service providers (ISPs) will attempt to address the threat of computers that have been hijacked as part of a spam or phishing operation. That is, computers that have been lured into a botnet operation that has command and control functionality.
The decision on whether to proceed with the code was based on privacy questions.
One measure the IIA plans to introduce in its ISP code is that a customers' connection be "quarantined" if it becomes infected, otherwise known as "walled garden" approach to security. The technique allows the infection to be remediated in isolation from a botnet's command centre.
But to introduce the measure, the IIA wanted clarity over whether permission to carry this out could be granted by a customer in writing, for example, in an ISP's customer relationship agreement. The agreement would allow the ISP to use information gleaned from specific accounts for the purpose of identifying whether connected computers were zombie machines, and then take actions to resolve the issue.
Computer scientists say they've discovered a "severe vulnerability" in the world's most widely used software encryption package that allows them to retrieve a machine's secret cryptographic key.
The bug in the OpenSSL cryptographic library is significant because the open-source package is used to protect sensitive data in countless applications and operating systems throughout the world. Although the attack technique is difficult to carry out, it could eventually be applied to a wide variety of devices, particularly media players and smartphones with anti-copying mechanisms.
"Wherever you need to verify the origin of a piece of software or a piece of information, those building blocks come in handy," said Karsten Nohl, an independent security researcher who in unrelated attacks has broken encryption in widely used smartcards and cordless phones. "The OpenSSL library provides much more than just SSL."
The scientists, from the University of Michigan's electrical engineering and computer science departments, said the bug is easily fixed by applying cryptographic "salt" to an underlying error-checking algorithm. The additional randomization would make the attack unfeasible.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/04/severe_openssl_vulnerability/
# 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.
Hi everyone,
I?m writing to let you know that we have updated Security Advisory 981374 with new workaround information. We are aware that exploit code has been made public for this issue. As with our last update, Internet Explorer 8 remains unaffected by the vulnerability addressed in the advisory and we continue to encourage all customers to upgrade to this version.
On Wednesday we added a workaround to the advisory that helps to mitigate the vulnerability by disabling the peer factory class through the modification of a registry key. With today?s update, we have added a Microsoft Fix It to automate this workaround for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 customers. As always, customers should test this thoroughly before deploying as certain functionality that depends on the peer factory class, such as printing from Internet Explorer and the use of web folders, may be affected.
We have seen speculation that Microsoft might release an update for this issue out-of-band. I can tell you that we are working hard to produce an update which is now in testing. This is a critical and time intensive step of the process as the update must be tested against all affected versions of Internet Explorer on all supported versions of Windows. Additionally, each supported language version needs to be tested as well as testing against thousands of third party applications. We never rule out the possibility of an out-of-band update. When the update is ready for broad distribution, we will make that decision based on customer needs.
Please review the advisory for more information. We will keep you posted as additional information becomes available.
Jerry Bryant
Sr. Security Communications Manager Lead
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
Today we are releasing two Important security bulletins addressing eight vulnerabilities in Windows and Microsoft Office. Both bulletins have an aggregate Exploitability Index rating of ?1? so we recommend that customers deploy these updates as soon as possible. The Microsoft Exploitability Index provides additional information to help customers prioritize deployment of monthly security bulletins. A summary of today?s security updates can be found on the Microsoft Security Bulletin webpage.
MS10-016 addresses one vulnerability in Windows Movie Maker. Both Windows XP and Windows Vista ship with affected versions (2.1 and 6.0 respectively). Version 2.6 is also vulnerable and can be freely downloaded and installed from the web. Customers who install 2.6 on any supported platform, including Windows 7, will be offered the update. In order to take advantage of the vulnerability, a user would need to open a specially crafted Movie Maker project file. These are files with the .mswmm file extension.
The MS10-016 bulletin also calls out Microsoft Producer 2003 in the affected products list. Producer 2003 is a free download with limited distribution. At this time, we are not offering an update for Producer 2003. Our standard approach is to produce updates that can be deployed automatically for all affected products at the same time but Producer 2003 does not offer a means for automatic update. Based on our investigation, we determined that the best way to protect the vast majority of customers was to release an update addressing the components that shipped with Windows. While we continue to investigate Producer 2003, we recommend that customers either uninstall the application or apply an available Microsoft Fix It to disassociate the project file type from the application to add an extra layer of security.
MS10-017 affects all currently supported versions of Microsoft Office Excel. It also affects Office 2004 and Office 2008 for Mac, the Open XML File Format Converter for Mac, supported versions of Excel viewer and SharePoint 2007. As with most Office vulnerabilities, a user would have to open a specially crafted file in order to be exploited.
Since both of today?s bulletins require user interaction, we give them both a ?2? on our deployment priority scale:
Our Severity and Exploitability Index slide offers additional guidance to help customers prioritize this month?s bulletins:
In the following video, Adrian Stone and I give a brief overview of today?s bulletins:
| More listening and viewing options: |
Today we also re-released MS09-033 to add Virtual Server 2005 to the affected products list. Customers who have already installed the update for affected products do not have any additional actions.
Additionally, we continue to to monitor the threat landscape around Security Advisory 981169 regarding a vulnerability in VBScript that could allow remote code execution. We are not currently aware of any active attacks but encourage customers to review the advisory and apply the suggested workarounds where possible. Customers that are running Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Vista are not affected.
Please join us tomorrow for a public webcast where Adrian Stone and I will go in to detail on these bulletins and answer customer questions with the help of the engineers who worked to produce them so please plan to join us.
Date: Wednesday, March 10
Time: 11:00 a.m. PST (UTC -8)
Registration: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032427711
Thanks!
Jerry Bryant
Sr. Security Communications Manager Lead
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
Hi everyone,
Today we released Security Advisory 981374 addressing a publicly disclosed vulnerability in Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7. Internet Explorer 8 is not affected by this issue. Customers using Internet Explorer 6 or 7 should upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 immediately to benefit from the improved security features and defense in depth protections. Additionally, Internet Explorer 5.01 on Windows 2000 is not affected.
At this time, we are aware of targeted attacks seeking to exploit this vulnerability against Internet Explorer 6. Internet Explorer Protected Mode in Internet Explorer 7 running on Windows Vista helps to mitigate the impact of this issue. Additionally, Internet Explorer on Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 runs in a restricted mode that is known as Enhanced Security Configuration. This mode sets the security level for the Internet zone to High. This is a mitigating factor for Web sites that you have not added to the Internet Explorer Trusted sites zone. Please review the Security Advisory for additional workarounds which include modifying the Access Control List (ACL) on iepeers.dll (the affected component), setting the Internet and local Intranet security zones to "high", configuring Internet Explorer to prompt before running Active Scripting, and enabling Data Execution Prevention (DEP) where possible which makes it difficult to successfully exploit the vulnerability.
As always, we are investigating this issue and will take appropriate action to protect customers when we have finalized a solution. This may include providing a solution through our monthly security update release process, or an out-of-cycle security update, depending on customer needs.
Anyone believed to have been affected can visit: http://www.microsoft.com/protect/support/default.mspx and should contact the national law enforcement agency in their country. Those in the United States can contact Customer Service and Support at no charge using the PC Safety hotline at 1-866-727-2338 (PCSAFETY). Additionally, customers in the United States should contact their local FBI office or report their situation at: www.ic3.gov. Customers should follow the guidance in the advisory and our Protect Your PC guidance of enabling a firewall, getting software updates, and installing antivirus software (learn more by visiting the Protect Your PC web site). International customers can find their Regional Customer Service Representative http://support.microsoft.com/common/international.aspx.
We are also working with our Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP), the Microsoft Security Response Alliance (MSRA), authorities and other industry partners to help provide broader protections for customers. Together with our partners, we will continue to monitor the threat landscape and will take action against any web sites that seek to exploit this vulnerability.
The Security Advisory will be updated with any new developments so if you are not already subscribed to our comprehensive alerts, please do so in order to be alerted by email when new information is added.
Please review the advisory for additional details and if the situation changes, we will provide an update here on the MSRC blog.
Jerry Bryant
Sr. Security Communications Manager Lead
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
Today we are providing advance notification to customers that we will be releasing two bulletins this month affecting Windows and Microsoft Office products. Both bulletins are rated Important and address a total of 8 vulnerabilities.
We recommend that customers review the Advance Notification webpage and prepare to deploy these bulletins as soon as possible. To provide additional guidance for deployment prioritization, customers should note that both bulletins will address issues that would require a user to open a specially crafted file. There are no network based attack vectors.
We?re also continuing to monitor the situation with Security Advisory 981169, the VBScript issue disclosed on Monday. There are no known attacks but we encourage customers to review the advisory and apply the suggested workarounds where possible. Customers that are running Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Vista are not affected.
As always, we will be hosting a public webcast where we will go in to details about the bulletins for March and where customers can ask questions. We will have a room full of engineers on hand to answer those questions live during the webcast. Here are the details:
Date: Wednesday, March 10
Time: 11:00 a.m. PST (UTC -8)
Registration: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032427711
A couple of months ago, I started including information about products that are reaching the end of their product lifecycle. It is extremely important for customers to move to supported platforms because after the dates below, those products/service packs, will no longer receive security updates.
Hope to see you at the webcast!
Jerry Bryant
Sr. Security Communications Manager Lead
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
Hi,
I am writing to let you know that we have revised the installation packages for MS10-015 with new logic that prevents the security update from being installed on systems if certain abnormal conditions exist. Such conditions could be the result of an infection with a computer virus such as the Alureon rootkit. If these conditions are detected, the update will not be installed and the result will be a standard Windows Update error. If a user receives this error, they should go to the following landing page for additional help:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/updates/015
At this time, we have resumed offering the update to all affected systems via Automatic Updates.
We have also released a Microsoft Fix It as a standalone scanning tool that reports on the compatibility of a system with the MS10-015 update. The scanning tool can also be deployed through enterprise deployment systems allowing administrators to detect compatibility with the update before deploying broadly. The Fix It and deployment information are available at Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 980966.
Customers who believe they have experienced a restart issue after installing MS10-015, are encouraged to visit our Customer Service and Support page at https://consumersecuritysupport.microsoft.com or call 1-866-PCSafety (1-866-727-2338). International customers can find local support contact numbers here: http://support.microsoft.com/common/international.aspx.
Update: note that the update will not be re-offered to those who have already successfully installed the update.
Thanks,
Jerry Bryant
Sr. Security Communications Manager Lead
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
Hello again,
Today we released Security Advisory 981169 to address the VBScript issue involving Windows Help files that we blogged about yesterday. To reiterate what we said in that post, we are not aware of any active attacks at this time and the following operating systems are not affected by this issue: Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Vista.
Our investigation is ongoing. Users on older versions of Windows should review the Security Advisory for mitigations and workarounds for this issue. Additionally, our Security Research & Defense team provides a detailed analysis of the issue and the available workarounds on their blog. User education is a key factor in this scenario given the amount of user interaction required to reach the vulnerability.
Our teams are working to address the issue and once we complete our investigation, we will take appropriate action to protect customers. This may include releasing an update out-of-band. We will provide further updates as they become available.
Thanks,
Jerry Bryant
Sr. Security Communications Manager Lead
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
Hi everyone,
On Friday 2/26/2010, an issue was posted publicly that could allow an attacker to host a maliciously crafted web page and run arbitrary code if they could convince a user to visit the web page and then get them to press the F1 key in response to a pop up dialog box. We are not aware of any attacks seeking to exploit this issue at this time and in the current state of our investigation, we have determined that users running Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Vista, are not affected by this issue.
The issue in question involves the use of VBScript and Windows Help files in Internet Explorer. Windows Help files are included in a long list of what we refer to as ?unsafe file types?. These are file types that are designed to invoke automatic actions during normal use of the files. While they can be very valuable productivity tools, they can also be used by attackers to try and compromise a system. To help customers better understand unsafe file types, we have published a white paper on the topic which you can find by clicking this link.
Once we have completed our investigation, we will take appropriate action to protect customers. To minimize risk to computer users, Microsoft continues to encourage responsible disclosure. Reporting vulnerabilities directly to vendors without further disclosure helps ensure that customers receive comprehensive, high-quality updates before cyber criminals learn of ? and work to exploit ? a vulnerability. Responsible disclosure protects the computer ecosystem and individual computer users from harm.
Anyone believed to have been affected can visit: http://www.microsoft.com/protect/support/default.mspx and should contact the national law enforcement agency in their country. Those in the United States can contact Customer Service and Support at no charge (for computer security related issues) using the PC Safety hotline at 1-866-727-2338 (PCSAFETY). Customers outside of the United States can visit http://support.microsoft.com/international to find local support information.
We continue to encourage customers to follow the ?Protect Your Computer? guidance of enabling a firewall, applying all software updates and installing anti-virus and anti-spyware software. Additional information can be found at: www.microsoft.com/protect.
We will provide more information on this issue as it becomes available.
Thanks,
Jerry Bryant
Sr. Security Communications Manager Lead
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
Hi,
We wanted to provide you with an update on our ongoing investigation into the ?blue screen? issues affecting a limited number of customers who installed MS10-015. We have been working around the clock with our customers, partners and several teams at Microsoft to determine the cause of these issues. Our investigation has concluded that the reboot occurs because the system is infected with malware, specifically the Alureon rootkit. We were able to reach this conclusion after the comprehensive analysis of memory dumps obtained from multiple customer machines and extensive testing against third party applications and software. The restarts are the result of modifications the Alureon rootkit makes to Windows Kernel binaries, which places these systems in an unstable state. In every investigated incident, we have not found quality issues with security update MS10-015. Our guidance remains the same: customers should continue to deploy this month?s security updates and make sure their systems are up-to-date with the latest anti-virus software.
Customers continue to emphasize the importance of quality updates, and that high quality updates encourages quicker deployment. While the issue customers are experiencing with MS10-015 was caused by a malware infection and not a problem with the security update, we wanted to use this event as an opportunity to explain why this issue was not caught during testing, and how we respond to reported issues in our security updates.
This issue was not caught as part of our testing because oftentimes when malware is present, infected systems are put in an unstable state. These types of infections often leave the machine in such an unstable state that it cannot be reliably tested. This is because Malware writers use unsupported and potentially destabilizing methods for compromising machines because they want to keep their malware hidden from anti-malware software. In the particular case of Alureon, malware writers modified Windows behavior by attempting to access a specific memory location, instead of letting the operating system determine the address which usually happens when an executable is loaded. The chain of events in this case was a machine became infected, during which the malware made assumptions as to the layout of the Windows code on the machine. Subsequently MS10-015 was downloaded and installed, during which the location of Windows code changed. On the next reboot the malware code crashed attempting to call a specific address in Windows code which was no longer the intended OS function.
Microsoft has taken steps to deter tampering with the Windows Kernel using technologies like Kernel Patch Protection (sometimes referred to as PatchGuard) and Kernel Mode Code Signing (KMCS), both of which are enabled in 64-bit systems. These technologies make it possible to detect when integrity checks fail. The different versions of Alureon that we have investigated only infect 32-bit systems and would fail to infect 64-bit systems. That said, it is important to note that running as a standard user instead of using an administrator account is a best practice that in most cases will prevent kernel mode malware from infecting a system. Similarly, keeping anti-virus signatures current will also prevent most malware from infections. Additionally, since we have determined that 64-bit systems are not affected, we are opening Automatic Updates for these platforms.
Customers who are interested in additional technical details of what the Windows Kernel is can learn more here.
Even after security updates are released, the Microsoft Security Response Center?s job is not done. In conjunction with Microsoft Customer Service and Support (CSS), we monitor forums and track customer calls to ensure we respond to reported issues as quickly as possible. On Wednesday, February 10th, we became aware of reports regarding Windows XP SP2 and SP3 systems becoming unable to restart successfully after the installation of MS10-015. The reports were first identified by the MSRC?s monitoring of various online community support forums, a spike in support call volume and telemetry from our Consumer Security Support Center. After reviewing the information we had available, we stopped offering Automatic Update distribution of MS10-015 in order to minimize the potential for widespread customer impact while we investigated these reports. Even though we have stopped distribution through Automatic Update, we have seen a large number of deployments as customers can still deploy the update through Windows Update, WSUS or SMS.
In this situation, our teams needed to get information directly from the affected systems in order to understand the cause. Because we had so few reports and needed to examine the state of the affected systems, the CSS team even drove to customer locations to retrieve machines for analysis.
This past weekend, we worked with the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC) on the systems that were delivered to Redmond last Friday, and confirmed that all of the affected systems had the Alureon Rootkit installed. The Windows Engineering team then began working to build a test matrix to determine if the malware was related to the reports we have been receiving. To ensure we had identified the root cause of the issue, Windows Engineering tested machines using the test process covering all 32 bit versions of Windows. While this issue could impact any 32bit Windows system that was infected with the malware, since reports are predominately on 32bit versions of Windows XP this test process is described at a high level focusing on that version in the below table:
|
Phase |
Actions |
Result on Test Machines |
|
Debug Phase 1 |
|
The system enters a repeated reboot / blue screen |
|
Debug Phase 2 |
|
Successful boot |
|
Debug Phase 3 |
|
Successful boot |
|
Debug Phase 4 |
|
The machine goes into a rolling reboot |
As indicated in the table, the presence of Alureon does not allow for a successful boot of the compromised system. The Windows Engineering team continued testing different configurations, as well as retesting several third party applications, leading to our firm conclusion that the blue screen issue is the result of the Alureon rootkit.
A malware compromise of this type is serious, and if customers cannot confirm removal of the Alureon rootkit using their chosen anti-virus/anti-malware software, the most secure recommendation is for the owner of the system to back up important files and completely restore the system from a cleanly formatted disk.
For instructions on how to back up your files in Windows, visit here:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Back-up-your-files
For instructions on how to reinstall Windows, visit here:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/help/install-reinstall-uninstall
Customers who believe they are experiencing this reboot issue after installing MS10-015, or require support removing it or repairing their systems, are encouraged to contact their Customer Service and Support group by either going to https://consumersecuritysupport.microsoft.com or by calling 1-866-PCSafety (1-866-727-2338). International customers can find local support contact numbers here: http://support.microsoft.com/common/international.aspx.
While we cannot predict how malware writers will author or modify their code, we are committed to finding new ways to detect issues like this on infected systems. We?re also working on a simpler solution to detect and remove Alureon from affected systems which should be released in a few weeks, as are several other third party vendors.
We will keep you updated here on the MSRC Blog as we have more data and information on the malware and automatic remediation tools.
Mike Reavey
Director, MSRC
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
In our continuing investigation in to the restart issues related to MS10-015 that a limited number of customers are experiencing, we have determined that malware on the system can cause the behavior. We are not yet ruling out other potential causes at this time and are still investigating. Please review our blog post from yesterday for additional information.
One of the key components when investigating issues like this are obtaining memory dumps from computers experiencing the problem. In order to get the information we need to fully analyze the issue, some of our support engineers have actually driven to customer locations and picked up affected systems so we can get the needed crash data directly and help inform our investigation. For more information about memory dumps, please see: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/254649.
We encourage customers to follow our ?Protect Your PC? best practices and always have up to date anti-virus software running on their systems to help prevent malware infections. For customers who do not have anti-virus software, you can either scan your system using our online tool at http://safety.live.com or you can install Microsoft Security Essentials for free.
This can be a difficult issue to solve once a computer is in an un-bootable state so we encourage customers who feel they have been impacted by this to contact our Customer Service and Support group by either going to https://consumersecuritysupport.microsoft.com or by calling 1-866-PCSafety (1-866-727-2338). International customers can find local support contact numbers here: http://support.microsoft.com/common/international.aspx.
Keep an eye on this blog for more updates as we have them.
Thanks,
Jerry Bryant
Sr. Security Communications Manager Lead
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
Hi everyone,
As we do every month following our public webcast, we have posted the questions and answers (which you can find here) and the recorded webcast below.
This month there were no particular themes that emerged in the questions. They ranged from wanting clarification of what it means when we say something is ?public? to questions like ?Will applying Enable_SSL_Renegotiate_Workaround.js cause IIS 7 to break SSL VPN connections?? You can find the answers to these and many other questions at the link above.
| More listening and viewing options: |
Earlier today I made a post about a potential issue with MS10-015. We are still investigating this but I wanted to provide some additional clarity on what I mean when I said we stopped offering the update via Windows Update. To be more precise, we basically turned off the Automatic Update system for this bulletin. This means that computers that have our recommended setting to automatically look for, download, and install high priority updates, will not pull this update down. They will still get all the other relevant updates. You can still go to Windows Update and manually select and install the update and you can still obtain the update package from the Download Center.
Please check back here for more updates on this issue as we will post additional information as it becomes available.
Thanks!
Jerry Bryant
Sr. Security Communications Manager Lead
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
Hi everyone,
I am writing to let you know that we are aware that after installing the February security updates a limited number of users are experiencing issues restarting their computers. Our initial analysis suggests that the issue occurs after installing MS10-015 (KB977165). However, we have not confirmed that the issue is specific to MS10-015 or if it is an interoperability problem with another component or third-party software. Our teams are working to resolve this as quickly as possible. We also stopped offering this update through Windows Update as soon as we discovered the restart issues. However, those using enterprise deployment systems such as SMS or WSUS will still see and be able to deploy these packages.
As you may recall from previous blog posts, MS10-015 is an Elevation of Privilege that would require the attacker to have valid credentials in order to be able to leverage the vulnerability in an attack. Several other updates in this release were identified as having a high priority for deployment and we continue to encourage customers to thoroughly test the updates and deploy them immediately. At this time, we are not aware of any issues with the other updates that were released this month and we continue to encourage customers to install them as soon as possible in order to help ensure that they protected from the vulnerabilities they address.
While we work to address this issue, customers who choose not to install the update can implement the workaround outlined in the bulletin. CVE-2010-0232 was publicly disclosed and we previously issued Security Advisory 979682 in response. Customers can disable the NTVDM subsystem as a workaround and we have provided an automated method of doing that with a Microsoft Fix It that you can find here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979682.
Customers who are experiencing issues after installing any of our security updates can get help resolving the issues by either going to https://consumersecuritysupport.microsoft.com or by calling 1-866-PCSafety (1-866-727-2338). International customers can find local support contact numbers here: http://support.microsoft.com/common/international.aspx.
Thank you,
Jerry Bryant
Sr. Security Communications Manager Lead
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
MSRC Bulletin Release Blog Post
Hi everyone,
As mentioned in our ANS blog post last week, today we are releasing 13 bulletins addressing 26 vulnerabilities. 11 bulletins affect Windows and 2 affect older versions of Microsoft Office.
In the post on Thursday, we mentioned that bulletins in the ANS listed as 1, 2, 3, and 6 were going to top our deployment priority list this month. We have also added MS10-015 (#12) to that list. It addresses Security Advisory 979682. We are aware of publicly available Proof-of-Concept code for this issue, but are not aware of any active attacks at this time. Here is the mapping from the bulletin numbers in the ANS to the released bulletin ID?s:
| ANS Bulletin Number | Actual Bulletin Number |
| 1 | MS10-006 |
| 2 | MS10-007 |
| 3 | MS10-008 |
| 4 | MS10-009 |
| 5 | MS10-012 |
| 6 | MS10-013 |
| 7 | MS10-003 |
| 8 | MS10-004 |
| 9 | MS10-010 |
| 10 | MS10-011 |
| 11 | MS10-014 |
| 12 | MS10-015 |
| 13 | MS10-005 |
As always, it is recommended that customers deploy all security updates as soon as possible. Of the bulletins released this month, customers should prioritize and deploy MS10-006, MS10-007, MS10-008, MS10-013, and MS10-015, given Critical severity ratings and/or Exploitability Index ratings of 1 (?Consistent Exploit Code Likely?).
MS10-013, which addresses a Critical vulnerability in DirectShow, should be at the top of your list for testing and deployment. This issue is Critical on all supported versions of Windows except Itanium based server products and has an Exploitability Index rating of 1. To exploit the vulnerability, an attacker could host a malicious AVI file on a website and convince a user to visit the site, or send the file via email and convince the a user to open it.
MS10-006 is also Critical on all versions of Windows, except Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, and addresses 2 vulnerabilities in SMB Client. One of the vulnerabilities has an Exploitability Index rating of 1. In the simplest scenario, a system connecting to a network file share is an SMB Client. The issue occurs during the client/server negotiation phase of the connection. In order to exploit this issue, an attacker would need to host a malicious server and convince a client system to connect to it. An attacker could also try to perform a man-in-the-middle attack by responding to SMB requests from clients. From our analysis of this issue, we expect attempts to exploit it would be more likely to result in a Denial of Service than in Remote Code Execution.
MS10-007 addresses a Critical vulnerability in Windows Shell Handler that affects Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. The attack vector is through a specially crafted link that appears to the ShellExecute API to be a valid link. This issue has not been publicly exposed but we give it an Exploitability Index rating of 1, so we urge customers on affected platforms to install it as soon as possible.
MS10-008 is the last one I will give some additional detail on. This is a cumulative update for ActiveX Killbits and is also Critical. You will notice in our Severity & Exploitability Index chart that we did not give this an Exploitability rating. That is because a Killbit is not an update that addresses the underlying vulnerability. It is a registry setting that keeps the vulnerable ActiveX control from running in Internet Explorer. We will give these an Exploitability rating of 1 if we are aware of active exploitation but in this case, we are not.
You can find more detailed information about these bulletins in several blog posts by our Security Research & Defense team at http://blogs.technet.com/srd.
With that, here are the Severity and Exploitability Index and Deployment Priority slides:
In the following video, Adrian Stone and I talk a little more about this month?s top priority bulletins:
| More listening and viewing options: |
I would also encourage you to attend out public webcast tomorrow where we will go in to detail on all 13 bulletins. Here is the registration information:
Date: Wednesday, Feb 10
Time: 11:00 a.m. PST (UTC -8)
Registration: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032427679
Hope you can join us!
Jerry Bryant
Sr. Security Communications Manager ? Lead
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
Today we released February bulletin information through our Advance Notification Service (ANS). This month, we will be releasing 13 bulletins - five rated Critical, seven rated Important, and one rated Moderate - addressing 26 vulnerabilities. Eleven of the bulletins affect Windows and the remaining two affect Office. More information about the upcoming security updates can be found on the Advance Notification Service (ANS) webpage.
As we started to do in December, we want to give customers a peek at what our deployment guidance will be next Tuesday. This month, we will be giving four of the bulletins a deployment priority rating of 1. In the ANS, those are bulletins 1, 2, 3, and 6. We recommend that customers test and deploy all security updates as soon as possible but you should prioritize these first.
To further help customers prioritize, I have pulled the Windows information from the ANS into a summary table so depending on the version you are running, you can see how many bulletins you need to prepare for:
|
Version |
Critical |
Important |
Moderate |
Low |
Total |
|
Windows 2000 |
5 |
3 |
1 |
0 |
9 |
|
Windows XP |
5 |
2 |
1 |
0 |
8 |
|
Windows Server 2003 |
4 |
3 |
2 |
0 |
9 |
|
Windows Vista |
3 |
3 |
0 |
0 |
6 |
|
Windows Server 2008 |
3 |
4 |
0 |
1 |
8 |
|
Windows 7 |
3 |
2 |
0 |
0 |
5 |
|
Windows Server 2008 R2 |
3 |
1 |
0 |
1 |
5 |
The Office related bulletins are both rated Important and would require user action to be exploited (usually in the form of convincing a user to open a specially crafted file). The vulnerabilities only affect older versions of Office so customers on Office 2007 or Office 2008 for Mac will have not actions this month.
We encourage customers to upgrade to the latest versions of both Windows and Office. As this bulletin release shows, the latest versions are less impacted overall due to the improved security protections built in to these products.
I also want to give a summary of the three open Security Advisories so customers know what to expect on Tuesday:
· Advisory 980088, Vulnerability in Internet Explorer Could Allow Information Disclosure: this advisory was released yesterday (Feb 3). We do not have an update for this issue planned for the normal February bulletin release. However, this vulnerability only affects versions of windows older than Vista in their default configuration, and there is a ?Fix It? available so customers in non-default configurations can protect themselves.
· Advisory 979682, Vulnerability in Windows Kernel Could Allow Elevation of Privilege: we are on track to release an update for this issue next Tuesday.
· Advisory 977544, Vulnerability in SMB Could Allow Denial of Service: we are still working on an update for this issue so it will not be addressed in the February bulletins. As a reminder, this issue cannot be used to allow an attacker to take control of a system remotely, but instead results in a system becoming unresponsive due to resource consumption.
We are not aware of any attacks on these vulnerabilities and continue to encourage customers to implement the mitigations and workarounds outlined in the advisories.
Last month I started including important information about Windows versions that are reaching the end of their product lifecycle. Customers using these versions should consider upgrading before support for these products end as, once they do, we will no longer provide security updates:
Finally, please plan to join Adrian Stone and myself next week for our regular live webcast where we will go in to detail on each bulletin to give you even more information and guidance:
Date: Wednesday, Feb 10
Time: 11:00 a.m. PST (UTC -8)
Registration: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032427679
Hope to see you there!
Jerry Bryant
Sr. Security Communications Manager ? Lead
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
Hi everyone,
Today we released Security Advisory 980088 to address a publicly disclosed vulnerability in Internet Explorer that may allow Information Disclosure for customers running on Windows XP or who have disabled Internet Explorer Protected Mode. At this time we are not aware of any attacks seeking to use the vulnerability.
Customers running Internet Explorer 7 or Internet Explorer 8 in their default configuration on Windows Vista or later operating systems are not vulnerable to this issue as they benefit from Internet Explorer Protected Mode, which protects from this issue. Windows XP users, or users who have disabled Protected Mode, can help protect themselves by implementing Network Protocol Lockdown. We have created a Microsoft Fix It to automate this. The Fix It can be run on individual systems or enterprises can deploy it through their automated systems.
We are working to produce an update for this vulnerability and when that is complete, we will take appropriate action to protect customers, which may include releasing an update out-of-band. As with any update, we have to balance overall quality and ensure application compatibility before we release it.
Microsoft is also working with our Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP) partners to help provide broader protections for customers. Together with our partners, we will continue to monitor the threat landscape and will take action against any web sites that seek to exploit this vulnerability.
We continue to encourage customers to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 to benefit from the increased protections provided in the newer version. In addition, customers should continue to follow our ?Protect Your Computer? guidance at http://www.microsoft.com/protect.
Thanks!
Jerry Bryant
Sr. Security Communications Manager ? Lead
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
Hello everyone,
Yesterday Adrian Stone from the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) and I hosted a live webcast to discuss Security Bulletin MS10-002 and Security Advisory 979682 in more detail with customers.
Below is the video of that presentation and you can find the question & answer transcript here. We spent over an hour answering customer questions during the webcast. They were all good. Below the video, I am including a set of links to resources we referred to during the presentation.
Thanks to all who attended!
| More listening and viewing options: |
Resources:
Blogs
Bulletins, Advisories, Notifications & Newsletters
Security Centers
Other Resources
Jerry Bryant
Senior Security Communications Manager Lead
*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*
