EBAY and AMAZON

Wed Jun 13 19:18:04 UTC 2012

On June 13, 2012 at 18:20 davehart at gmail.com (Dave Hart) wrote:
 > On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 5:36 PM, Barry Shein <bzs at world.std.com> wrote:
 > >  > On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 11:44:44AM +0000, Jamie Bowden wrote:
 > >  > > While MS may be a favorite whipping boy, let's not pretend that if the dominant OS were Apple or some flavor of *nix, things would be any better.
 > >
 > > That assumes the security architectures of all these OS's is similar
 > > which is simply not true.
 > 
 > You're right.  Windows has an architecture that's easier to secure,

It didn't occur to me that the original comment was referring to
professionally secured sites only.

I think one of the huge complaints about Windows systems is their
appearance by the tens of millions in botnets which tend to be a
problem with non-professionally run systems.

 > with auditing, ACLs, and capabilities ("privileges") part of every
 > NT-derived release.  This means everything interesting doesn't have to
 > be "root", for which there is no equivalent in Windows -- no magic
 > user which bypasses access checks.
 > 
 > > There have been security flaws in Microsoft OS's which led to the
 > > spread of malware which would have been almost impossible on any
 > > unix-like operating system.
 > >
 > > One of the biggest problems was creating the first and often only user
 > > on MS systems with administrator privileges allowing any piece of
 > > software they ran to do anything on the system.
 > 
 > Is it not common to install unix-like operating systems similarly,
 > with setup completed after a root password is chosen but before any
 > human-named accounts are created?

Apparently not, given the relative absence of un*x (which includes for
example MacOS and Linux) systems in being pwned by clicking "open this
attachment" in an email message.

But the worst from Windows was the decades when they allowed any app
to inject code into the kernel typically for graphics speed-up. Which
of course could be any code, and that any code could own the system
instantly.

The rest is talking around the actual, measurable problem of botnets etc.

Where do you think all that spam which pounds your mailbox
relentlessly comes from? Botted Windows systems.

I don't think saying that a professionally secured Windows 8 release
candidate is much better than past systems when we're suffering under
excuses or even mitigates the situation.

The worst is that many of those features which made Windows so
insecure were not removed because they provided marketing advantage
(e.g., making any user admin, injecting graphics code for app
speed-up.)

So MS agonized for years about how to deal with this and not cut into
their or their favored vendors' profit model while the rest of the net
suffered gabillions of dollars in damage.

MS, in effect, made many tens of billions on the flaws in their OS's,
at the expense of everyone else.

(I'm done but I'll leave the rest of the msg...)

 > I'm not impartial, I once worked for the architect of NT's security.
 > Discount my opinion appropriately.  My opinion is 20 years of
 > hardening have likely made Windows a tougher nut to crack than other
 > mass-market OSes.  It could hardly be otherwise -- there have been
 > large piles of money fueling a free market in 0-day Windows exploits
 > for many years now.  Windows has grown over that time, of course, and
 > more code means more holes, but other OSes have been growing as well.
 > Meanwhile, the most security-sensitive parts of Windows have slower to
 > change and grow.
 > 
 > Yes, Windows evolved from an essentially security-ignorant single-user
 > environment.  Unix evolved from an essentially security-ignorant
 > multiuser environment.  The baseline of unix security with magic root,
 > setuid apps, and primitive access permissions are nonetheless inferior
 > to the baseline of NT-derived Windows.  There are varying degrees of
 > ACL support in some unix-like systems, and wide support for
 > capabilities that allow services to start as a non-root user, or "drop
 > root" after starting as such.  There is not, across the POSIX world, a
 > strong security infrastructure that can be relied on to be universal.
 > On the other hand, with the death in the wild of the Windows 9x/ME
 > house of cards, today Windows does provide that universal security
 > infrastructure.
 > 
 > Unix systems can be secured.  So can Windows systems.  No OS can
 > simultaneously provide lazy users with power tools and completely
 > protect those users from self-injury.  Security costs overhead for
 > too-often no perceived benefit until someone gets hurt.  When you are
 > forced to deal with it, it's nice to have the best in class
 > infrastructure under your feet.
 > 
 > Cheers,
 > Dave Hart

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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