Summary: Security news from Microsoft and the facts Microsoft carries on hiding

MICROSOFT'S practice of silent patching (fixing security bugs without ever telling anyone about it) does not prevent the company from lying about disclosure [1, 2] and even bragging about "transparency". What a nerve they have when they produce reports that daemonise Red Hat based on incomplete data which Microsoft itself is knowingly hiding.

Today we look at some recent security problems, starting with one which was covered before:

Microsoft’s problems with Token Kidnapping [.pdf] on the Windows platform aren’t going away anytime soon.

"Microsoft gives up on Windows security flaw," says the headline of another report.

DEVELOPER OF INSECURE SOFTWARE Microsoft has seemingly given up on finding a solution to a security vulnerability that takes advantage of the way Windows uses shortcuts.

As The INQUIRER reported on Monday, just about every operating system released by the Vole in the past decade is affected by the security flaw, which allows hackers to remotely execute code on Windows systems. Microsoft was relatively quick to admit to the problem, saying that the fault lies with the fact that "Windows incorrectly parses shortcuts".

The risk was increased by removable and network storage mechanisms such as USB memory drives, which can be 'autoplayed' when connected. Due to a dodgy digital certificate in a driver, users would be none the wiser as control of their system was being outsourced to someone else.

From Slashdot (the summary):

Microsoft Has No Plans To Patch New Flaw

"Microsoft has acknowledged the vulnerability that the new malware Stuxnet uses to launch itself with .lnk files, but said it has no plans to patch the flaw right now. The company said the flaw affects most current versions of Windows, including Vista, Server 2008 and Windows 7 32- and 64-bit. Meanwhile, the digital certificate that belonging to Realtek Semiconductor that was used to sign a pair of drivers for the new Stuxnet rootkit has been revoked by VeriSign. The certificate was revoked Friday, several days after news broke about the existence of the new malware and the troubling existence of the signed drivers."

Glyn Moody explains that "after all, with all the others [flaws], who will notice?"

Dell is now shipping computers with a hardware trojan that only affects Microsoft Windows. The New Scientist does not call out Windows, but the malware name is self explanatory.

Further information posted on Dell's community forum reveals that the trojan in the affected motherboards is stored in onboard flash memory rather than firmware ROMs. And the malware at issue is called w32.spybot.worm, which normally spreads using file-sharing networks and an internet chat client.

Social networks are now being blamed for merely carrying messages that are used to control Microsoft Windows botnets. One should say "Windows botnet" and "Windows malware", not just "malware"; these things are not universal. They specifically exploit Microsoft's bad engineering. "Time to Get Rid of That Other OS," argues Pogson.

The latest outrage is an attack that exploits another form of “autorun” for shortcuts/links on USB drives. That other OS lets the malware walk right in even if the user does not click on any of the links. That other OS tries to be so helpful…

The original article does name Windows as the problem (also in the headline).

Hackers have developed malware that spreads via USB sticks using a previously unknown security weakness involving Windows' handling of shortcut files.

"Don’t Call the Police," Pogson concludes.

There is no limit to how bad malware can be. It can range all the way from sending spam e-mail from your machines to selling all customer lists and sabotaging data by rot over a long period of time so that by the time you catch it weeks of work could go down the drain. The worst case is killing your operation through lawsuits charging negligence in allowing disaster to happen when reasonable people know you do not allow malware to run on your systems.

Running Windows is truly a liability. Windows was never designed to be secure. ⬆

"There was no strategic direction from Bill and Ballmer about these two things. It was like, 'Well we have these two things, DOS and Windows, and do we have to run on top of this new multitasking DOS? Are we running on top of DOS 3.0 and we just ignore those guys?' That went on for a year, this lack of strategic direction. And we just made our own decisions."

--Steve Wood, one of the first Microsoft developers