antiworm

In a simple demonstration, a hapless team discovers the truth. "Your server is vulnerable. It's already been cracked. Oh, and by the way, it's already distributing malware for a botnet." A Big Case of Oops! Attitude of management in many organizations is one of the biggest barriers to improved security on the internet. People simply don't want to believe that their systems are vulnerable. Denial is pervasive, and affects organizations from the biggest of the Fortune 500 or Federal government agencies, down to modestly sized companies, local governments, and non-profit corporations. The attitude of the unnamed client described at the "Following the White Rabbit" blog (link above) is all too common. I suspect that an underlying cause is that people want to believe several things that worked pretty well from an evolutionary perspective, but don't work very well on the internet. When everybody around is a bunch of cave dwellers, consumed entirely with...

That didn't take long, did it? Apparently Microsoft released their "out of band" patch in a hurry because they had already seen exploits "in the wild" for this defect. They guessed a worm couldn't be far behind, and they were right. Gimmiv: New worm feeds on latest Microsoft bug The cycle of patching will never fix this problem. If you are a CIO or manager of an enterprise or government network which has been hit by new worms this week, contact Intrinsic Security to discuss FireBreak AntiWorm. Worms are detected instantly and trapped without signatures.

Microsoft plans to issue an "out of band" patch today, e.g. a patch released on a day other than "Patch Tuesday". Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification Thw defect, which hasn't been publicly described just yet, apparently exists in every version of Windows that anyone who is likely to patch anything actually uses: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Vista. Microsoft describes this update as "critical" which means they know it can be remotely exploited without user intervention (and without exploit chaining, which they don't yet consider to be critical.)

If you haven't noticed, somehow lately computer keyboards and laptops in the Windows PC world are sporting a little pad for reading fingerprints. Notice the fine print at the bottom of this page, which I'll quote here in case it goes away: Microsoft Fingerprint Reader "The Fingerprint Reader should not be used for protecting sensitive data such as financial information, or for accessing corporate networks. We continue to recommend that you use a strong password for these types of activities." Why do you suppose Microsoft and all those hardware makers would go to all the trouble to add a fingerprint reader to laptops and keyboards, and then advise you not to use it? Probably because they know something that the average consumer probably doesn't: these devices can be spoofed. It's only a matter of time before there are clear, step by step instructions available on the internet for lifting a fingerprint and applying it to a model finger for spoofing purposes. H...