SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/04/microsoft_windows_defender_rar_bug/
A remote-code execution vulnerability in Windows Defender – a flaw that can be exploited by malicious .rar files to run malware on PCs – has been traced back to an open-source archiving tool Microsoft adopted for its own use.
[...] Apparently, Microsoft forked that version of unrar and incorporated the component into its operating system's antivirus engine. That forked code was then modified so that all signed integer variables were converted to unsigned variables, causing knock-on problems with mathematical comparisons. This in turn left the software vulnerable to memory corruption errors, which can crash the antivirus package or allow malicious code to potentially execute.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @08:26PM (8 children)
Anyone who's been paying attention is aware of the number of times that anti-virus apps have been exploited.
That garbage just provides a larger attack surface.
The proper way to address exploitable code is to fix the security flaws in your code.
Pasting band-aids all over the outside of your crappy OS is just stupid.
Hint to OS designers:
-Start- with a security model; DON'T try to paste "security" onto the side of your thing later in the process.
N.B. UNIX had one of those in 1973, before MICROS~1 ever got into the OS business (in 1980).
...of course, that would mean that Redmond would have to start all over again.
...further meaning that there is a high probability that apps that folks have would not be compatible with MICROS~1's new thing.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by turgid on Monday April 09 2018, @08:33PM (4 children)
Maybe they could dust off the Xenix source code and start hacking? I'm sure someone somewhere must still have a drive that can read 5.25" 360k disks.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @09:02PM
One of us is psycho^W psychic.
I've been thinking about Xenix too.
MSFT licensed that in 1978, so it's clear that they knew about proper security even before they bought QDOS from Tim Paterson (one T) and rebranded that.
If MICROS~1 had used UNIX file permissions from the start, that would have taken their (literally and in fact) 2-bit file ATTRIBs up to 9 bits per file.
Not all that big a price to pay to cure 99 percent of their security problems from the start.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday April 10 2018, @02:06AM (1 child)
Read 5.25 360K floppies? Yup. Surprisingly, I still can do that.
Still have several dozen disks as well. All old DOS stuff.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2018, @02:34PM
I can see how you may read 5 of those old disk. But how do you read a quarter disk? :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2018, @03:40AM
Not needed, the images are floating around the net, though somewhat corrupted. I hear there was some "NCommander" dude trying to restore them, though...
Restoring Xenix 386 2.2.3c, Part 1 [soylentnews.org]
Xenix 2.2.3c Restoration: No Tools, No Problem (Part 2) [soylentnews.org]
Xenix 2.2.3c Restoration: Damage Mapping (Part 3) [soylentnews.org]
Xenix 2.2.3c Restoration: Xrossing The X (Part 4) [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2018, @07:37AM (1 child)
NT had a pretty good security model, in theory. The ACL model is a lot more flexible than the unix owner-group-other model. Unfortunately, this also makes it a lot harder to understand, with the result that any permission problem is solved by running everything as Administrator.
On top of that, NT was a lot closer to being a micro-kernel than any unix outside of Minix, but then they decided that graphics performance was more important than security and stability, and moved the graphics drivers into ring0. And we probably all know that graphics drivers are notoriously hard to get correct.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 11 2018, @08:35AM
they decided that graphics performance was more important than security and stability
"They" being the salesmen who run the company. (It's obviously NOT engineers in charge there).
Yeah. Allowing user-supplied input into the realm where it can do maximum damage has to be the stupidest thing ever done by a software company.
Of course, I think we all know that M$ isn't so much a software company as it is an abuse company that sells software as a way of delivering abuse.
and moved the graphics drivers into ring0
Let's not gloss over the specific case of font rendering.
...and, just in time, here's El Reg's headline:
It's April 2018--and Patch Tuesday shows Windows security is still foiled by fiendish fonts [theregister.co.uk]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2018, @06:54PM
The AV problem is actually very similar to the Halting Problem except that with the Halting Problem you get the full code and the inputs but with the AV problem you don't. And they say the Halting Problem is not solvable in general.
Perhaps you can solve the AV problem for specific/popular cases[1] but sandboxing is often a better way of securing stuff. Like "solving" the halting problem by ensuring that all programs halt within a max time limit whether they're written to or not.
[1] I do use AV as part of "defense in depth". But it's called virustotal and runs on someone else's servers...