From: jftucker at gmail.com (James Tucker)
Subject: [ok] RE: MS should re-write code with security in mind

First of all, almost all Windows users demand backward compatibility.
While MS's software is not open source, MSDN indexes a huge number of
libraries and most all of these would have to be wrapped up to work
under a newly written OS if backward compatibility is to be
maintained. Programmers of 3rd party windows software also have a long
history of not doing things the way they should (are told to) and this
will lead to further problems if the quirks of the OS are removed.

This is an issue which MS will face for years to come, and they are
trying to re-write major portions of the OS in Longhorn. SP2 was a
step in the right direction protecting most of the buffers in the OS.

A drastic but potentially good option they have is actually to release
their old legacy operating systems free of charge. Source release for
MS is probably not a good idea, as allot of the source does not
change, and it is likely that many new exploits would be theorised in
a very short space of time. At least if the legacy OS's were available
consumers with legacy applications would not have so much to complain
about, in terms of lack of support and patching.

There are a great deal of old DOS based applications in the world
which have yet to be rebuilt on any more modern systems; and yet to
re-install these systems it is nearly impossible these days. To find a
fresh copy of DOS is very hard now. More importantly it is even more
difficult to find a boot disk formatted with the correct generation of
boot loader.

Built in encryption is available in NT and this can be hardened with
security upgrades available on MS's site. There are laws which govern
MS in this regard and restrict them from exporting high encryption
OS's from the US, the specifics of which I do not know, but google
would be able to tell you.

NT is a multi-user OS, it has a client server hierarchy to it also.
The process scheduling system in NT is a "proper" process scheduler
and allot of work went into changing this in Windows XP. In fact
certain details were changed in SP1 and it is not unlikely that they
changed again in SP2, although I have not heard as such.

I am sure you are probably aware of the issues of attempting to secure
and authenticate all mail transfer. Authentication unfortunately
directly conflicts with privacy, in that if a user is to prove who
they are, then you know who they are. Server side authentication can
be useful, although this still requires some kind of centralisation in
order to properly authenticate. Backwards compatibility issues are
obvious, and more importantly you will note that holes in the system
will appear any time traditional plain text SMTP is allowed.

Deep packet inspection ISP side to stop SPAM and viruses is possible,
however as you should be aware, being a firewall consultant, this is
neither fast nor cheap. The best recent solution being the regexp
system in Checkpoint FW1 NG+AI.

Finally, it is not impossible for you to implement what you want
without MS's involvement. Theoretically there is nothing to stop the
community from writing an application which simply redirects all IP
traffic through encrypted and fully authenticated channels. This kind
of solution could work very effectively in a LAN scenario where all
machines speak the same language. On the Internet the game changes,
but of course, it was the Internet we were worried about in the first
place.

It is true to say that closing all holes in MS software would reduce
the volume of SPAM and viruses on the Internet. Of course this would
take some time however, as many places which remain infected (which
contribute to most of the volume) simply would not update for a long
time anyway (and it is this lack of updates and security which puts
them there in the first place).

If administrators and users of MS software are simply made more aware
of the issues which face the Internet and the professionals who
support it, we will slowly see a big improvement. SP2, good or bad,
was a step in this direction, at the very least the security center
will encourage users to buy / upgrade their anti virus solutions, and
the recompilation of major portions of the OS with buffer checking
will reduce the number of exploits possible in the OS.

Software is unfortunately imperfect, and will rarely be perfect. It is
likely that as most systems become more secure, the viewed need for
vigilance on security will be lost among non IT-pro's. When that time
comes, it will be the rare exploits which will cause major damage, not
the near daily patches we see now.

"there are no problems, only income opportunities!" -Tony Lawrence. 

my 2c.


On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 16:00:05 -0500, Curt Purdy <purdy@...man.com> wrote:
> Clairmont, Jan M wrote:
> > M$ should just bite the bullet and re-write windows with
> > security in mind, give it a true process scheduler, multi-user
> > with windows as a client server processes.
> <snip>
> 
> It ain't gonna happen.  There is so much legacy code, dating all the way
> back to NT 3.5 in 2K XP that no-one really knows how it works.  Of course,
> that is the beauty of open-source, lots of people know how Linux works.
> 
> Of course you don't have to be open-source to be secure, as Netware was
> always built with security in mind.  Novell engineers have a saying, "We
> patch Netware twice a year whether it needs it or not."  I hate to see it
> go.  I love SuSE linux, am running the 64-bit version on AMD, but I wish
> they were keeping the Netware kernal also, for my security-critical clients.
> Sadly, the days of not having to run around patching servers all the time
> will be gone after Netware 7.
> 
> BTW, when I have to run windows (rarely), I start a VMWare session under
> SuSE, do what I need, and close it out as quickly as possibe, after checking
> for patches of course ;)
> 
> Curt Purdy CISSP, GSEC, MCSE+I, CNE, CCDA
> Information Security Engineer
> DP Solutions
> 
> ----------------------------------------
> 
> If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, you will be hacked.
> What's more, you deserve to be hacked.
> -- former White House cybersecurity adviser Richard Clarke
> 
> 
>

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