full-disclosure - Test your windows OS

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Message-ID: <41621EC8.7040901@myself.gen.nz>
From: steve at myself.gen.nz (Steve Wray)
Subject: Test your windows OS

Berend-Jan Wever wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Wanna do a quick test to see if the programmers that wrote your windows operating system have any clue as to what there doing ? Run these commands from cmd.exe in the system32 directory:
> 
> for %i in (*.exe) do start %i %n%n%n%n%n%n%n%n%n%n%n%n%n%n%n%n%n%n%n%n
> for %i in (*.exe) do start %i AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.... (type as much "A"-s as cmd.exe allows on one line.)
> 
> Each command will execute every program in your system32 directory, most of them will either ignore the parameter or report an error because the parameter doesn't make sence... But on my win2k system I found 6 programs vulnerable to these very simple formatsting and BoF tests.... grpconv even gives EIP 0x00410041, can it be any easier?
> 
> These are not vulnerabilities in itself: you cannot gain access or elevate priviledges but I just wanted to let you know that these programmers did a sloppy job.

Fascinating; you've rediscovered one of the first vulnerability checks 
ever devised!
:-)

You (and the rest of the list; everyone who hasn't already) should read 
'The Unix Haters Handbook' (amusingly enough I find this online copy at 
Microsoft http://research.microsoft.com/~daniel/uhh-download.html but it 
is *not* a Microsoft book; its way older than MS (IIRC)).

 From  O'Reilly& "Practical UNIX and Internet Security" chapter 27;

"Recall that the first study by Professor Barton Miller, cited in 
Chapter 23, found that more than one-third of common programs supplied 
by several UNIX vendors crashed or hung when they were tested with a 
trivial program that generated random input. Five years later, he reran 
the tests. The results? Although most vendors had improved to where 
"only" one-fourth of the programs crashed, one vendor's software 
exhibited a 46% failure rate! This failure rate was despite wide 
circulation and publication of the report, and despite the fact that 
Miller's team made the test code available for free to vendors.

Most frightening, the testing performed by Miller's group is one of the 
simplest, least-effective forms of testing that can be performed 
(random, black-box testing). Do vendors do any reasonable testing at all?"

Oh in fact I can now do better than that;
I found this snippet;

http://www.llnl.gov/CASC/calendar/miller.061200.html

where Miller says;
"This year (2000), we took another stab at random testing, this time 
testing applications running on Windows/NT . Given valid random mouse 
and keyboard input streams, we could crash or hang 45% of these 
applications."

So yeah, its a very valid technique you describe there, good results!

> Cheers,
> SkyLined
> 
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