No Defense Against Windows Rootkits? 510
An anonymous reader writes "Spyware bad guys (and also phishing people) started using rootkits technology to stay hidden in a system. The problem is that at the moment the technology to defend a Windows system from these things is very poor. In fact antivirus companies have just started adding basic anti-rootkits technology. So the problem is serious, and well outlined by this question: Is the closed source code of Windows preventing us from actively defending our systems?"
It works both ways, but it's worse for MS (Score:5, Insightful)
This would be a resounding YES.
And Butler and Hoglund's recent book on rootkits was pretty nice.
MS(ux) for a few reasons, this is just one of them (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure admin is such a big deal (Score:4, Interesting)
But the fundamental problem is that if someone wants to install this garbage, the only way you can really stop them is by taking control of their computer away from them. I'm not sure that even Microsoft is willing to go that far yet, and I'm not sure I would want them to, anyway.
Re:I'm not sure admin is such a big deal (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm not sure admin is such a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
In the end, the best answer is for people to start using their noodle...protection software can also hinder us.
Re:I'm not sure admin is such a big deal (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'm not sure admin is such a big deal (Score:5, Interesting)
From everything I've read, it seems MS is working on the goal of windows eventually running only applications signed by them, the same way XBox is supposed to only run games they sign. There are so many things wrong with that besides the examples you mentioned:
- Who signs the apps? Microsoft?
- How do they determine which are legit and which arent?
- Who is held responsible if a legit company
- How much will they charge?
- Will the costs of signing push shareware & freeware programmers out of the market?
- Will the signed applications expire?
- What happens if I sell my computer? Are the licenses still tied to it?
- Will they also keep compeditors out of the market too
- What happens when everyone's guard is down, and someone figures out a way to code-sign a worm.
Just to scratch the surface. Worst case scenario, future PCs will cease to run Linux or any other alternative OS.
My real fear is that MS and/or Intel lobbyists convince the government to pass a law mandating that computers only run signed code. As a matter of fact, I'm surprised they've waited this long.
Re:I'm not sure admin is such a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
At the end of the day, operating systems can only identify suspicious behavior. It will always be up to the user to make the final call. If your users can't make good decisions, nothing short of a total system lock-down will help.
Re:MS(ux) for a few reasons, this is just one of t (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, in XPSP2 it has this big balloon which pops up repeatedly going along the lines of "Listen you pillock, you don't have firewall or automatic updates turned on. You really do need these. Click here and I'll set it all up for you, it's about 3 seconds work!". I know people who, when have this pointed out to them, go "Oh I never read that, it just keeps popping up".
The only other thing to do with some people is forcibly configure things, which I'm sure we'd all hate. I use Active Directory to force fine-tuned update compliance and firewall settings across my home network, but home users can't even negotiate a simple dialogue going "Here's what you need to do, here's why you need to do it, here's how to do it".
So when IE pops up a convenient dialogue warning about the fact that HotPornDialer32.exe isn't signed and is in fact coming from a website with an invalid certificate, along with a warning about exactly why it's bad to click 'Install', people will do anyway. Perhaps a Firefox-esque forced delay is in order so people can't just click 'OK' without thinking.
Re:MS(ux) for a few reasons, this is just one of t (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe people will anyway -- they'll just learn that they have to wait a moment before they can click 'OK'... they still won't think. Maybe most of them never will.
Re:MS(ux) for a few reasons, this is just one of t (Score:3, Insightful)
In the same session I can recieve the "Take a tour of windows," "Your firewall is not turned on," "Clean up your desktop icons," and "Your hardware could not be installed" messages, all from the same section of the screen with the same look. Starting immediately after Wind
Re:MS(ux) for a few reasons, this is just one of t (Score:3, Informative)
I've given some serious thought to doing that myself, but I've never been hit badly enough to worry about it.
That said, some of the new rootkits are very, very good and kind of frightening. Do a bit of investigating at some of the hacker websites (like the guy who wrote the trojan wh
Re:It works both ways, but it's worse for MS (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, if i ran a server i would do that.
Re:It works both ways, but it's worse for MS (Score:5, Informative)
It prevents a large swathe if not all rootkits from running.
This is one of the areas where I think Linux (and open source software in general) has closed source software beat, you can easilly customise the kernel to your own particular situation in which the machine will be running. Being able to have your own custom built kernel with stuff like grsecurity etc is invaluable.
Re:It works both ways, but it's worse for MS (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It works both ways, but it's worse for MS (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It works both ways, but it's worse for MS (Score:5, Informative)
Other steps you can take are :
-not having dev tools installed on your servers (quite often source root kits require them)
-keeping copies of
-running chkrootkit
-Mount / ro. You need to set up seperate space for
Re:It works both ways, but it's worse for MS (Score:3, Insightful)
Read-only root (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It works both ways, but it's worse for MS (Score:5, Informative)
mount
use a separate account for each daemon (some distros I've seen run apache as 'nobody', for example - don't use 'nobody', create a separate user for each daemon) This prevents your daemons from overwriting each others data, and allows the following:
use --uid-owner and/or --gid-owner in iptables to restrict your daemons from opening *outgoing* connections, or listening on random ports. If one of your daemons is compromised, it makes it harder for an attacker to connect to take over complete control.
Never have executables or data owned by the same user that the daemon runs as. I've seen this done mostly on game servers (the docs recommend running the game as 'unreal', and have all the game files owned by 'unreal') but some others (squidGuard comes to mind) also recommend (or even require!!?!?) having data files owned by the daemon. If there was a hole in the daemon, an attacker could theoretically use it to gain higher priveleges (such as the UID of the account used to start the daemon - frequently root) the next time the daemon is started.
Re:It works both ways, but it's worse for MS (Score:4, Informative)
That will prevent loading new kernel modules (so you can still load them early in the boot process), cut off access to things like
Re:It works both ways, but it's worse for MS (Score:5, Informative)
On sane operating systems *cough*Linux*cough* printer drivers aren't kernel modules - they don't need that sort of low-level OS/hardware access. Of course, it'd still be an inconvenience adding other hardware, but that's not a good example. With Linux, newbies at least will probably only want to run the kernel modules their distro supplies, so why not have a list of valid modules and their checksums loaded at startup, and refuse to insert a module that's not on the list?
Re:It works both ways, but it's worse for MS (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:why all things to all people (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It works both ways, but it's worse for MS (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It works both ways, but it's worse for MS (Score:2)
I fear not your rootkits! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I fear not your rootkits! (Score:5, Informative)
(For those who don't get it, "System" is a login with higher privleges than even Administrator. There's nothing that System can't do. Just to brighten up your day, it's also the default user for Windows Services. Feel safe yet?)
Re:I fear not your rootkits! (Score:5, Interesting)
So there is *something* that they can't do.
Try
at (now plus a minute)
voila! Interactive system shell!
Re:I fear not your rootkits! (Score:3, Informative)
Hahaha, I see you have little understanding of Windows.
System can load device drivers, and access ring 0.
System can do anything it wants, including working with any and all network connections already running, and grabbing any kerberos tokens present on the machine.
I grant you, it would take writing actual code.
Maybe you meant, System cannot access network resources as long as System doesn't do anything bad.
But, of course, if we assume
Re:I fear not your rootkits! (Score:3, Insightful)
Not true of NT 5.1 and 5.2 (XP, 2003). Most services run as 'Local Service' or 'Network Service' with differently grained privileges. System is still available for services that require it (including NT's crss and lsass processes).
Re:I fear not your rootkits! (Score:4, Informative)
You can open up these permissions on a system-by-system basis if really necessary, or even better just set applications that support it to use named service accounts. Cuts out a huge number of vulnerabilities.
You can secure a Windows system, and it's really pretty easy to do a lot of these things. You just have to know a bit of what you're doing and be prepared to put in the work. That's the biggest flaw in most MS administration shops: people who shouldn't be admins get lulled into a false sense of security because there's a pretty GUI and they don't understand what's going on behind the scenes.
Re:I fear not your rootkits! (Score:3, Insightful)
Why aren't these applied by default?
Re:I fear not your rootkits! (Score:3, Informative)
Oh yeah? Delete a file when there's a read-lock on it.
for those who don't get it, this is a fundamental problem with Windows - a file that's locked can't be modified or deleted. It's why you have to reboot after installing a service pack, or sometimes removing a virus.
Re:I fear not your rootkits! (Score:5, Funny)
Ask the UNIX folk... (Score:4, Funny)
No, seriously, I don't know the answer to this. :-)
Re:Ask the UNIX folk... (Score:5, Informative)
tripwire - there's a commercial version available, and I've used the free version. Creates checksums to compare your system against...
A brief description here... (with download and install instructions)
http://www.cert.org/security-improvement/implemen
Sam
http:/// [http] www . iamsam . com
Knoppix CD (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, and don't forget to mention that you should run tripwire from a known-secure system (a Knoppix CD, for instance) at least once in a while. Indeed, if your system is infested by a good rootkit, it could itself so well that it would play back a phony, made to look innocent contents of any files that it had infected.
Same goes for lsmod, ps and other tools (it is however very rare that a rootkit is so thorough as to hide itself from all tools. Most often an rpm -q --verify -a finds the nasties). But if you're really paranoid, run your tripwire and rpm --verify from an external system, not from within the one you want to examine.
Re:Ask the UNIX folk... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, half the time windows itself doesn't know what its installed. Every time I have to rollback a box from some semi-major patch, I cringe. I know something is going to break. If it's internal system doesn't keep basic track of what's installed and running (how many broken uninstall apps have you seen, which end up with you crawling through the registry trying to disable the damn software?), how the hell can you even know what to scan for?
I don't have the faintest idea of how to go about checking for a windows rootkit. What could you do? Take a drive image to compare against? That would never fly. Windows hides so many damn system jobs anyway, how the hell would you be able to spot one more?
The bulk of my windows security comes from running Snort upstream on the traffic that comes from the damn box, looking for traffic that ought not be there, and denying outbound from every port except ones I allow explicitly.
Re:Ask the UNIX folk... (Score:5, Informative)
Spending years being not-free as in beer, plan9 languished during the Linux FOSS years until belatedly being opened up for version 3
Then Lucent lost loads of $$ in the dot-com crash and wound down Bell Labs (such as taking out every other light bulb) and the staff retired or left (mostly to Google)
as Rob Pike said "Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad." - circa 1991
Re:Ask the UNIX folk... (Score:3, Interesting)
A rootkit has the ability to change the inputs and outputs of the overlaying OS API's. It does not however have the ability to change the I/O's of direct hardware access. Simple solution to detect rootkits is to do an API call for file directory (dir, ls, whatever), and compare it side-by-side to a direct hardware request for a file directory.
Re:Ask the UNIX folk... (Score:3, Informative)
That's cute, except you're assumiung your active memory is safe. So long as I'm running in memory, I don't even need to hook the API calls to fake return data. Jamie Butler demonstrated a technique at this year's DEFCON for hiding an active in-memory rootkit using the TLBs built into modern processors. Good luck on that one.
Unless you
You have to wonder... (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean even if you find the problem can you honestly say you'd be sure you wouldn't leave Notepad.exe broken by making your changes?
Clearly Windows needs to be completely re thought with NO concern for legacy apps. See also OS X.
Re:You have to wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
They tried with Vista, and broke it more.
Re:You have to wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
But if they did that, why would you use Windows?
If you had to choose between Windows Rewrite, which isn't backwards compatible, Linux, and MacOS X, the appeal of the non Windows solutions is a lot higher than it is now.
Re:You have to wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish Microsoft would but it will never happen. See OS X's market share.
The Answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. We are at the mercy of Microsoft to patch the systems for us. At least with Open Source you have potentially thousands of programmers looking for security holes and reporting those security problems.
Re:The Answer (Score:5, Insightful)
How long was the plain text password in Firebird before it was caught? A year and a half? And that's not even something subtle as some buffer overflows, or that double free in zlib.
Re:The Answer (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it easier to find defects in open source? (Score:3, Insightful)
> software.
Is it? I wonder if this isn't a case where we don't look for proof becuase we've assumed we know the answer. Certainly, with open source, you can examine the source. But examining complex kernel source code is no trivial task. Given the large amount of practice and study on methods of hacking closed source systems, isn't is possible that this having the source doesn't really make it easier after all? That it just
Windows Rootkit detection Tool (Score:5, Interesting)
Shameless plug: I've written a script that should be able to help find any rootkits that are listening on tcp/udp on windows.
Heres the link [elifulkerson.com]
What it does is attempt to handshake with itself on every available tcp or udp port. If the handshake fails, that is an indicator that somebody else is already camping out on that port.
Source is GPL, feedback is always welcome.
Re:Windows Rootkit detection Tool (Score:3, Informative)
Listening on a port != rootkit. Windows listens on dozens of ports - some of which you can't switch off without crippling the system.
Mine's fairly locked down, and listens on:
TCP: 135,139,445,1025
UDP: 445,500,1026,1137,1138,1251,1900,2419,2420,3273,3
And that's just the ones listening on 0.0.0.0...
Re:Windows Rootkit detection Tool (Score:3, Interesting)
Netstat (and ps, and ls, ...) is often doctored by the rootkit so as to not show itself running.
The trick described would find still rootkits which hide by doctoring those common system utilities. It won't probably find kernel-module based rootkits that specifically look for that trick, but those are rare.
Listening on a port != rootkit.
But listening on a port where no currently activated legitimate service should be listening may be.
And that's just the one
Re:Windows Rootkit detection Tool (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Windows Rootkit detection Tool (Score:3, Interesting)
Wouldn't a firewall (e.g. Zonealarm) pick up and/or block the outgoing traffic?
Re:Windows Rootkit detection Tool (Score:4, Informative)
Not if the rootkit binds to the network interface at a lower level than the firewall (i.e. traffic between ZoneAlarm and the interface passes through the malicious code, not the other way around). If it does that (which *is* possible IIRC - I think kernel-level/ring 0 code is required though) the firewall won't detect or block the traffic, because it won't see it.
It's about the money (Score:2, Insightful)
Joe Consumer: "Do I really need this?"
Co. Thug: "No, not at all. However, you never know when you may have an accident."
Window's source code... (Score:2)
Does Microsoft over share their code with developers?
While I am aware that MS does not legally publish their source code to Windows I do recall at one point that Microsoft did share some sections with a focus group of developers. It would only make sense that MS would share code with the big anti-virus firms in order to ensure a better product for their customers.
But I could be wrong about them sharing source with anyone.
Re:Window's source code... (Score:5, Informative)
SysInternals' (Score:5, Informative)
Re:SysInternals' (Score:4, Interesting)
Fortunately these rootkits can usually be detected by their side-effects, like the slowness and the internet activity... but you have to be suspitious that something's going on.
Re:SysInternals' (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, here's a useful tip for people.. there is a cheaper alternative to WinPE.. BartPE [nu2.nu], it requires Windows XP to build the bootable cd but in terms of usefulness it's a nice little life saver.
Can also be extended with Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) [ubcd4win.com].
And now for something completely repetitive... (Score:3, Interesting)
Wrong question! (Score:5, Insightful)
The right question is what is the vendor (Microsoft) doing about it. You purchased a product from a vendor, you should expect them to solve problems with that product or explain how to properly secure it, or just ignore the issue which says something about their product and commitment to support.
Re:Wrong question! (Score:4, Interesting)
Warez jokes aside, most common non-corporate windows are OEM copies. OEM = no support from microsoft. You get your pile of bytes that might or might not work, and you get some patches at the whim of MS. You get no support unless you pay thru the nose per incident.
Sure, you can call your OEM supplier - however, they have no access to the source, and generally just tell you to reinstall the thing and immediately tell your system is unsupported if you actually install something other than the supplied bundled software on your system.
Strider ghostbuster... (Score:5, Informative)
Just convince Microsoft to make it available.
There is also SysInternal's Rootkit Revealer [sysinternals.com], which although not quite as general, is still hard to fool.
under attack (Score:4, Informative)
Re:under attack (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:under attack (Score:3, Insightful)
Now think about "unknown pathogens" for a minute.
Only the paranoid will survive...
Unacceptable for national defense (Score:5, Interesting)
So we are left with two options:
a) Windows 2000 is impervious to rootkits, either off the shelf or through modifications unavailable to the general public
b) The US Navy is running an unsecurable OS for the most advanced surface ships in the world - with nuclear reactors to boot.
"Windows for Warships": old old news (Score:5, Interesting)
Does this question really need to be asked any longer?
Has this story teleported us all back to the year 2000? Hit the reset button? Is Slashdot's new motto "No hugging, no learning"?
I thought this was common knowledge. I didn't really expect a "pro-business" administration to do anything about it, did you? It's actually one of the few things that makes the rest of us feel safer.
Britain has the same problem [ncl.ac.uk], by the way:
Also see The Register [theregister.co.uk] which quotes an upbeat Armed Forces Minister:
Perhaps the Minister can now explain why his desktop PC doesn't even run properly.
Les Hatton gives his opinion [vnunet.com] at IT Week:
The big picture (Score:4, Insightful)
The point made in the 'Cathedral and the Bazaar' may be coming to pass. It is impossible to manage very complex systems effectively. It is a question of distributed control vs. top down management. My favorite example is the Soviet Union vs. the US of A. A bureaucracy can't manage something as complex as a whole economy; maybe it can't manage something as complex as Windows.
The bottom line would seem to be that we will see a never-ending stream of problems like the one at hand.
www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathe
www.uq.edu.au/news/index.html?article=6618
Bastille Windows? (Score:4, Interesting)
If not, there should be.
Re:Bastille Windows? (Score:3, Informative)
It's not perfect, but it provides a good starting point and can roll back the changes you make. It also creates an XML file with the changes it recommends if you want to simply review it and make any changes your
Easy fixes!! (Score:3, Funny)
2. Use Linux and be paranoid about security.
3. Buy a tinfoil hat.
4. Build a beowulf cluster of Linux enabled devices: an iPod, two toasters, one 'smart' fridge, and one spoon -anything runs Linux these days-.
5. Build your own OS!
Or you can keep on using Windows and trusting AV companies and its flawed model of "ok, we'll release the fix AFTER enough people have been screwed".
I don't think that the design of Windows, where changing an int to a float in the library that displays Clippy can crash MSN Messenger, would allow for easy fixes, regardless of closed or open source code.
You can actively defend your system anyway. It takes time and money (e.g. self-made hardware firewall with parts bought from the tinfoil-hat store, if you want to be
source code (Score:3, Interesting)
If your solution is to fix it yourself, you've already lost. It needs to be fixed by the *official* software vendor so that the changes can be pushed automatically to all the Beerbellies and Flabbyasses out there.
And besides, even for those who can understand the source code, it's not like the changes required are simple. If you DO manage to understand the system enough to make some usefull changes, a vendor will not just blindly accept them. They will themselves have to review the changes and completely understand them anyways. So why not do it themselves the first time? And to the person spending all that time doing the vendors work for them, do you not have a life or a job or something?
can't see why closed source should be allowed... (Score:3, Insightful)
What if we just stopped fixing their shitty code? (Score:3, Funny)
Rootkit Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
"I do know that FU is one of the most widely deployed rootkits in the world. [It] seems to be the rootkit of choice for spyware and bot networks right now"
He wrote and distributed a rootkit for windows; for educational purposes only (!). It becomes one of the most widely used tools to propagate spyware and trojans. Does he bear any moral responsibilty for this?
I would answer positively. If I leave a loaded gun lying on the sidewalk and someone picks it up and shoots someone else, I think I may get some bad karma.
Re:Rootkit Responsibility (Score:3, Insightful)
If he didn't write this rootkit and made it available, someone elase would. And worse, someone else could not publish the rootkit, so the good guys have a chance of improvening the system*, they could just sell it on the black market.
Blamming him because people use the rootkit is advocating security trhought obscurity.
* Not that MS will do that, but this is MS problem.
Re:Rootkit Responsibility (Score:3, Interesting)
Does he bear any moral responsibilty for this? I would answer positively. If I leave a loaded gun lying on the sidewalk and someone picks it up and shoots someone else, I think I may get some bad karma.
karma != responsibility
They keep flogging this outdated line of reasoning (Score:5, Insightful)
Currently, malicious code for Windows is more common than for UNIX because Windows is the most widely used operating system. However, if UNIX starts to gain popularity, then the situation will naturally change; new rootkits for UNIX will be written, and new methods of combating them will be developed.
This has been refuted time and again yet the various Windows-friendly analyst continually trot this one out as a rationale for the ( admittedly much improved but still ) relatively weak security design of M$ Windows.
Newsflash for those who didn't get the memo: Windows leads by a huge margin ON THE DESKTOP. On the server side the disparity, if one exists is a completely different story. Also, since there are many open source versions of Unix, such as Linux, *BSD, and Solaris, some of which have been available for more than a decade, it should have been relatively easy for Windows-loving, Unix-hating programmers to have designed the Unix-slaying, self-propagating daemon years ago. To date, the only thing that has come close was the Morris worm way back in the late '80s.
So guys, nice try - your explanation ( or rationale ) is leaking badly. If Windows represent a bigger target, it SUPPOSEDLY has the "advantage" of being closed-source but the open source Unices, which are fewer in number SHOULD be an easier target.
It's time to focus on what the true flaws of each platform are - their relative prevalence is no longer relevant to the discussion ( aka flamefest ).
Re:They keep flogging this outdated line of reason (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but you're just plain wrong.
"This has been refuted time and again..."
Really? Got an example?
Try this one on for size: Firefox didn't have an security issues until it started becoming popular. The Mac had a few recently too.
Windows SERVERS are not the common target of these root-kits, the DESKTOP is because it IS the most popular.
If Joe Beerbelly used Linux on the desktop, you'd have to take away his ability to install programs to protect him. How useable is the system at that point?
"If Wi
Re:They keep flogging this outdated line of reason (Score:3, Informative)
For one, better user accounts and software that doesn't require root access to run (Windows is just getting there now). For another, better separation of executables making it very easy to lock out system binaries while still giving access to applications (sbin and bin). Let's not forget that with XP Home, Windows still defaults everyone to being an administrator. I think even Pro does that for the first user created.
"On the server-side - and particularly the non-Windows server side - t
Nah (Score:3, Funny)
Windows being closed source in no way prevents me from defending my system. I just insert my Gentoo install disk and reboot.
Not well-outlined (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is not well-outlined by that question. In fact, the addition of the idea of closed or open source has nothing to do with it. Is the lack of attention paid to rootkits the source of the problem? Is this just the problem of the month that will be solved soon and replaced by another, bigger problem? The open/closed source question is important, but really doesn't have anything to do with the issue at hand.
The problem is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because a lot of applications WON'T WORK if they're run as normal users. Why is that?
Because the Windows mindset comes from DOS, where there were no restrictions on what an application could do. Anything could put something anywhere it wanted to. So the developers got used to being able to do that.
Suddenly here comes Windows, and suddenly your application can't save settings to the INI file in C:\WINDOWS anymore, because it doesn't have write access to that directory.
The correct thing is to get an upgrade for the app. But you can make it work by just running as an administrator. So they do. And Microsoft is complicit in this by not putting enough pressure on the application developers to fix their apps to not require administrator access.
Does the closed-source nature prevent people from defending against this? Not really. If everyone ran as root in their Linux systems all the time, there would be just as many exploits for Linux.
That brings a friends tagline to mind..... (Score:5, Funny)
sysinternals.com has a tool (Score:3, Informative)
Window XP: No real "Safe Mode" (Score:3, Informative)
By the time the system has booted far enough to get into "Safe Mode" it's already loaded so many DLL's, including the obfucating rootkit ones, that there's no way of accessing the filesystem to see the malware.
Now, if Microsoft had added a single-tasking, statically linked command line emergency system which would allow you to just manipulate an NTFS filesystem this would be the greatest step forward in rootkit/malware removal.
Alternatively, "Safe Mode" should load only those DLL's which are hard coded into the kernel to load, along with signatures and checksums to make sure (as much as you can) that those files haven't been tampered with.
As it is, the only way I've found of de-rootkitting machine is using Knoppix 3.6 and captive-NTFS!
Bad question (Score:3, Insightful)
If you can go in to the source code and tinker with it, chances are you don't need any help defending your system in the first place.
Probably already said but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sysinternals [sysinternals.com]
If you must use Windows these fine folk are well worth a visit (should be mandatory...)
Re:The big problem with MS-ware is the closed API (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, but that still wouldn't help in this case as the administrative tools probably wouldn't count.
Re:Simple defense against rootkits (Score:3, Informative)
When you perform any operation on a file system object - getting the contents of a file, size, modification date, etc - you're, after all the layers of indirection, making a system call to the executive. Most real rootkits on Windows NT derivatives are kernel rootkits - that is they modify core system calls to hide themselves and perform nefarious activies - you can't really detect them with something as naive as a file content check.
Re:Simple defense against rootkits (Score:3, Informative)
He did mention "normally unconnected read-only media". So you not only p
Re:Simple defense against rootkits (Score:3, Informative)
However, it's hella inconvenient, on many servers, to boot to a "rescue disk". Do you have any:
- servers that cannot tolerate the downtime required to scan?
- servers at remote locations where you can't insert bootable media easily (CDROM, floppy, etc.)?
Re:What rootkits? (Score:5, Interesting)
The issuse is that they're extremely difficult to detect. What heuristics do you use that that the major AV companies are not aware of?
The most effective method that I have found to get rid of spyware on an infected system, by the way, is to boot from a live Windows bootable CD to delete all the crappy spyware directories...
I'm sure that works reasonably well, but once a system is comprimised, you never really know for sure. I find that the only surefire method, which incidentally often takes less time, is to wipe the drive and start fresh. The type of user that is going to get spyware probably doesn't have a complicated setup or do more than write documents and use iTunes, and backing up is as simple as looking for *.doc, *.xls, *.ppt, *.mp*, *.mov, *.wmv, and *.avi.
Design vs. Implementation (Score:3, Informative)
Is it the Windows design that is insecure, or the implementations? Of course, that begs the question if there actually _is_ a Windows design to speak of. Well, what is there in the APIs that Microsoft publishes that is necessarily insecure, and what is there in the Unix APIs that is necessarily insecure?
I can answer parts of the Unix side; the fact that software needs to be all-powerful to do a single pri
Re:NO!!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Reduced user permissions (aka: creating a user account with permissions of "User") means that the user cannot install files to
Lets review: Administrator/root accounts have good aut