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MS Mulling Changes to Thwart .ANI-type Attacks 99

Posted by Zonk from the thinking-around-the-problem dept.
Scada Moosh writes "ZDNet has a story about the lessons Microsoft learned from the recent animated cursor (.ani) attacks and some of the broad changes being made to flag this type of vulnerability ahead of time. The changes include a possible addition to the list of banned API function calls, more aggressive checks for buffer overruns and enhancements to existing fuzz testing tools. '[Michael] Howard said Microsoft will "rethink the heuristics" used by the /GS compiler to flag certain issues. "Changing the compiler is a long-term task. In the short-term, we have a new compiler pragma that forces the compiler to be much more aggressive, and we will start using this pragma on new code," he added. Two other Windows Vista security mechanisms -- ASLR and SafeSEH -- were also in place to catch code failures but, in the case of the .ani bug, Howard said the attackers were able to wrap vulnerable code in an exception handler to find ways around those mitigations.'"
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MS Mulling Changes to Thwart .ANI-type Attacks More

MS Mulling Changes to Thwart .ANI-type Attacks

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  • What is a banned API call? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by solafide ( 845228 ) on Friday April 27, 2007 @03:29PM (#18905555) Homepage
    Does the banning of an API call mean that the call is still there, it just can't be officially used? Couldn't it still be used deviously to exploit it? Shouldn't we just remove the function from the API, not prevent the compiler from compiling code with that function being used?
    • OMG, I have a great idea! Why don't we just ban viruses?

    • Re:What is a banned API call? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Rosyna ( 80334 ) on Friday April 27, 2007 @03:36PM (#18905683) Homepage
      Take a gander at Microsoft's list [microsoft.com]. If the Safe options are on, the API is not available.

      It's all kinds of sexy... but basically, it removes functions in which programmers have frequently used incorrect or for which there is no absolutely correct way to use them and still validate user supplied data.
      • Interesting. Has the main parts of Linux distributions (i.e kernal, KDE, Gnome code) been thoroughly worked through to use secure APIs in the same way?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by VertigoAce ( 257771 )
      A banned API is one that is likely to cause security vulnerabilities. There are replacements for most of them that are less likely to have problems, but they aren't part of the official C standard library.

      Microsoft's build tools will treat any calls to banned APIs [microsoft.com] as errors. They aren't removed from the system because they are used by many existing applications. For example, both strcpy and strncpy are banned at Microsoft. Yet many people have been using strncpy as a replacement for strcpy, so it needs to b

      • For example, both strcpy and strncpy are banned at Microsoft.

        Kind of makes you wonder why there are so many buffer overflows in Windows, doesn't it?

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by 0xABADC0DA ( 867955 )
          Probably because instead of the banned strncpy Microsoft are using strcpyEx, which includes an extra parameter "iAllowDeny". When set to 1, this prevents buffer overflows. But because of the unfortunate name, some programmers think it will 'allow' exploits so they set it to 0.

          If only Microsoft would add a C++lippy to MSVC to clear up these kinds of things.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Keeper ( 56691 )
            I'd be willing to bet that most use the functions defined in StrSafe.h...
          • Clippy sez:

            You appear to be writing a buffer overflow. Would you like to:

            1. Switch to a certified safe string copy function?
            2. Cause Vista to pop up a security dialog every time your function is run?
            3. See more information on currently unpatched Windows exploits?
            4. See tips on how to acquire fame and fortune as a virus writer?

      • Over in OpenBSD-land, when you link a program that uses either strcpy (which doesn't do range checking) or strncpy (which doesn't do adequate truncation checking), you get a big warning saying that they are unsafe. The preferred replacement is strlcpy, which is found in most libc implementations (I just checked FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OS X, and Solaris, and it was there for all of them). The main exception is glibc, where the strlcpy patch was rejected as 'inefficient BSD crap.' Apparently security is not impo
    • A banned API means that no MS code is allowed to call that API. An example, as noted, is strcpy which if you don't properly check string lengths before hand (and even then, in multi-threaded code if the length of the from parameter is increased in between your check and your call to strcpy) you have the potential for a buffer overflow. So, no MS code will use that function. However, lots of existing code calls strcpy and standards committees tend to get ansi (get it?) if you go around "deprecating" or re
  • They should concentrate on better design, coding and testing methods rather than blaming the compilers.

  • Default deny policy (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sd.fhasldff ( 833645 ) on Friday April 27, 2007 @03:32PM (#18905603)

    While risking being out of sync with Slashdot's schizophrenic stance on Microsoft-bashing, let me lower my hammer on this one:

    "The changes include a possible addition to the list of banned API function calls"

    That's exactly the problem with security under Windows! (okay, there are other problems as well)

    Microsoft needs to apply a "default deny" policy to all aspects of Windows' security and this sort of thing wouldn't be a problem in the first place. There shouldn't be a list of BANNED calls, there should be a list of safe ALLOWED calls.

    I'm not saying that other operating systems couldn't do a better job too, but security is one (huge) area where Microsoft really and truly sucks - and it isn't something they can solve overnight, either. It seems ingrained in their philosophy and permeates all aspects of Windows (and other products).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dedazo ( 737510 )
      Actually what they need to do is get rid of all that legacy crap code they have that assumes everyone on the internet is a good friend. "Banning" APIs and coming up with workarounds to fundamental design problems (seriously, an animated cursor??) is simply piling band-aids on top of each other until they forget which one did what.

      Unfortunately for Microsoft, they have a hell of a lot of that sort of code in Windows and a lot of their products. The ones they've really re-engineered like IIS6 or written fro

    • There shouldn't be a list of BANNED calls, there should be a list of safe ALLOWED calls.

      I think this is similar to the GCC concept of hiding symbols. The only real issue is when compiling legacy code which links directly to those hidden symbols, linking will fail. Obviously, that's the point. I think, then, that the Microsoft approach is lazy: they're more worried about "legitimate" legacy code no longer working well with later compilers than they are about actually hiding the offending API calls from userspace all together.

    • I'm not saying that other operating systems couldn't do a better job too, but security is one (huge) area where Microsoft really and truly sucks - and it isn't something they can solve overnight, either. It seems ingrained in their philosophy and permeates all aspects of Windows (and other products).

      It's the PC heritage, going back to the days when no-one in the non-Unix PC world gave the slightest thought to security, because you could get away with it back then. It's a difficult mindset to change, beca

      • It's the PC heritage, going back to the days when no-one in the non-Unix PC world gave the slightest thought to security, because you could get away with it back then.

        They did not get away with it. Macro viruses blew out computer labs and people's systems and caused all manner of havoc.

        Worse, M$ knew better and everyone told them so. They had Xenix, they helped make OS/2, they knew what they were doing, they just decided to hold on their DOS legacy. It was then and still is a matter of negligence. O

        • Perhaps "PC heritage" was the wrong term. I was really thinking "microcomputer heritage", going back to the days of the S-100 bus, Apple, and the countless other pre-PC machines. That was before hard disks were common, let alone LANs, and macro viruses were not an issue until much later. Many of the people involved at that time were busy reinventing things from scratch, starting at the most rudimentary level. They mostly ignored any lessons that might have been had from software on bigger iron, because
    • If you think /. gets enraged by windows security holes, just wait until they propose locking out all software that isn't blessed by Microsoft in advance!

      Default deny is a nice idea, but I haven't yet seen an implementation that doesn't require an expensive verisign certificate (MS signed drivers), a PhD in computer science (SELinux), or making the user click "Accept" until his mouse hand curls up into a raptor claw (Vista UAC)...

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Allador ( 537449 )
        Just to add to this, getting a cert to sign your code isnt that expensive, even for the smallest of ISV's. On the order of $200 (per year if you need to sign new code, which is the case for most ISV's).

        And MS doesnt sign the cert, or make any decision about who can or cannot get one. They simply created one trusted root, gave signing-certs to 8 or 10 cert-vendor companies, who then will sell you a cert that is signed from a trusted root.

        It's theoretically possible for MS to revoke any given cert signed fr
    • "You pressed any key!"
      "Allow or deny?"

      Windows security is a sad joke. Unfortunately few people realize that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by SEMW ( 967629 )
        The problem with getting your information about Vista from Apple's propoganda is that when you're trying to evangelise to Windows users, they realise that what you're saying is crap, and ignore you -- even if whatever you're evangelising is genuinely more secure than what they're using (which it obviously definitely is with Linux as compared to Windows).

        ("What triggers a UAC prompt" [edbott.com]

  • Related news (Score:5, Funny)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Friday April 27, 2007 @03:33PM (#18905615) Journal
    Old Bill's Livery and Horse Trading post announced that they have decided to strengthen the windows of the stable because horses were being stolen with surprising regularity. When the reporters queried the wisdom of strengthening the windows while the door is wide open and unlocked, Old Bill's assistant Steve threw the straw bales he was sitting on at the reporters.
  • In this context, I hope what you mean by mulling is: slapping forehead exclaiming "that was dumb!"

  • Incremental approach. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RightSaidFred99 ( 874576 ) on Friday April 27, 2007 @03:36PM (#18905687)
    The main problem is that complex software is just hard to secure. And not just complex MS software - they are not the only ones suffering these kinds of vulnerabilities.

    This incremental approach will eventually result in operating systems that are secure to all but the most sophisticated local attacks. You can't stop the attack where someone just downloads something and blindly runs it. Unlike most people, I don't think computer OS's and apps will always be as insecure as they have been for the last 15 years since the explosion of the Internet to the masses.

    It may take another 5 years, but I think we're getting there. Vista isn't perfect, but it's a step closer.

    • This incremental approach will eventually result in operating systems that are secure to all but the most sophisticated local attacks.

      And since those attacks are For Sale for $3000 to $5000 on the Internet, everyone with intent to do serious, widespread damage will still be using them.

  • For starters.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Himring ( 646324 ) on Friday April 27, 2007 @03:38PM (#18905721) Homepage Journal
    Don't allow IE to load a cursor with a .jpg extention....

  • The changes include a possible addition to the list of banned API function calls, more aggressive checks for buffer overruns and enhancements to existing fuzz testing tools.

    You know if Bill Gates was any kind of leader, he would call for his programmers to scrutinize their code for these kinds of security issues. Oh wait! He did 5 years ago. [usatoday.com] It's great to know that MS has spent the last 5 years innovating such features.

  • Write it the right way once, call it often, and it's fixed. Please outlaw code that reinvents insecure versions of routines for basic data structure.

    In this day and age of OOP and libraries, there's no excuse but negligence for crappy code.

  • Windows - be careful! (Score:3, Funny)

    by codergeek42 ( 792304 ) <peter@thecodergeek.com> on Friday April 27, 2007 @03:39PM (#18905735) Homepage Journal
    Always remember to practice SafeSEH by using the CON dev. :)

  • What Microsoft REALLY Needs To Do... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Zero_DgZ ( 1047348 ) on Friday April 27, 2007 @03:49PM (#18905901)
    ...Is re-evaluate what the true purpose of the operating system is, and stick to it instead of tacking so much nonsense to the abomination that today we call Windows.

    Microsoft made a big to-do about "focusing on security" in the development of Windows Vista, but instead spent all this time A) spackling over the screwball security holes that the superfluous bits of the last version of the operating system created, and B) bolting on more superfluous bullshit.

    The pattern of flagrant Windows/Microsoft security breaches has traditionally involved the fracal-like fuzz of superfluous features surrounding Windows. It simply tries to be too much. How many times have we heard about some hole in Internet Explorer that lets l33t h4xx0rs walk in and screw with your OS? Animated cursors opening security holes. ET-phone-home Windows Media player opening security holes. IIS subsystems on home user's computers opening security holes... Ad infinitum.

    You want a web browser on your PC? Install a web browser. It shouldn't be your OS'es job. You want animated cursors? Install a cursor manager. It shouldn't be the OS'es job. You want media players? Install a media player. It shouldn't be the OS'es job. Are we seeing the fucking pattern here, yet? If Microsoft could focus on the core of the operating system, making it the platform and the framework that the rest of your computing experience happens on instead of trying to make it the damn "multimedia/computing experience" itself I'll wager a significant portion of these stupid, smack-on-the-forehead sort of problems would go away. And if and when they did crop up, users affected could just patch or uninstall the affected browser/media player/cursor manager/whatever instead of having it permanently tied into their OS for the rest of time (heaven forbid, for example, users reinstalling Windows into it's stock, unpatched state).

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by f0dder ( 570496 )
      BS.. cuz if linux does it, if Apple does it.. it's called innovation?? Look Microsoft tried to appease the EU w/Windows w/o WMP and guess what, nobody bought it!!
    • In theory, your idea would work well. You would install an OS and a command shell from a vendor and get everything else from somewhere else. That's what DOS and early Linux distros were like.

      However, a key piece to overall system stability is integration testing. Debian does TONS of integration testing. Hence, stable is stable. The problem with leaving the integration testing to the user is that you turn a simple "poke-me" appliance into one of those annoying machines that geeks are always tinkering with. T
    • The truth is that Vista is a home user OS. It was designed to play games and show movies. It was not designed to be used in a business, or to be used for any serious purpose beyond playing Donkey Kong and watching Mickey Mouse cartoons...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by SEMW ( 967629 )
        Not really. When the MS first brought in Windows NT, it was solely a business OS -- home users had 3.1/9x. It's only since WIndows XP that the consumer line has used the NT codebase as well (Vista is NT 6.0).

  • Innaccurate Summary (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ThinkFr33ly ( 902481 ) on Friday April 27, 2007 @03:51PM (#18905923)

    Howard said the attackers were able to wrap vulnerable code in an exception handler to find ways around those mitigations.
    This is incorrect.

    Howard said that the vulnerable code happened to be wrapped in a very general try/catch block.

    This try/catch block, which was in the vulnerable code already, and not injected by the attackers, potentially allowed the attackers to repeatedly try different memory locations looking for system call addresses that were randomized by ASLR.

    Without this try/catch, the process would have crashed after the first failed attempt.

    In other words, liberal try/catch policies can potentially expose security vulnerabilities by giving bad guys more than one chance to do their bad deeds.

    Also, there were no reported instances of Vista being compromised. It is doubtful that the engineers of the various exploits targeted Vista, and therefor didn't take advantage of the try/catch issue to overcome ASLR since XP doesn't have ASLR. In addition, Protected Mode IE would have thwarted the attack even if they had.

  • But I Thought... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Friday April 27, 2007 @04:06PM (#18906167)
    Wasn't Vista rewritten from scratch, rather than using the old NT code base? Isn't this wh it took an extra 3 years to arrive? Isn't this where there are still major compatibility errors in Vista compared to previous NT and Win95/98/ME versions?

    So what did they do here? Rewrite the .ANI handler by re-implementing the same bug as before?

    Or were we just lied to again, by Microsoft?

    • Re:But I Thought... (Score:5, Informative)

      by ThinkFr33ly ( 902481 ) on Friday April 27, 2007 @04:09PM (#18906213)
      When did Microsoft ever claim to have rewritten Windows from scratch?

      I guess it's easy to be mad at Microsoft for lying when you put those lies in their mouth yourself.

      • When did Microsoft ever claim to have rewritten Windows from scratch?

        They used to do it regularly. NT stood for "New Technology." I can't tell you how many times they declared the "death of DOS" even while they were using the same old 16 bit functions. ME, W2K and XP were all billed as radically new but were all more of the same rehashes.

        Vista is more of the same. The wikipedia entry, which they pay people to write, claims, "hundreds of new features; some of the most significant include an updated

        • They used to do it regularly. NT stood for "New Technology."

          NT 3.0 was written from scratch. Please provide proof to the contrary, if you have it. Then, provide proof that *Microsoft* has claimed Vista is rewritten from scratch. And I said Vista, not Longhorn or anything else.

          I can't tell you how many times they declared the "death of DOS"

          I'd calculate that about the same number of times you've declared "M$ Winblows" was "dead".

          But I could be wrong.

          which they pay people to write

          Please provide proo

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by SEMW ( 967629 )

          The wikipedia entry, which they pay people to write, claims, "hundreds of new features; some of the most significant include an updated graphical user interface and visual style dubbed Windows Aero, improved searching features, new multimedia creation tools such as Windows DVD Maker, and completely redesigned networking, audio, print, and display sub-systems." In short new everything, which clearly is not true

          Ummm, no. You seem to have a serious misconception about what exactly an operating system is. Multimedia features, searching features, even networking, audio print etc. subsystems do not an OS make. The kernal is still the NT kernel -- with some changes, but still broadly the same -- which is why Vista is NT 6.0. No-one at Microsoft has ever claimed otherwise; no Wikipedia editor has ever claimed otherwise.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • .NET wasn't up to snuff? Find me a single article that says anything even remotely like this.

          The Vista reset was caused by a flawed attempt to include too many features at once combined with unsustainable development practices / management. It had absolutely nothing to do with .NET. Not to mention the fact that Vista is based off of the Windows 2003 Server codebase, not XP's.

          Furthermore, there was never a plan to rewrite Windows from the ground up.

          Informative, indeed.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by SEMW ( 967629 )

          After the reset they re-used much of the code from XP.
          Wrong way round. As VertigoAce notes [slashdot.org], it was the pre-reset builds which were based of XP; the post-reset ones were based on 2003 Server.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by VertigoAce ( 257771 )
      It was delayed largely because they reset the project in late 2004. The original Longhorn was based off of the XP codebase. When they reset development they started from the Windows 2003 codebase (which was based off of the XP codebase). At no point did they claim that they were starting from scratch.

      Many of the compatibility problems are related to fixing bugs in the OS. Any time you change the behavior of the operating system you risk breaking some piece of code that relied on the old behavior. Notice tha
  • I still can't get over why generating "safe" code is the job of the compiler, anyway. What's wrong with checking lengths and buffers before using them? What's wrong with paranoid programming?

    Did Microsoft's new focus on security from the ground up with Vista really just amount to compiling all its system components with /GS? Pathetic.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by kybred ( 795293 )

      I still can't get over why generating "safe" code is the job of the compiler, anyway.

      It's not, but some compilers have options to add bounds checking in the compiled output. Usually this is done for testing then the code is compiled for release without the bounds checking. Also, there are tools like Purify [ibm.com] that also can do bounds checking and the like.

  • MS just don't get the security bit anyway - never will. 99% spam comes from MS boxes. Let alone a mouse cursor that lets the crackers do it.

  • Security broke dragging files to cmd.exe (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Myria ( 562655 ) on Friday April 27, 2007 @06:07PM (#18906673)
    Prior to Vista, you could drag files from Explorer to cmd.exe to have it type in the filename for you, exactly like on Mac. However, due to overzealous security changes by Microsoft, this does not work in Vista [microsoft.com].

    In NT, console windows are actually owned by the most privileged user-mode process in the system, csrss.exe. One of Vista's big security changes is that processes cannot send window messages to windows owned by processes of higher security clearance. This means that Explorer cannot send a message to console windows telling them that there is a file being dragged to it. Starting Explorer as Administrator does not help, because csrss.exe runs with higher privilege than that.

    Rather than fix the insane design issue of csrss.exe owning console windows, they decided to leave it the way it is. Never mind that there have been exploits against csrss.exe through the console system in the past.

    To give you an idea of how bad of a hack the console implementation is, kernel32.dll's WriteFile detects console handles, which are fake handles, and translates the call into an RPC call to csrss.exe. This breaks all kinds of stuff.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by anss123 ( 985305 )

      I agree that cmd.exe is clunky. In Vista you can no longer put it in full screen either. Win+R, cmd.exe, alt+enter, alt+enter was an excellent way of resetting the video driver whenever it fucks up.

      The problem with MS seems to be that they overlook 'worse case scenarios'. Shell extensions are nice, for instance, but how do you remove a faulty one? What do you do when the Add/Remove panel crashes or when the video card decides 2048x1600@85Hz is a nice display mode on your 1280@60Hz display?

      On Linux the ans

  • backwards (Score:2, Interesting)

    by midnighttoadstool ( 703941 )
    Here we go again.

    Another pointless discussion that doesn't acknowledge the depth of complexity of backwards compatability, and its commercial necessity.

  • Hire people who know that it's a really, really, really bad idea to drop a structure onto the stack, especially if said structure is to be filled by user data. That should take care of the issue.

    Instead of fixing the underlying problem, MS tries hard to "fix" the world around it. It's not an issue with the compiler, it's not an issue with API calls that can be "abused", it's an issue with badly written API functions. Grab the source of those friggin' libs and move the structures that you moronically created

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