Spikes Detected In Autorun Malware 140
msm1267 writes "Researchers recently have seen a major increase in the volume of autorun malware in some countries, thanks to a couple of new worms infecting those older machines. The two new worms, Worm.JS.AutoRun and Worm.Java.AutoRun, both take advantage of the autorun functionality to spread, and the JavaScript worm has other methods of propagation, as well. Researchers at Kaspersky Lab say that the volume of autorun worms has remained relatively constant over the last few months, but there was a major spike in those numbers in April and May, thanks to the distribution of the two new pieces of malware."
Windows users are chumps. (Score:1, Insightful)
Because they keep being screwed by things like this all the time and there is no rioting band of geeks with pitchforks and shovels and rakes (and implements of destruction /Guthrie) demanding that this be removed from Windows.
>autorun.inf
The most dangerous thing to ever come out of a computer company. That this feature made it past review demonstrates the utter disregard for the most basic security at all, especially since boot sector worms had been around for years in DOS and Win3.1 before Win95 ever g
Re:Windows users are chumps. (Score:5, Insightful)
>autorun.inf
The most dangerous thing to ever come out of a computer company. That this feature made it past review demonstrates the utter disregard for the most basic security at all, especially since boot sector worms had been around for years in DOS and Win3.1 before Win95 ever graced us with its presence. Since Windows 95, it's been trivial to write auto executing code because Microsoft deliberately yanks down the pants and underwear of the end user and says "Go to it!"
You're indulging in some 20/20 hindsight here. At the time Windows 95 was released, the only media that supported autorun.inf on insertion was CD-ROMs. (Floppy disks didn't do this, if only because the OS could not reliably detect when a disk was inserted in the drive.) Remember, at that time, CD-R drives were not mainstream computing devices; they were still very expensive and rare. (According to Wikipedia, the first CD-R drive under $1000 was not released until September 1995.) When Windows 95 was released, the idea was that only pressed CDs would autorun, and presumably MS thought that the vendors could be trusted not to ship malware. (The Sony rootkit scandal proved that was a mistake, but no one anticipated something like it at the time.) And let's be honest, in 1995, IT security wasn't really on the radar for home users.
The real problem came with Windows XP. By this time, recordable CDs (and, later, DVDs) were commonplace. But Microsoft's biggest mistake was reusing their autorun code for other forms of removable media – such as thumb drives. Again, when thumb drives were first released, they were pretty expensive (I remember paying $100 for a 1GB thumb drive about a decade ago), so the best explanation is that Microsoft didn't think it likely someone would put malicious software onto a thumb drive and just leave it laying around or give it away – at the time, that would have been a rather costly strategy.
Over time, as thumb drives became dirt-cheap, it was clear that allowing INF-based autorun on rewritable removable media was a bad idea. It probably shouldn't have taken Microsoft until 2009 to get rid of this. But the decisions made earlier in the process were not as clear-cut as you're making them out to be.
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Autorun reflects a basic underlying philosophy behind Windows design, historical and current. The user is a moron with no ability to take even the simplest steps reliably, so let's reinforce and legitimize that notion by trying to make it more of an appliance and less like a general-purpose computer. That's what having things start up automatically
Re:Windows users are chumps. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it would have taken any hindsight at all -- floppy based viruses predated CD-ROMs by a long time. If a virus could spread by floppy, why not a CDR?
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I don't think it would have taken any hindsight at all -- floppy based viruses predated CD-ROMs by a long time. If a virus could spread by floppy, why not a CDR?
Autorun.inf features also work just fine and dandy when placed in a folder or a network share. Autorun.inf can do more than just run a specific file, it can alter the right-click options, invoke some dlls, change the icon, etc.
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That doesn't excuse Windows 98SE and all succeeding versions of Windows up until Vista in 2009 having autorun turned on, or existing at all.
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BMO
Re:Windows users are chumps. (Score:5, Insightful)
>The real problem came with Windows XP. By this time, recordable CDs (and, later, DVDs) were commonplace
No, CD-Rs were commonplace by the time Windows 98 came out. I think there were more burned copies of Windows 98 than there were official pressed ones at that time. The first "under $1000" CD-R drive was in 1995, and 3 years to "affordability by ordinary people" in electronics had become the norm even then.
Autorun from 1998 onward revived the spread of malware by removable media. Nobody was doing bootsector viruses on floppies anymore in 1998 because the number of people booting their machines with an OS floppy was minuscule. Autorun malware took the place of bootsector malware. It was so commonplace that it was recommended by everyone who knew anything about preventing the propagation of malware by pirated software that autorun be turned off.
In 1998.
Speaking of convenience, if a software install CDROM (you know, an official one) had an autorun.inf that didn't check to see if the software was already installed, the installer would start. If you merely wanted to pick a file off the CD, you had to cancel the install and open Explorer, rather than simply pop the disk in and browse the drive. This was even before the popularity of burned disks.
While you can say this was the publisher's fault, it illustrates the dubious value of autorun even as an installation "feature"
It took a full 10 years of autorun being a problem for it to be turned off in Vista instead of in a service pack or in 98SE and NT4. That shouldn't have happened, and autorun should now not even exist.
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BMO
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It took a full 10 years of autorun being a problem for it to be turned off in Vista instead of in a service pack or in 98SE and NT4. That shouldn't have happened, and autorun should now not even exist.
There is nothing wrong with autorun. There is everything wrong with it being fully automatic. A prompt is what you want. Also, a simple setting to disable it.
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But they still could not automatically infect other CD-Rs as far as I know. Someone would have to deliberately put it on there.
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And, we are right back to the point made in an earlier post. People who don't even know what an installer is, should not be installing stuff. In the long run, the clueless computer owner who wanted to install something, and didn't know how, would have saved money by going to his local computer guy, and HAVE THE SOFTWARE INSTALLED.
BMO was modded a troll above - but he makes a very valid point. Microsoft's strategy of permitting any type of autorun was flawed. Computing should have remained something of a
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Yo, fellow douchebaggery guy!
If you'll read again, I didn't say they can't have a PC. I said something to the effect that "they should have sought professional help". Do you notice the subtle difference, now that I bring it to your attention?
"But the fact that you are basically proposing a fucking guild system so that only the "blessed" can install"
It would have been little different from the world we have today. The elite are the guys who make a living fixing all the stupid shit, as opposed to my vision,
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In my own experience, I'm pretty sure it was 98 before I found a CD writer that I could afford. It may have been 99, I'm not quite certain. I remember the day I walked into a store outside of Los Angeles on Interstate 10. I just can't precisely place the date.
As for CD readers, I had one on a 386 SX, a couple of years before Win95 was released. That was just a bit of luck - I found it at an estate sale, and the ladies didn't know the value of the thing. They gave me the whole computer, and a couple box
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Of course, I do not accept, condone or encourage piracy.
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1. Floppy disk viruses were already commonplace, even without autorun.
2. I burned my first CD in 1997, using my Win95C desktop's built-in burner.
It took Microsoft better than a decade to put 1 and 2 together (to get 4, mind you--and they managed to be that close only because everybody was shouting the correct answer at them).
You seem to think this is acceptable. I do not.
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Re:Windows users are chumps. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey now - you stress the "librarian" thing as if you expect librarians to be clueless. Not fair, I say. In my experience, about half of today's librarians are pretty savvy. Someone has to be administrator on library systems, after all, and in small towns, that will almost invariably be the librarian. Those little old frumpy ladies are generally pretty intelligent, and they don't make the same stupid mistakes repeatedly. Sure, some of them never really get the hang of it, but even those ladies can generally follow directions when given a rigid guideline to follow.
Maybe I read your post incorrectly, maybe not. I just want to give librarians their due!
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You are getting it backwards. It's to point out that somebody in a different field could see the looming disaster while many in IT were thinking a stupid idea may just work out if it's MS doing it. I seem to remember discussions here where fanboys insisted the malware swamp we are now living in that mostly came from that was just bad SF.
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Not really hindsight. I remember having this argument when Windows 95 came out and while many of us simply found it an annoying behaviour the potential for abuse and misuse was very obvious at the time.
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man file (Score:2)
I don't know how many "guess the ext" games I had to play when some place would tell everyone to turn on full filenames without warning them NOT to fuck with the dot three
Three measures help make loss of extension metadata more difficult.
The first part is to warn the user when changing the extension. Windows has been doing this half since I started using Windows in 1999.
The second part is not to include the extension in the automatically selected text when the user renames a file. Windows 7 gets this right, and Windows Vista may have, though I don't have any Vista PCs on hand with which to confirm this.
Finally, the operating system should allow application installers
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Re: Windows users are chumps. (Score:2, Insightful)
Nix isn't immune against malicious wares either. The only folks who believe it is are, either, misinformed or blatantly incompetent.
Ease of use for end-users was how MS moved to become the dominant player. Any platform is subject to malicious intent and the propogation of said software. I appreciate nix but end-users still find it a struggle. Microsoft, at least, provides native management tools for hardening security, which is another reason its platforms remain the leader in the markets. You can't knock s
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He doesn't have any.
I'll agree with him that *nix isn't immune, but most *nix malware has to do with Layer 8 vulnerabilities than anything else.
And there isn't any anti-malware for stupid except education.
That said, I can attest to the fact that Bagle runs just fine in Wine and is well behaved. But stuff like that is really rare.
--
BMO
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He doesn't have any.
You are kidding right? Or do you seriously believe that there are no compromised Linux servers out there [threatpost.com](and please don't stop the moment you see the word Apache, it's more.. and this is just one of multiple examples if you really are interested)? If so you are less informed than some of the Windows users being ridiculed here.
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Sure [crowdstrike.com], we can do that [packetstormsecurity.com].
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Awwww, I'm sorry your faith in the infallibility of BMO has been shaken.
'Tis human to make the occasional slip-up, and divine to make allowances for them, or to point such things out in a civilised manner.
Cretin.
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Autorun in The Year of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Twenty-Thousand-And-Thirteen is beyond the pale.
I knew it'd be a long time before we had any chance of getting rid of Windows, but---18,000 years?
How very completely and utterly depressing.
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I was saddened and embarrassed by my mis-type, but upon reading your post, I'm gonna stand by it.
Yes, it would be depressing indeed. But not unexpected. :-D
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BMO
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It made me laugh on a rainy Sunday morning. Cheers.
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Projecting your latent homosexual tendencies? I see nothing more than two random like-minded users on the internet sharing a chuckle.
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Some of his rants are far out there, but lot of his comments hit the (often painful due to its closeness to truth) spot.
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I can't and won't attempt to speak for BMO, but if you've really got the time to follow me around trying to discern my personal preferences from my Slashdot posts, then you undoubtedly know that I'm male, hetero, and lived for the past several years with a woman whom I plan to marry later this year.
As for BMO, yeah, I'm currently a fan of his, and what of it?
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No it is not ... unless you run unpatched pirated XP sp 2 from 2004 with updates turned off due to a failed Windows genuine advantage tool.
Windows Vista fixed this and MS patched this for XP in 2009. IT is fud. The problem is according to the article third world countries all run the pirated version of Windows and even though MS relented with update it is so so out of date that even WIndows Update wont work in a sp2 system. I tried it in a VM. You need to manually run fixits from microsoft.com before it can
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Hmm (Score:1)
I don't think you ought to run Windows... (Score:1, Troll)
...and you won't autorun a virus.
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If we manage yet another year without being the most pwned OS in the world, we'll still be doing better than Windows. And, just for the sake of argument, Android is more of a fork of Linux, than it is Linux. "Linux Based" does not equate to Linux. I'll note that Cyanogen Mod makes Android systems pretty damned secure!
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You are aware that this is the exact sort of situation that Stallman's differentiation between Linux and GNU/Linux fixes? Except to make things more confusing, you've replaced "Linux" with "Linux Based" and "GNU/Linux" with "Linux."
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Yeah, you're right and all - but I have my prejudices. Stallman's alright and all, but I don't like "Gnu/Linux". If he weren't such an arrogant old twit, he would have settled for "Linux/Gnu", and been happy with secondary placement. But, noooooo! Stallman wants primary recognition, for having done all the EASY stuff!
Alright, so almost no one agrees with me. It's still my opinion, and I'm entitled to my prejudices.
g++ != easy stuff (Score:2)
Stallman wants primary recognition, for having done all the EASY stuff!
So you think Emacs, g++, and glibc are "easy stuff"? Kernel may be hard, but templates in C++ are undecidable [stackoverflow.com].
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Note that Linux desktop was not free of stupid features either:
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/foobar/6229 [geekzone.co.nz]
Incoming patch (Score:2)
Android Malware exploits this, too (Score:2)
A little while ago, there was some Android malware on Google Play [thenextweb.com] that had this as a side effect.
It not only infected your phone, but then installed an autorun script on SD cards so the next time you plugged your phone into your PC, it would infect Windows as well.
You can bet such things will continue... or if it was the cause of some of the spikes, as well.
Time to move along (Score:5, Interesting)
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Autorun malware only runs on Windows .. (Score:1)
autorun? (Score:2)
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Seriously? Who hasn't disabled autorun? I remember thinking autorun was a bad idea in 1995 when Windows first included it, and have disabled it on the corporate network for at least... 8 years?
90% of home users? Of course there was also the fiasco that the autorun disable setting still doesn't work t work correctly, requiring a patch and additional registry setting or two to truly kill it.
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All MS operating systems since vista prompt before autorunning.
XP ha 'autorun'. Vista and later call it 'autoplay', which by default prompts before automatically executing a program.
Autoplay is still not impervious to attack and ignorant users. AutoPlay still looks for, reads and invokes some commands from the autorun.inf file regardless of the autoplay dialog box selection (depending on device/drive type it still reads the icon and label keywords). If the system hasn't been patched, it is vulnerable to the attack used by Conficker. The autoplay behavior is slightl
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This article covers some of the technical issues and attack vectors still present in AutoPlay (of which autorun functionality is now a subset).
https://media.blackhat.com/bh-dc-11/Larimer/BlackHat_DC_2011_Larimer_Vulnerabiliters%20w-removeable%20storage-Slides.pdf [blackhat.com]
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Yes. Whenever windows sees new data from any source, it immediately executes it... for security reasons ya know.
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Yes. Whenever windows sees new data from any source, it immediately executes it... for security reasons ya know.
The worm didn't cause so much stupidity. It only brought our attention to it.
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You would think more people would listen after 20+ years.
Re:Windows Right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. Whenever windows sees new data from any source, it immediately executes it... for security reasons ya know.
Not really. That security hole was patched over four years ago [microsoft.com]. What does happen is that when removable media is installed, the user is prompted for what to do; this can include opening the folder to view the files, or running a setup file if one is present. Yes, if someone *chooses* to run the setup.exe file and it's infected, then they can get a virus or trojan. But that's part of the cost of having an open platform without executable signing. The only way to eliminate this risk would be to force the user into a walled garden. That may be feasible on smartphones and tablets, but it's not acceptable on workstations.
Re:Windows Right? (Score:5, Informative)
The only way to eliminate this risk would be to force the user into a walled garden. That may be feasible on smartphones and tablets, but it's not acceptable on workstations.
apple has successfully closed holes for this sort of stuff through gatekeeper and mac app store. gatekeeper has three settings, and at its most restricitve setting you can only run programs that have been registered wtih apple. medium setting throws a stern warning, and low setting is off.
the mac app store takes it one step further by porting the security of ios app store to mac.
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Gatekeeper sounds a lot like UAC on Windows. It differentiates between signed and unsigned apps. Much like the Mac App Store we now have the Windows App Store or whatever they call it.
Unfortunately most users are not happy with those restrictions. They want to be able to buy software and install it, e.g. games. I keep saying it: if you are dumb enough to click though all the dire warnings and install some unknown application you were not expecting to install then there really is no help for you, other than
Re: Signed apps (Score:4, Insightful)
One thing we've recently seen in my workplace is a Trojan horse virus embedded in a fake Flash player update which carries a valid Adobe signature.
So even allowing only signed apps to install is no guarantee of security.
The main difference with something like UAC versus Apple's Gatekeeper is that Apple made the effort to sell as many programs as possible in their own online store for the Mac, and Microsoft didn't really have an equivalent. So Apple was in a position to put something in place allowing only those store purchased items to be installed by end users (while admins of a box could still have less restrictive settings and load whatever they wished). This allows configuring a system with everything a user needs up front, but still giving the user freedom to buy and load a wide selection of programs after the fact, while ensuring they all come from a known, safe source.
Not available on mobile (Score:2)
They want to be able to buy software and install it, e.g. games.
What keeps professional developers of Windows applications from porting their applications to use the framework formerly known as Metro and sell games through the Windows Store? "They work only with Windows 8 and Windows RT, and most users have Windows 7." In that case, what keeps professional developers of Windows games from offering their games through GOG and Steam?
Buy a tablet or etch-a-sketch instead, or perhaps a Chromebook.
The content owner has not made this comment available on mobile
Add to playlist to watch it later on a PC [pineight.com]
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The only way to eliminate this risk would be to force the user into a walled garden. That may be feasible on smartphones and tablets, but it's not acceptable on workstations.
apple has successfully closed holes for this sort of stuff through gatekeeper and mac app store. gatekeeper has three settings, and at its most restricitve setting you can only run programs that have been registered wtih apple. medium setting throws a stern warning, and low setting is off. the mac app store takes it one step further by porting the security of ios app store to mac.
You've been drinking too much of the Kool-Aid man. I use Macs almost exclusively right now but even I know that I have to be careful what I execute on my Mac. Sure I could turn on Gatekeeper and only run software that has been blessed by his Holiness, but then I would not be able to run all sorts of software I need for work. But you know what, you can crank up the UAC permissions on Windows Vista+ and get the same results. Plus OP specifically indicated that a walled garden like the Gatekeeper crap you
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Recurring fee per platform (Score:2)
I don't think gatekeeper means what you think it means. It's not a walled garden. It's not uac. It's a sensible anti malware tool.
So where should a developer of applications distributed as free software or otherwise without charge come up with the $99 per platform per year to register with Gatekeeper and other platforms' counterparts?
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well there's only one gatekeeper platform.
You are correct that there's only one that calls it by the trademark "Gatekeeper". But Windows desktop has Authenticode to suppress deletion of files that are "not commonly downloaded", the Modern UI framework of Windows 8 and Windows RT has its own dev account, Windows Phone has its, Xbox Live Indie Games has its, and iOS has its. Each needs its own $99 per year certificate.
if you are making iphone apps then you already pay $99 for a dev account so gatekeeper is included.
For one thing, I thought one needed specifically an OS X dev account, which is an additional $99 per year. For another, I was under th
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and $99 isnt' that much considering how muhc time you're investing.
That depends on your country's exchange rate with USD and whether you're getting paid for your work. If you're not getting paid, your time is worth $0.
wrong! my time is extraordinarily valuable. 18 hours of awake time in the day, 10 hours working, 2 hours commuting, 4 hours dealing with kids, 2 hours for me. very precious, and whatever i dedicate them to is a huge investment. if I invest 100 of these precious hours in a software project, i won't blink at $99, especially since it gives me tools to be more productive.
true about overseas though, i don't have an answer for that one.
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I don't think gatekeeper means what you think it means. It's not a walled garden. It's not uac. It's a sensible anti malware tool. What, do you root for the bad guys now?
You're right Gatekeeper is not what I was talking about. But you knew what I was talking about and you are just trolling. I am referring to the setting that, enabled by default in 10.8 and beyond, does not let you install anything but from the Apple App Store. And the tool called GateKeeper on MacOS has a Windows equivalent that warns you when you are installing something that seems to be dangerous. But it is not any better than any antivirus software out there. There was that Mac OS vulnerability with
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I am referring to the setting that, enabled by default in 10.8 and beyond, does not let you install anything but from the Apple App Store.
this statement is false. it does not exist. stop trying to spread lies and hate.
And the tool called GateKeeper on MacOS has a Windows equivalent that warns you when you are installing something that seems to be dangerous.
it warns you if your software doesn't have a developer signature, which goes through apple and requires the developers to sign up for free. also, on the strict and medium setting it doesn't warn you, it prevents you from doing it.
i am a tard herp derp derp oops I farted
finally, you're starting to say true statements!
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"The only way to eliminate this risk would be to force the user into a walled garden."
Yes, of course you are correct. It would be totally unfeasible just to disable autorun. I mean, I can't do that on Debian, or BSD, or Red Hat, or much of anything. And, it certainly can't be done on Windows. I wonder what would happen though, if autorun were just disabled? You know - a guy puts a removable media into his machine, and NOTHING HAPPENS!! How would the average person react to that? Would NO ONE open a f
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I've never actually looked - can autorun just be uninstalled on a Windows system?
Uninstalled, probably not. But it can be disabled... and that feature has been in Windows for at least 10 years.
For that matter, Windows Vista and newer don't autorun directly*... they instead bring up a number of options when removable media is inserted, with the top one being the autorun program if one exists.
*Although I seem to remember some atrocity of a flash drive protocol named U3 [wikipedia.org] that did some trickery to autorun its launchpad software, but that may have been back on WinXP.
View files on this drive.exe (Score:2)
Windows Vista and newer don't autorun directly*... they instead bring up a number of options when removable media is inserted, with the top one being the autorun program if one exists.
Then let's call our fake antivirus installer "View files on this drive" or something to that effect.
No visible notification of mount (Score:2)
And, it certainly can't be done on Windows.
The people least aware of the risks of general-purpose computing are also the people least likely to change defaults.
Would NO ONE open a file browser, and navigate to that media, and select that file he was interested in? NO ONE AT ALL?
If the user receives no visible notification that the operating system has made a particular device available for viewing in the file manager, then the user is not likely to check in the file manager and is instead likely to think the operating system is broken. It'd be better to automatically open the file manager when a volume is mounted, but of course, the file manager would have to not ha
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Would NO ONE open a file browser, and navigate to that media, and select that file he was interested in? NO ONE AT ALL?
Saying "NO ONE" in capitals so often doesn't really matter, because you're presenting a false dichotomy. It does matter if you go from 90% of people able to install something to only 25% of people. These numbers are totally made up, but I bet they're not totally off-base.
Now, you're right to say that there are other solutions to just making a walled garden. Ubuntu uses another method: installing from CDs is something that's pretty much never done, it has a software centre, so it has little need for autorun.
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Not really. That security hole was patched over four years ago [microsoft.com]. What does happen is that when removable media is installed, the user is prompted for what to do; this can include opening the folder to view the files, or running a setup file if one is present.
You should read that article more closely. That fixed a bug where the setting to disable autoruns did not work properyl. It still ran if an autorun file was located on the network or some USB devices as I recall, and even more amusingly you needed to set a registry key to enable the patch to work. The default for XP and 2003 is still to run the autoruns unless specifically disabled by group policy or local settings. Win7 does prompt as you describe.
Re:Windows Right? (Score:5, Informative)
The terms "closed platform" and "walled garden" have a very specific meaning, and it doesn't apply to Windows. From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] (my emphasis):
It's obvious that Microsoft has absolutely no control over what software can be run on Windows. Compare that to Apple's iPad, where you can't install anything that's not approved by Apple (unless you jailbreak it first). That makes iOS a "walled garden".
Now, maybe we agree that it was foolish for Microsoft to enable any kind of "autorun" feature. The point is that in an "open platform" (that is, one where the user has complete control over what can be run on it), the user must also have enough power to do dumb things like running an unknown program from a pendrive that was just plugged in. How easy it should be for the user to do that is another discussion.
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It's obvious that Microsoft has absolutely no control over what software can be run on Windows.
Unless that software is Lotus, Borland, Novell, or one of the hundreds of other software packages that Windows has prevented from running well to give Microsoft's apps an unfair advantage.
Applications that misuse an API (Score:2)
Unless that software is Lotus, Borland, Novell, or one of the hundreds of other software packages that Windows has prevented from running well
True, upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows 8 will break some (not all) applications. Microsoft can't do much about applications that use an API contrary to specification. Once each new version of MS-DOS or Windows came out, most of the important software patches to which you refer were swiftly updated.
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This is the first time that I have seen a description of Windows as "an open platform" and that it is not a "walled garden".
This is absolutely a mind-blowing statement.
You're confusing the term "open platform" with "open source."
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This is the first time that I have seen a description of Windows as "an open platform" and that it is not a "walled garden". This is absolutely a mind-blowing statement. Windows is a closed platform. Windows is a walled "garden". Its problems are totally of Microsoft's own creation. They knew better but choose to ignore the security hole they created. They have chosen to let the security hole remain.
In one sense it is an open platform because it allows any software or hardware developer to release their stuff to the system without Microsoft's consent.
(BTW it seems that Slashdot's quote feature eats the original line breaks as can be seen above)
Desktop apps yes, Modern apps no, drivers no (Score:2)
In one sense it is an open platform because it allows any software or hardware developer to release their stuff to the system without Microsoft's consent.
"Hardware"? Hardly. Device drivers for x86-64 need to be digitally signed with a kernel-mode code signing certificate issued by a Microsoft-trusted commercial CA to a registered business entity, and these certificates expire. Keeping up with renewing a certificate per platform per year can pose a substantial expense to hobbyist hardware tinkerers. And even pure software developers run into problems. While Windows for x86 and x86-64 is an open platform with respect to desktop applications, it isn't so open f
Pandora runs Linux (Score:2)
maybe microsoft found pandoras source code
Anyone can. The Pandora handheld computer [openpandora.org] runs a GPLv2 licensed Linux operating system.
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
Re: WHICH AV SELLER IS PUTTING THIS OUT ?? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I hate to tell you, but many of us have a more refined sense of humor than "zomg, he said dickfuck lawlawlawlawlawl" ;)
Re: (Score:2)
iTunes is garbage, for example (Score:2)
Seriously, who the fuck is still running Windows
People who need to run iTunes or any other application listed as "garbage" in Wine's AppDB.
and still uses autorun?
You got me there. Windows for the past six years has defaulted to using autorun only for optical discs, and with the proliferation of USB flash drives and high-speed Internet access in urban areas, only farmers use optical discs.