>This shows how we are being played with. The NSA could already have published the security details of all leaked tools, so we could all have protected our computer systems. We could have prevented Wannacry.
> unfortunately, not everyone keeps their systems totally up to date for various reasons
Because patching requires a quick risk calculation. Should I patch to the bleeding edge and get the latests security but risk a regression bug, or do I wait a bit so I can run a full regression test?
On my machines, sure I like to stay on the latest and greatest. But I'm sure there are plenty of companies that got bitten because some critical software they rely on didn't play well with the latest OS upgrade. Blame game notwithstanding, it comes down to a business disruption risk.
Of course, the right answer is to test the patches as they come out in a non-production environment, and go from there based on results. But I can see where some companies wouldn't have the resources devoted to do that on a frequent basis, which is unfortunate.
Similar to this, I didn't patch my OS X laptop for something like three months because the darn update was a firmware update. It said something along the lines of "Make sure your laptop doesn't lose power, and make sure you have a full backup before starting." Uh-huh. I do have a full backup, but clicking that "Later" button was far more valuable than dealing with the 0.001% chance of disaster.
And I'm a security guy. If I don't care enough to update every day, what do other people do? (There's not much reason to keep a personal laptop up to date when you're not interesting enough to be targeted and not in the habit of running random internet programs. Or rather, a few months of lag is fine, as long as you're paying attention to what the updates are for.)
I think we just don't like to acknowledge the fact that updates sort of suck, yet we bash people and shame them for not doing them. I mean, we don't have many other tools to force them to update, but surprise surprise when people are just concealing the fact that they don't update at all. Even in corporate settings.
Platforms should maybe get better at differing security patches from other types of updates to help make the choice easier. But, I suppose, at a certain point any sufficiently old setup is simply no longer supported because it becomes too difficult to align the security patches with old versions.
This. It still amazes me that MS hasn't done a better job of this.
I'd be interested to hear a heavyweight enterprise sysadmin's take on this, but my experience and read is that it's "toss it at the wall and see what sticks".
Which is crazy when MS knows all of the following things: (a) which files the patch changes, (b) how it changes those files, (c) which programs a customer uses, & (d) which MS files get loaded by which customer programs.
In days where we can do ISA-to-ISA conversion on the fly, you'd think it wouldn't be rocket science to be able to say "Warning! This patch may effect operation of commonly used programs X, Y, and Z". Or at least have an admin tool to provide that information.
Microsoft does a pretty good job at this, but some patches disrupt certain configuration. The latest round, for example, impacts printing for many people on Windows 7.
This is part of what I do. We do a risk assessment -- SMB and Kerberos get patched no matter what, everything else depends on a test cycle and may be deferred for up to 6 mo.
What? With the large monolithic patches that Microsoft has moved to, they have got worse, much worse, recently. It does make it easier to patch everything at once quickly, but if one thing goes wrong, you have to back it off and lose all protections.
Unless you were doing external vulnerability assessment, that granularity was a false sense of security. Rolling back sometimes re-introduced old bugs.
Granularity is impractical when applying patches is optional, as it drastically increases the number of applied patch combinations to QA.
But my point was more towards MS programatically alerting customers as to what programs and subsystems patches might effect.
As far as I've seen, they give you a file list, some brief notes on what the patch is for, and assurance that they internally QA'd it.
But I can't see why there's any technical reason that my system can't warn me that an MS library called into frequently by a particular program I use every day is modified in this patch.
Which is something I care about almost as much as "MS QA passed this patch" (side note: thanks so much to all the unloved, unknown internal QA folks out there, keeping things from breaking!).
I mean... they're trying pretty damn hard with Win10.
The LTSB version is designed to essentially stay the same with regards to applications/apis/etc while still proffering up security updates as fast they have them.
Yes, the final analysis showred that Windows 7 systems were the most affected by WannaCry. And they were targeted for more than a year by Microsoft with the multiple "upgrade now to 10" ads delivered through the security update channel. And I personally had the computers which didn't work under Windows 10, and worked correctly under Windows 7, so I really understand those who disabled auto-updates.
Not to mention that also afterwards there were Windows 7 patches that kept one CPU core 100% busy for days!
Windows 10 has tons of security patches in it. Yes, it also has some UI changes that are less than great, but, seriously, stop using Windows XP already.
Because XP patches only worked on valid licenses. A ton of XP in China is pirated. So Qihoo 360 created custom patches for all those pirated versions of Windows. Weird Alice in Wonderland situation.
Well, it's not how most Linux distros do it. If your update has breaking changes, it's not a security update.
There is no good reason to excuse Microsoft for maliciously disguising updates as security patches in order to manipulate the non tech-savvy into switching to their new unprecedentedly invasive OS. Especially when, as you said, the UI is worse.
The entire UX of Windows 10 is worse, every time I have to use it for something I get physical anxiety from claustrophobia.
I really don't like that I have to install untrusted 3rd party software on my computer in order to prevent my operating system from automatically ruining my user experience and spying on me.
Microsoft deserves ALL the blame for people still running XP. They broke so many hardware drivers with the XP->Vista change that people basically got stuck forever.
Then, not having learned their lesson, they pulled similar crap with the Windows 7->Windows 8 transition which pissed people off so badly that they refused to go to Windows 10 and are currently suing Microsoft for attempting to shove it down people's throats.
Insecure old version of Windows are Microsoft's own damn fault.
Drivers still run inside kernel. What was changed in Vista is that the kernel tries to detect when kernel data structures that should be immutable are changed, which some drivers do.
The idea of non-privileged drivers is neat, but in general is not worthwhile because the driver has to somehow access the hardware, which for significant amount of device/platform combinations leads to access to arbitrary memory locations.
Edit: perfect example are GPU drivers, which are for a long time typically composed of small priviledged kernel driver and all the complex logic in userspace. In many cases the interface between these two components could be abused to get code execution in kernel context (in 2k/xp times there was even RCE in kernel context triggered by displaying properly crafted image in IE)
As I recall, the issue they meant to address wasn't security but stability. Apparently a majority of BSODs were caused by faults in the driver taking down the kernel with it.
This means you aren't preventing drivers from having full access. You just need to prevent more unintended side-effects.
And you can do things like give people specific permission to access the kernel when doing the driver install. ie. "This driver does not adhere to Vista driver standards. Do you wish to install as an XP driver?"
Suddenly, people can run that business critical, single, old driver as unsafe while running the other drivers safely.
Alas, some manager at Microsoft decided it was more important to get his numbers up this quarter so he could get his bonus. In so doing, Microsoft orphaned a bunch of people on XP just like they orphaned a bunch of people on VB6.
Microsoft made its own bed; now it has to lie in it.
You're giving people too much credit. A lot of people, and companies, totally ignore their software. There's no risk calculation; they're not thinking about it at all.
Most of the time a security patch doesn't break software. There are exceptions and disasters have of course happened but you're kind of conflating general updates, upgrades and security patching. You can even canary test patches against percentages of your userbase since it's really simple with a Windows environment. Patching windows itself is probably the easiest thing to patch in an enterprise environment. The real reason these companies/organizations don't patch Windows is because they don't prioritize it and/or they're lazy.
There are plenty of companies where "most of the time it's not broken" is a big problem. Possibly bigger than the cost of a security issue (I don't know, because this is both hypothetical and I'm an outsider to the issues at play).
To not acknowledge that others would value a different part of the risk curve lacks perspective.
I mean, in my line of work Windows Update suddenly running and rebooting means fire risks. I wish I could connect the computer to the network so I could monitor equipment remotely, but it's too much risk. I hope utilities take the same measures. Certainly some work computers are vulnerable to all mess of viruses from not having gotten updates in years.
I agree in spirit, but there's always a balance. And to clarify, I meant "risk" in the "failure analysis" sense. I didn't intend to imply that such risks should go unmanaged. Disconnecting from the internet is part of that risk management, but of course it is multi-layered.
I can't buy an Emerson control system for a small reactor getting reconfigured every other week, and LabView on an un-networked Windows computer is perfectly fine.
I would not use a PC (with any OS) to control a 10 kg reactor though. At least directly. I think it'd be okay to use a PC to coordinate discrete controllers as long as they couldn't change state without a command (i.e. latching valves and the like) and as long as there was a backup safety that didn't have a computer in the loop.
Safeties that do things like shut off furnaces if temperature sensors break or valves that shut off flow if it becomes too high or detect a flame are common, analogous to a fuse on a circuit board. You sure hope not to use them, but they'll suffice for unexpected situations.
But there's definitely a risk that has to be managed, and connecting infrastructure and industrial equipment to the internet is not managing it very well!
I believe it was compounded in this case by the fact that Microsoft did not release the patch to all users. That OS was no longer supported so they only made the patch available to customers who pay for long term support.
All OSes vulnerable to wannacry are still under support.
Contrary to popular belief, wannacry will not spread to windows XP, it will just crash it. It will run on it if you fire the executable manually, but it will not infect an XP host through SMB.
Oh? I had heard that NHS didn't have access to the patch but I'd be happy to be proven wrong. I was under the impression that XP was the main vulnerable OS under WannaCry
The point is that people could have died because Microsoft decided not to release a zero day patch widely. In fact, once WannaCry got bad enough, they did release the patch.
What about Stuxnet? Did they go to companies and told them to patch against that once it was out? We don't even know how many more times these things have happened in the underground and used by criminals. We have just one example of NSA doing this, and even that wasn't sufficient because the "horse was already out of the barn."
NSA did exactly what you said and went to MS months before wcry hit, once it was clear what shadowbrokers had, in order to patch the vulnerability that wcry exploited: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/ms17-01...
unfortunately, not everyone keeps their systems totally up to date for various reasons.