WinXP Security Flaw

Many readers have submitted word of the newest security hole in Windows XP. joshjs, for instance, writes: "Don't know if this is common knowledge at this point or not, but apparently some security researchers discovered that Windows XP's universal plug and play features contain a huge security flaw: 'A Microsoft official acknowledged that the risk to consumers was unprecedented because the glitches allow hackers to seize control of all Windows XP operating system software without requiring a computer user to do anything except connect to the Internet. ... Microsoft made available on its Web site a free fix for both home and professional editions of Windows XP and forcefully urged consumers to install it immediately.' Read more at the Washington Post's story." No OS is perfectly secure, but I bet a lot of new XP owners won't be too happy about this. Update: 12/20 20:05 GMT by T : fcrick submits a link to the same AP story at Wired, and several readers have pointed out that a patch is available. Update: 12/20 21:31 GMT by T : And as banuaba writes: "This hole also affects versions of 98 with XP File sharing installed and all versions of ME."

PNP

This gives "Plug and Pray" a whole new meaning.

Plug your XP box to the internet and pray for the hackers not to find it.

Re:PNP

The OS allows access to raw sockets and, therefore, the entire kernel.

Go read it again. Raw sockets is not a security flaw. Unix (including Linux and OSX) has them too. All it means is that it's easy to spoof packets. That's it.

Re:PNP

No, the difference is that in Linux (for example), you must be a priviledged user (root) to do raw sockets. In XP, last I heard, any user could do it.

Well..

It's not really Microsoft's fault, if this guy would've stayed quiet then WinXP would still be secure today.

Re:Well..

Ironically, he did "stay quiet". Notice that Scott Culp is practically peeing his pants in admiration of how he didn't publish details on how this is exploited.

Microsoft info

The information from Microsoft regarding this can be found here [microsoft.com], as well as a patch.

Re:Microsoft info

Eeye's advisory is here [eeye.com].

Re:Microsoft info

And the "XP Dramatically More Secure" article from a few months ago:

http://www.eweek.com/article/0,3658,s%253D701%2526 a%253D16895,00.asp [eweek.com]

Quoting Jim Allchin is fun:

Windows XP is dramatically more secure than Windows 2000 or any of the prior systems. Buffer overflow has been one of the attacks frequently used on the Internet. We have gone through all code and, in an automated way, found places where there could be buffer overflow, and those have been removed in Windows XP.

D'oh...

Re:First security hole?

"What rock has he been smoking" is perhaps more appropriate.

Technically true?

Well technically this is probably true. There have been compromises of IIS, MSSQL, and other Microsoft products but the OS itself hasn't been vunerable to such attacks until now.

Now granted, IIS comes with Windows so, is that really a seperate component? Also, by the same logic, Linux has never been exploited either has it? I mean, does Linux run any network daemons on it's own? No. So Linux, itself is bulletproof, it's just all those other things you put on top of it that can cause problems.

I just find it amusing how Microsoft keeps changing where they want to split their hairs when distinguishing between the OS and the applications. IE is part of the OS until it gets compromised and then suddenly it's a seperate application.

Technically false.

There have been a number of remote exploits in Win9x filesharing, first of all. I don't know of anything affecting an "out of the box" installation, but if you had a Win95 box that had any writeable shares, even password protected ones, even deeply nested in the filesystem ones, your computer could have been remotely compromised.

Secondly, does anyone remember a little thing called Outlook Express? Sure, most of the popular worms exploited the unpatchable "Stupid User" bug, but there have been at least two that left your computer remotely compromisable from just the Preview pane of the email (thanks to HTML buffer overflows) and one that would let your computer be compromised as email was downloaded (thanks to email header buffer overflows). Of course, the preview pane bugs were really Microsoft HTML component bugs, so could be triggered by Internet Explorer hitting a malicious page even if you didn't use Outlook.

And if there's one thing that Microsoft has taught us, it's that Internet Explorer is an essential part of the Windows(TM) Operating System eXPerience.

Re:Technically true?

I hate to say so, but the linux kernel had security problems too.
The syncookies bug a few months ago is a kernel bug.
Also the ip_conntrack_ftp bug in 2.4.3 and older is a kernel bug.

but Microsoft gets it now -

"Oh, you wanted a DOOR to hang that lock on.... Sure, I guess we could do that..."

Bug counter on the web

Is there any MS Windows XP bug counter on the web? Something like:

• "1233 bugs registered up to now".

I think it would be funny, we could also compare with Linux 2.4.x bugs. And maybe we can also have a Score thing, or something like /.

Any suggestion? Any website that already do this?

Re:Magic Lantern

> watch the next "service pack" from Micro$oft to fix this quietly installs the Magic Lantern trojan.
>
>You don't think the Feds dropped the antitrust case for nothing, do you? ;)

...and if the Feds support the AGs in strengthening the crippled remedy presently in progress, maybe this was Magic Lantern, and it just got disabled. (If eeye.com executives are disappeared next week, I guess we'll know for sure ;-)

I may have misadjusted my tinfoil hat this morning, but it struck me that a PC configured to send out unicast malformed NOTIFY messages to exploit the previously-undisclosed UPnP hole on a specific target machine... well, it'd look to the UPnP service like piece of hardware. Hardware like a lantern, if you will, shining a light on the suspect's machine... *evil grin*

Heh

"This is the first network-based, remote compromise that I'm aware of for Windows desktop systems," said Scott Culp, manager of Microsoft's security response center."

This speaks for itself

It's time for new marketing...

It's so neat to see "Intel Inside" and "Windows" stickers on all these nice software boxes. With Microsoft's new dedication to security, I'm thinking its time we print up some nice "RedCode Enabled" or "Nimda Friendly" stickers. Then all I anyone needs to do is make a visit to the local computer outlet to upgrade the Windows OS boxes they have out on the shelves to buy.

When the big virus/worm/... that exploits this hole is announced, maybe we can print up stickers to apply to all those nice shiny new XP boxes.

but what about the Internet Connection Firewall???

Here's a little gem from the MS XP site [microsoft.com]

Now Windows XP offers strong security to home computer users through Internet Connection Firewall protection, which makes your information, computers, and family data safer from intruders as soon as you start using Windows XP.

I guess that helped a lot.

Re:but what about the Internet Connection Firewall

At risk of losing all my karma, but here goes.... if you enable XP's built in firewall on a network interface, you'll discover that you can no longer connect to the universal plug and play service on that interface. So yes, it helps a lot actually!

Shit, I thought it was a feature....

Man, when I found two weeks ago that I can remotely control my XP machine and appliances, I thought: "Yeah, finally, something from MS that is usefull". When I do tech support, I don't have to go the user's cubicle anymore, I can just remotely fix the problem.

And now, this is a security hole. Man, nowaday, you can't know for sure if it's a bug or a feature anymore.

Re:Does someone here know what U p&p is?

The Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) service allows computers to discover and use network-based devices. Windows ME and XP include native UPnP services; Windows 98 and 98SE do not include a native UPnP service, but one can be installed via the Internet Connection Sharing client that ships with Windows XP. This bulletin discusses two vulnerabilities affecting these UPnP implementations. Although the vulnerabilities are unrelated, both involve how UPnP-capable computers handle the discovery of new devices on the network.

The first vulnerability is a buffer overrun vulnerability. There is an unchecked buffer in one of the components that handle NOTIFY directives - messages that advertise the availability of UPnP-capable devices on the network. By sending a specially malformed NOTIFY directive, it would be possible for an attacker to cause code to run in the context of the UPnP service, which runs with System privileges on Windows XP. (On Windows 98 and Windows ME, all code executes as part of the operating system). This would enable the attacker to gain complete control over the system.

The second vulnerability results because the UPnP doesn't sufficiently limit the steps to which the UPnP service will go to obtain information on using a newly discovered device. Within the NOTIFY directive that a new UPnP device sends is information telling interested computers where to obtain its device description, which lists the services the device offers and instructions for using them. By design, the device description may reside on a third-party server rather than on the device itself. However, the UPnP implementations don't adequately regulate how it performs this operation, and this gives rise to two different denial of service scenarios.

In the first scenario, the attacker could send a NOTIFY directive to a UPnP-capable computer, specifying that the device description should be downloaded from a particular port on a particular server. If the server was configured to simply echo the download requests back to the UPnP service (e.g., by having the echo service running on the port that the computer was directed to), the computer could be made to enter an endless download cycle that could consume some or all of the system's availability. An attacker could craft and send this directive to a victim's machine directly, by using the machine's IP address. Or, he could send this same directive to a broadcast and multicast domain and attack all affected machines within earshot, consuming some or all of those systems' availability.

In the second scenario, an attacker could specify a third-party server as the host for the device description in the NOTIFY directive. If enough machines responded to the directive, it could have the effect of flooding the third-party server with bogus requests, in a distributed denial of service attack. As with the first scenario, an attacker could either send the directives to the victim directly, or to a broadcast or multicast domain.

I think it would be interesting to keep a running

tally of said security issues as they pop up and then document how long it takes Microsoft to fix them-- before and after the bug is publically exposed.

I would be interested to see captured on a yearly basis the bug count of Microsoft products versus some open source products including how long each bug took to get fixed and the severity of each bug.

Microsoft is good a spreading FUD-- but facts are hard to beat and gobbled up by the media.. I'd be willing to volunteer my time to anybody with a server and some bandwidth for a project like this: just tell me what you need me to do.

Not just Windows XP... 98, ME as well!

What the article doesn't mention is that Windows 98 with XP sharing is also affected, and that any version of Windows ME is affected as well.

If you are running Windows 98 or ME, you should immediately go to Microsoft's website [microsoft.com] and download the patch for your system.

A more technical description can be found here [eeye.com].

Windows 2000 is not affected.

"... most secure ever ..."

Microsoft's newest version of Windows, billed as the most secure ever, contains several serious flaws that allow hackers to steal or destroy a victim's data files across the Internet or implant rogue computer software.

I wonder what their least secure version allows?-)

Reset the slogan timer again

"Over four hours without a remote hole in the default install!"

You gotta love it...

I know I do. "Hackers" can sieze control if people connect to the Net. MS makes a free fix[1] available on their Web site. Like, through the Net. So eXPendable users are basically forced to play Russian Roulette when they get on-line.

Oh the fun you could have with BackOrificeXP right now... User tries to get patch, Evil haX0r-d00d shoots out a pop-up and mp3: a little Strauss music and a MsgBox reading, "I don't think I can let you do that, Dave."

woof.

[1] As opposed to that Win95 "fix" they called Win98 that you had to pay for.

How do you forcefully urge people?

Microsoft has come out with a new book recently...

Along similar lines of "Writing Solid Code".

Wait for it, wait for it...

"Writing Secure Code" [amazon.com]

This should not surprise you.

Haven't you seen the commercials? A huge multi-media advertising blitz to tell us all that _Everything_ is easier in XP.

-JDF

isnt the amount of time it takes to fix this...

about the same amount of time that MicroSoft said that installing XP would save?

maturity

XP is an inmature OS. There are going to be tons of problems, just like any other new OS.
Why company would switch to ANY OS that is less then 3 years old is beyond me.

priorities

This is for those who are sympathetic to the MS responsible reporting policies:

The flaw, discovered five weeks ago threatened to undermine widespread adoption of Microsoft's latest windows software...

The company sold 25 million copies of Windows XP in the two weeks after it hit stores Oct. 25...

The company released a free fix thursday.

So beyond consideration that MS delay releasing XP until this hole is fixed. The best thing to do is keep it secret (responsible reporting) until they get around to writing the patch sometime. In fact, the biggest threat here is that it will "undermine the adoption" of XP -- i.e. they might not sell as many copies if people know there is a huge hole in the OS. No mention of threat to users, etc.

For reference, look at the motorola exploit in the jargon file [tuxedo.org].

I wonder how many times this has to happen before people are convinced that making bugs available and publicly releasing exploit code is the only way that the big vendors will make security a top priority.

The exploit

From Eeye Digital Security:

The SYSTEM Remote exploit

The first vulnerability, within Microsoft's implementation of the UPNP protocol, can result in an attacker gaining remote SYSTEM level access to any default installation of Windows XP. SYSTEM is the highest level of access within Windows XP.

During testing of the UPNP service, we discovered that by sending malformed advertisements at various speeds we could cause access violations on the target machine. Most of these were due to pointers being overwritten. The following describes one instance.

Example Session:

NOTIFY * HTTP/1.1
HOST: 239.255.255.250:1900
CACHE-CONTROL: max-age=10
LOCATION: http://IPADDRESS:PORT/.xml
NT: urn:schemas-upnp-org:device:InternetGatewayDevice: 1
NTS: ssdp:alive
SERVER: EEYE/2001 UPnP/1.0 product/1.1
USN: uuid:EEYE

If a buffer is incremented in the protocol, port, and uri fields of the Location URL and send sessions with 10,000 microsecond intervals, access violations will begin to be observed. In one situation, The EAX and ECX registers will contain addresses that are pulled from memory that was overwritten and the svchost.exe process will access an invalid memory address at a "mov" instruction. It throws and access violation due to the fact that the destination address is an overwritten pointer, and there's nothing interesting at 0x41414141.

During our testing we found that there were multiple points of exploitation. In our testing we found instances of stack overflows and heap overflows, both of which were exploitable. In the case of the heap overflow we saw pointers being overwritten for both buffers and functions.

The SSDP service also listens on Multicast and Broadcast addresses. Therefore gaining SYSTEM access to an entire network of XP machines is possible with only one anonymous UDP SSDP attack session.

Comments: First, don't mod me up as "informative"; I didn't write any of that. If you're considering modding me up as informative, consider unchecking "willing to moderate" or at least read the moderator guidelines. Second, does MS put out products with such glaring, horrible security flaws *on purpose*? As far as I know, the UPNP feature is brand new, so it shouldn't be based on any existing code base, yet MS programmers are *still* using unsafe commands (presumably) and not doing bounds checking. This is a buffer overflow vulnerability in a new product, for fuck's sake.

-Legion

Re:The exploit

Perhapse you could also explain why Linux kernels are still being released with glaring security and system bugs in them? (Every single 2.4.x release)? Hm? Maybe it's the SAME reason?

I daresay you're right. Now please explain to me why a free kernel which was written for motives other than profit and with no obligations to the user base, manages to produce code that is NO WORSE than an expensive piece of software from Microsoft that has gone through a proper software engineering process.

This is even more damning when you consider that Jim Allchin said

"Windows XP is dramatically more secure than Windows 2000 or any of the prior systems. Buffer overflow has been one of the attacks frequently used on the Internet. We have gone through all code and, in an automated way, found places where there could be buffer overflow, and those have been removed in Windows XP."

So Microsoft is even admitting that they went to extra effort this time to improve the quality of their code and they STILL can't beat the free software. Microsoft has all the funding to do security audits and all the facilities for code review yet they STILL produce software that is only just on-par with freeware!

Yes, Linux has problems. My incredulity stems from the fact that Microsoft has them too. If Microsoft wants to distinguish themselves from the freeware then they're going to have to offer something MORE than the freeware. Their history with security proves that they have nothing more to offer than something I can download for free.

Just wondering...

...what makes this any different from any other version of Windows?

The best way to secure a Windows box is to take a pair of scissors to the ethernet cable.

- A.P.

Whoa, Nice shootin', Tex

Hold up. Let's stop this flamebait.

For all you Linux-heads that haven't installed XP, the installer determines by asking you if you are connected directly to the Internet or if you are connected to a LAN --- if you're directly connected, YOUR CONNECTION IS AUTOMATICALLY FIREWALLED. Which means, that if MS did its math correctly, most people connecting to the Internet should already be protected, patch aside.

Now, what if you're on a LAN? You should already be behind a firewall. So theoretically the only people vulnerable are corporate users vulnerable from attacks INSIDE the company. That narrows it down, doesn't it?

Ooooh, it's a bug!! So what?!? I believe "security by obscurity" has proven to work this time. When did /. hear about this bug? Today. When was the patch released? Prolly before we heard about it. Nuff said.

But then, you know, Linux doesn't have bugs (eyeroll). Why is it that when Win* has bugs, it's headline news on /., but all the bugs in the 2.4 kernel go unnoticed? Oh yeah, heh, I forgot, this is Slashdot. Honestly, guys, grow up.

Like all the Linux boxen running pretty much any version of wu-ftpd and vulnerable versions of BIND (and there are A LOT) are safe. Hah. Why don't you look at the fact before you start posting flamebait......

Plug & Play port 5000

We ran into this several months ago when we were testing some server software that we wrote. We were using port 5000 as a default. As soon as XP came out, we tested the software on it and found that we could not bind a server to port 5000 at all because it was taken. So naturally, we wondered, what in XP is listening on port 5000?
Turns out that Microsoft picked the same port for its Plug and Play architecture, which listens on it for a connection coming (presumably) through the local TCP/IP stack. The protocol is XML (maybe SOAP, can't remember). You can receive and send configuration information by using that port (the schema is somewhere on microsoft.com) and it occurred to me even then that this looked like a potential security hole. But, I thought, this is too blatantly obvious and surely Microsoft is not so stupid as to allow access to the PnP internals from nonlocal IPs. Right? So we simply moved our software's default port setting to another port and forgot about it.

Predictions:
The scandal will flow off MS in a day or two, like water off a duck's back.
The downloadable security patch will be bundled with the latest updates to Microsoft's digital rights management crap.
Every script kiddie will have a tool within the week that scans IP ranges on port 5000 in search of the machines that have remained unpatched.
The guy who publicized the flaw will be tried in a secret military tribunal as a cyberterrorist.

Re:There's no exploit

One would expect a rush of script kiddies against vulnerable machines....

How do you know there hasn't already been one. After all, security through obscurity means not telling users how bad things really are.

TWW

Just a question

How are *users* supposed to know about this?

I mean, it's OK for you and me, we read techie web sites like slashdot, and I'm subscribed to bugtraq. But 99.9% of the public out there aren't.

So, somewhere informative should be yelling and screaming about a problem like this that affects pretty much everyone with WinME or XP.

So, I check MS's website.

Top article with the biggest link? No. That goes to 'Give the gift of Internet for Christmas', an advert for MSN.

Ah, there's a Windows section just beneath - surely it'll be there? Nope. "Music, movies and more".

Maybe it counts as 'News'? "Test Results In - Windows XP more reliable" (at least if its getting your computer rooted you're after).

Downloads perhaps? An item at least for a security fix - the Internet Explorer one discussed last week, but no mention of any XP patches. Not even if I click "More downloads".

Maybe if you click on the 'Windows' section? No mention. But that's for the Windows XP Home edition. Maybe the Pros think it's more useful? No. "Turn your computer into an entertainment center" - very professional.

Aha - finally found it; chose a link from the Windows XP Home page to the Windows XP home page (note capitalisation difference) and theres a small link there "Important! Security patch for Windows XP and Windows ME users" on a page that apparently has the main intention of allowing people to choose whether they want the home edition or the professional edition sites, neither of which has the link.

Oh, and as an aside, is it just me, but I'm using Internet Explorer 5 with default font size settings, on Win NT 4 with default font size settings, and some of the text on the security bulletin is only about 6 pixels tall and is utterly unreadable because of this?

Re:NO EXPLOIT AVAILABLE

You missunderstand the purpose of full-disclosure. It is not intended to make life easy for skiddies, it has two reasons:

1. To force the programmers of the faulty code to fix it by giving them a deadline by which the exploit will be published. This in turn is because the black-hats will be passing the info around and the rest of us living in ignorance will lead to rooted systems eventually, even if the exploit is not disclosed. So there has to be a deadline to make sure the bug gets fixed quickly.
2. To test the manufacturer's claim that they've fixed the problem. It does happen that patches occasionally don't work.

The idea that full-disclosure means "immediate disclosure" is simply not true.

TWW

The speed of reportnig in other media

Ha! I heard this on AM radio before I heard it on Slashdot.

Nobody would break into my system anyway ...

"No OS is perfectly secure, but I bet a lot of new XP owners won't be too happy about this."

Perhaps fewer than you might think, because first they have to know about the hole, then they have to care . In my experience, the average joe doesn't understand the implications at all, and asks "why would anyone want to break into my system anyway? I have nothing of interest or value there."

As Slashdotters we tend to highly over-estimate the level of understanding of the average joe with regard to security issues and YRO in general. Sad, but all too true 8^{

Subscribe to MS Security notification!

Folks,

I think at least Microsoft has done something to immediately close this security hole.

If you want to get notification of any security patches for any Microsoft product, their security web page (www.microsoft.com/security) allows you to sign for for an email notification service that gives email warnings about possible security problems and available patches to correct said problem.

It's also a good practice to regularly visit the Windows Update web page (windowsupdate.microsoft.com). That page has Critical Updates that includes security patches.

FUD

"Linux" as a trademark is owned by Linus. Not the software.

The GNU affects you only if you wish to redistribute GNU copyrighted software. It is not an EULA, and no one is "licensed" to use or install GNU Software. Anyone can install/configure/run/modify it however they want.

Yes, FUD

The GPL is a EULA..

EULA = "End User License Agreement". They are a way of taking away user's first sale rights. The GPL does not try to foist any license agreement on end users. In fact it states


5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or
distribute the Program or its derivative works.


So you are confusing a license to redistribute something (which is required for all copyrighted works) with a license to use a copyrighted work. Microsoft has the latter in the form of EULA. Linux doesn't. Microsoft has the former in the form of often secret agreements with OEMs. Linux has the former with the publicly available GPL. Apples and oranges.

Re:May not be (quite) as bad as it sounds

"Anyone with any kind of "always on" connection would have to be an idiot to not engage some kind of firewall for their connection."

what about those "idiots" that aren't computer literate and that dont know what a firewall even is?