Re: The importance of IVs

From: Simon Johnson (simon.johnson_at_gmail.com)
Date: 08/28/05 

Date: 28 Aug 2005 13:04:32 -0700

The really really annoying this about XP, from a security standpoint,
is that it could have been so much better.

Really, XP has some nifty security features but they're all off by
default. For example, you can use group policy to configure the Windows
Firewall in SP2, you can use group policy to ban program execution by
MD5 hash (or have a preapproved list of executables and only allow
those to run). I have no idea if Linux has these features..

In practical security with real world risks, group policy is a
tremendous security invention by Microsoft. With a carefully thought
out implementation it is possible to mitigate almost any "non-targeted"
[1] attack on windows systems.

If you don't run as administrator the machine very difficult to break
in to. I've ran an XP box downstairs that my family use and they're
real novices. Despite their "handycap" (for want of a better world)
they still haven't managed to fubar the machine after three years
without a format. This isn't because i've spent hours and hours
tweaking security settings. Quite the opposite, it takes around fifteen
minutes to put the computer in to this configuration.
h
I agree with Regis that it is certainly possible to configure a secure
Windows XP box. I also agree with Tom that none of this matters if it
doesn't come this way out of the box. XP home is marketed as a
one-stop plug and go OS.

I can't comment directly on the memory management issues. I've always
developed software in managed languages where you don't have to worry
about allocating memory and what not. I have no want or desire to ever
allocate memory directly as this is the source of so many security bugs
it's unreal.

Frankly, anybody who writes security software in a language that allows
this is fricking insane. Even the best professionals leave buffer
overflows and it only takes one mistake to lead to a serious attack.
It's pragmatic to remove this possibility by using a language that
prevents this kind of behaviour from the outset. But I digress.. In XP
you can certainly turn the paging file off completely. I'm not sure
how that impacts on the discussion.

Simon.

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