Text 5534, 112 rader
Skriven 2005-06-30 17:59:18 av Mike '/m' (1:379/45)
   Kommentar till text 5380 av Rich Gauszka (1:379/45)
Ärende: Re: High-bandwidth vulnerability gateway into Windows
=============================================================
From: Mike '/m' <mike@barkto.com>


Another article

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1833035,00.asp

===
RSS in Longhorn: The Security Question

Microsoft Corp.'s ambitious plan to bake RSS deep into the belly of Longhorn
will open new attack vectors for spammers, phishers and malicious hackers,
security experts say.

"It is inevitable, without a doubt. When Longhorn comes out, attackers will
pounce on every new thing to see if Microsoft did it correctly. You can bet RSS
integration will be one of those things attackers will want to exploit," said
John Pescatore, senior vice president of research at Gartner Inc.

Looking to introduce the fast-growing content syndication technology to a mass
audience, Microsoft plans to embed an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) platform
to automatically distribute feeds into Windows applications, both its own and
those from developers.

The plan is for Longhorn to provide a common feed list of subscriptions and a
common feed store of data in Longhorn, which will be available to applications
through Windows APIs. The Redmond, Wash., company's vision also includes RSS
discovery and easy-to-subscribe options in the upcoming Internet Explorer 7
browser refresh.

With Longhorn, Microsoft will make RSS more understandable to the average,
non-technical end user, but once the technology reaches critical mass it will
surely become a lucrative target for malicious hackers.

Richard Stiennon, director of threat research at anti-spyware company Webroot
Software Inc., has long predicted that RSS will be used to serve up malicious
code. "It's not yet a big target, but once RSS usage becomes as widespread as
e-mail or instant messaging, the hackers will find a way to use it to
distribute malware," Stiennon said in a recent interview with Ziff Davis
Internet News.

Gartner's Pescatore believes crackers will pounce on Microsoft's implementation
of RSS to "see if any mistakes were made."

"The RSS threat is a legitimate one, and Microsoft will have to be very careful
about how it's baked into the OS. The potential for danger is very, very real,"
Pescatore said.

"I see it more as a spam threat in the beginning," he added. "With RSS, users
are automatically pulling in news feeds, so the authentication side has to be
addressed to make sure people are getting the feed they subscribed to. I'm
positive we'll see an RSS spam problem because spammers will find a way around
the authentication weakness."

Once weaknesses are identified, Pescatore believes the phishers will pounce and
try to lure users to visit fake sites to steal confidential information. This
type of threat is especially apparent on RSS search engines that pull results
from multiple Web sites and present those as an RSS feed.

Because Microsoft is embracing the use of enclosures to deliver attachments in
RSS feeds, there is also a risk that rigged media files and other attachment
types can find their way on a user's desktop.

"We're seeing Podcasts become quite popular, and we already know that media
player flaws can cause serious damage. Put them together and you will
inevitably have problems," Pescatore added.

"Any time a protocol has the word 'simple' in it, there will be complicated
ways to attack it. We really haven't scratched the surface of the threats yet.
There's a lot of active content flowing through RSS aggregators, and the
malware writers will want to pounce."...
===

 /m





On Sat, 25 Jun 2005 15:19:18 -0400, "Rich Gauszka" <gauszka@hotmail.com> wrote:

>I saw that and shook my head. Bury all this sh*t in the OS and tell me it's
>secure?
>
>
>"Mike '/m'" <mike@barkto.com> wrote in message
>news:c7uqb11ah9ndos43sljtgp5q4g335jpus5@4ax.com...
>> Microsoft, not happy with giving HTML a high-bandwidth gateway via IE
>> into the core of Windows, now wants to outdo itself by giving RSS feeds
>> a similar high-bandwidth gateway into the core of Windows.
>>
>> http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1831451,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594
>>
>> ===
>> SEATTLE-Microsoft's vision for tying RSS directly into the next release
>> of Windows drew cheers and jeers among the syndication-feed enthusiasts
>> gathered here Friday....
>>
>> The core of Microsoft's RSS plans is to bring feeds into Windows
>> applications,...
>> ===
>>
>>
>> Just think of the new types of security vulnerabilites this is going to
>> open.  Why, the price of an owned Windows zombie may even decrease due
>> to an oversupply.
>>
>> /m
>

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