Wed, 31 Aug 2005

Hidden-code flaw in Windows renews worries over stealthy malware

And what do Mr. Bill and crew have to say on this?

"Our early analysis indicates that this attempt to bypass these features is not a software security vulnerability, but a function within the operating system that could be misused," the company said in a statement. "Microsoft is reviewing the report to determine further details and whether there is any potential impact for customers and will provide appropriate customer guidance if necessary."

Maybe it's just me, but I always thought that one way to look at a security vulnerability was as an operating system function that was abused ... and that part of the idea of security itself was preventing system abuse.

Last week, the Internet Storm Center, a group of security professionals that track threats on the Net, flagged a flaw in how a common Microsoft Windows utility and several anti-spyware utilities detect system changes made by malicious software. By using long names for registry keys, spyware programs could, in a simple way, hide from such utilities yet still force the system to run the malicious program every time the compromised computer starts up.

(link) [The Register]

/Technology | 0 writebacks | permanent link

comment...

 
Notes: If you put a <mailto:> link in the URL field your address will not be mangled: this could be a bad idea as your email address could be easily harvested by bots designed for SPAM. The comments field should now format correctly for line feeds and carriage returns: when you hit the 'Enter' or 'Return' keys in your comment it should break to a new line. The text should wrap cleanly. Please let me know if it doesn't. No HTML tags will pass through - entering links seems to be the main cause of comment SPAM. Also, please be sure that Javascript is enabled in your browser before attempting to post a writeback. Sorry for any inconvenience, but this really helps cut down on the amount of comment SPAM I have to deal with.
 
 Name:
 URL:(optional)
 Title: (optional)
 Comments:  
Save my Name and URL/Email for next time