7 ms·

Why do all these virii start with 'W32.' ? ;-)

by Luyt 16y ago

rbanffy 16y ago
To honor the environment that lets them thrive.
- tptacek 16y ago
  WinAPI is no more hospitable to viruses than Linux is. What it is is popular enough to be worth targeting.
  - davidcuddeback 16y ago
    That's a fallacy that I'm frankly tired of hearing. Unix was designed from the start to run multi-user environments, whereas Windows grew out of DOS, which was initially built for single-user, non-networked environments. The difference in their initial goals led to wildly different security models. The average Unix user runs without superuser privileges most of the time. Typically, the less experienced a user is, the less privileges he has in a Unix environment [1]. At least as recently as Windows XP [2], the average Windows user ran his computer with an administrator account on a daily basis, which opens the user to much greater damages from malware. When I used Windows on my own computers, I always setup a non-administrator account for daily use, but I'm experienced enough to know (1) how to do that and (2) that it's a good idea. This suggests that Windows has an inversion of privileges compared to Unix. That is, the most experienced users grant their daily account the fewest privileges, whereas the least experienced users operate with administrator privileges. [1] http://librenix.com/?inode=21 http://librenix.com/?inode=21 [2] Windows XP is the latest version of Windows that I've had enough experience with to say what the average user's setup is like. I hear that the situation has improved a bit with Windows 7, but when I was an intern at Microsoft, every one seemed to run as an administrator on their Windows 7 machines, so I'm not convinced that it's any better.
    - tptacek 16y ago
      The idea that viruses need "superuser" to perpetuate themselves is itself a fallacy. Why do I want superuser if I can grab all your browser cookies, dump or exploit your address book, persist in ways no normal user can detect, and gain full access to the network you're connected to? I'm not a Windows user. Since age 13, I have spent a total of one (1) year in Windows, in 2000, when I ran a Solaris to WinAPI ACE_wrappers port for my startup. I cut my teeth on 386bsd, installed from approximately 900,000 3.5 inch floppy disks. What I am is a security person, and these arguments about Windows being a petri dish for viruses strike this security person as BS. Computers are a petri dish for viruses, and the smug Unix weenie attitude of "we solved that with su" drives me nuts even before we get to analyzing how long any Unix operating system has ever gone without a well-known privilege escalation flaw.
      - davidcuddeback 16y ago
        How will you infect an executable without superuser privileges? My executables in /bin and /usr/bin are r-xr-xr-x. If you're not infecting files on the filesystem, then what you have is not a virus [1]. Without a virus, you're left to exploit bugs in userspace software. If you have a way to exploit Chrome to read my cookies, how is that a virus and what does that have to do with the OS? I would expect that exploit to work on any platform that runs Chrome. In regards to your first post about popularity, do you think that all of those Unix web servers out there are not a juicy target? How valuable do you think it would be to a virus writer to be able to infect Google's datacenter? The rest of your comment is name-calling and self-congratulatory back-patting, which does nothing to present a cogent argument. [1] Executables aren't the only files that can be infected. You could infect a user's PDF, JPEG, or other files that are then interpreted by a vulnerable executable.
        tptacek 16y ago
        (a) You don't need to infect executables. .profile works nicely. (b) How valuable do you think it would be to a virus writer to infect Mastercard's data center? It isn't riddled with viruses. (c) If you have a population that accounts for 80% of the market which is only 20% saturated and another that accounts for 5% of the market, why would you ever, ever, ever write for the 5% market? We haven't hit "peak oil" for malware yet. (d) Your footnote makes my point. Thanks. (ps) the congratulatory back-patting is to head off the inevitable Linux advocacy "you're a shill for Microsoft" BS that comes bundled with these discussions.
  - lelele 16y ago
    It's not just popularity. "Admin by default" and "Easy-to-use over everything" is what doomed Windows. In *nix you always had to exploit bugs, in Windows you hadn't to. Nowadays Microsoft has built layer of abstraction over layer of abstraction to fix these previous decisions, but I think that such complexity has just made exploitable bugs more likely. Moreover, according to Secunia, in mainstream Linux distros every security bug gets fixed eventually. No such hope comforts Windows user.
    - tptacek 16y ago
      See above. Why, besides vanity, does superuser matter to a virus? The idea that Windows is harder to update than Linux will come as a surprise to enterprises who have been getting autoupdated fixes for almost a decade now.
      - Locke1689 16y ago
        Given that my hobby used to be exploiting various overflow exploits in Linux machines I agree with you, but do you think there are some things that Windows lagged on that hurt it? For example, there are a couple things like ASLR, NX/W^X bit, and stack canaries that I think they should have rolled out sooner. Do you think that made a difference or were SQL injection et al so easy by then that there was no point in bothering with overflow attacks if your goal was to make money and get information? Edit: Ah, and I forgot: Windows ACE's are pretty much as good as NFSv4 ACLs but Linux still doesn't support anything other than basic POSIX.1e ACLs out of the box.
        tptacek 16y ago
        My perception is that at WinXPSP2, where Microsoft finally got serious about runtime protection, the state of the art in mainstream Unix deployments was not that much better. How resilient was Solaris to overflows in 2003?
        Locke1689 16y ago
        I think you're right; most UNIX installations weren't that much better (Linux especially). I think Solaris may have been one of the best simply because they were running on SPARC procs and the SPARCs have had optional NX support since '98 or so. That still relied on the admin enabling it though (so basically no one had it enabled).
  - caf 16y ago
    The other thing the Windows ecosystem has that makes it more hospital for executable file viruses is a culture of user-to-user sharing of binary executables. In the UNIX world, sharing source is the usual vector for copying programs user-to-user. This was particularly true back when executable file viruses were at their most prolific - back in those days, if you copied a game from your friend at high school, that binary was quite likely to be several tens of generations removed from the original source. Each generation was an opportunity for a virus to climb aboard. With internet distribution of illicit wares, you're much closer to the original source.
Confusion 16y ago
virii OT, but please: viruses. In Latin, 'virus' is like 'sand': it has no plural (and if it would've had a plural, it would've been 'viri'). http://stason.org/TULARC/security/computer-virus/14-Is-it-viruses-virii-or-what.html http://stason.org/TULARC/security/computer-virus/14-Is-it-vi...
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- lmkg 16y ago
  > and if it would've had a plural, it would've been 'viri' That's not immediately clear. Depending on whether you think it's second or fourth declension, and masculine or neuter, the various possibilities are virua, vira, virūs, and viri. My best guess is that the "correct" usage was one of the more exotic varients (virua or vira), but the word was so rare that many people didn't learn the nuances, and instead adopted it to the more common patterns. Similar to how "begs the question" is often used incorrectly, and that ends up becoming an accepted usage. However, the plural could not have been "virii."
  - paulgerhardt 16y ago
    http://www.ofb.net/~jlm/virus.html http://www.ofb.net/~jlm/virus.html More than either of you two probably want to know about the subject.

Why do all these virii start with 'W32.' ? ;-)

by Luyt 16y ago

Why do all these virii start with 'W32.' ? ;-)

rbanffy 16y ago

To honor the environment that lets them thrive.

tptacek 16y ago
WinAPI is no more hospitable to viruses than Linux is. What it is is popular enough to be worth targeting.
- davidcuddeback 16y ago
  That's a fallacy that I'm frankly tired of hearing. Unix was designed from the start to run multi-user environments, whereas Windows grew out of DOS, which was initially built for single-user, non-networked environments. The difference in their initial goals led to wildly different security models. The average Unix user runs without superuser privileges most of the time. Typically, the less experienced a user is, the less privileges he has in a Unix environment [1]. At least as recently as Windows XP [2], the average Windows user ran his computer with an administrator account on a daily basis, which opens the user to much greater damages from malware. When I used Windows on my own computers, I always setup a non-administrator account for daily use, but I'm experienced enough to know (1) how to do that and (2) that it's a good idea. This suggests that Windows has an inversion of privileges compared to Unix. That is, the most experienced users grant their daily account the fewest privileges, whereas the least experienced users operate with administrator privileges. [1] http://librenix.com/?inode=21 http://librenix.com/?inode=21 [2] Windows XP is the latest version of Windows that I've had enough experience with to say what the average user's setup is like. I hear that the situation has improved a bit with Windows 7, but when I was an intern at Microsoft, every one seemed to run as an administrator on their Windows 7 machines, so I'm not convinced that it's any better.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    The idea that viruses need "superuser" to perpetuate themselves is itself a fallacy. Why do I want superuser if I can grab all your browser cookies, dump or exploit your address book, persist in ways no normal user can detect, and gain full access to the network you're connected to? I'm not a Windows user. Since age 13, I have spent a total of one (1) year in Windows, in 2000, when I ran a Solaris to WinAPI ACE_wrappers port for my startup. I cut my teeth on 386bsd, installed from approximately 900,000 3.5 inch floppy disks. What I am is a security person, and these arguments about Windows being a petri dish for viruses strike this security person as BS. Computers are a petri dish for viruses, and the smug Unix weenie attitude of "we solved that with su" drives me nuts even before we get to analyzing how long any Unix operating system has ever gone without a well-known privilege escalation flaw.
    - davidcuddeback 16y ago
      How will you infect an executable without superuser privileges? My executables in /bin and /usr/bin are r-xr-xr-x. If you're not infecting files on the filesystem, then what you have is not a virus [1]. Without a virus, you're left to exploit bugs in userspace software. If you have a way to exploit Chrome to read my cookies, how is that a virus and what does that have to do with the OS? I would expect that exploit to work on any platform that runs Chrome. In regards to your first post about popularity, do you think that all of those Unix web servers out there are not a juicy target? How valuable do you think it would be to a virus writer to be able to infect Google's datacenter? The rest of your comment is name-calling and self-congratulatory back-patting, which does nothing to present a cogent argument. [1] Executables aren't the only files that can be infected. You could infect a user's PDF, JPEG, or other files that are then interpreted by a vulnerable executable.
      - tptacek 16y ago
        (a) You don't need to infect executables. .profile works nicely. (b) How valuable do you think it would be to a virus writer to infect Mastercard's data center? It isn't riddled with viruses. (c) If you have a population that accounts for 80% of the market which is only 20% saturated and another that accounts for 5% of the market, why would you ever, ever, ever write for the 5% market? We haven't hit "peak oil" for malware yet. (d) Your footnote makes my point. Thanks. (ps) the congratulatory back-patting is to head off the inevitable Linux advocacy "you're a shill for Microsoft" BS that comes bundled with these discussions.
- lelele 16y ago
  It's not just popularity. "Admin by default" and "Easy-to-use over everything" is what doomed Windows. In *nix you always had to exploit bugs, in Windows you hadn't to. Nowadays Microsoft has built layer of abstraction over layer of abstraction to fix these previous decisions, but I think that such complexity has just made exploitable bugs more likely. Moreover, according to Secunia, in mainstream Linux distros every security bug gets fixed eventually. No such hope comforts Windows user.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    See above. Why, besides vanity, does superuser matter to a virus? The idea that Windows is harder to update than Linux will come as a surprise to enterprises who have been getting autoupdated fixes for almost a decade now.
    - Locke1689 16y ago
      Given that my hobby used to be exploiting various overflow exploits in Linux machines I agree with you, but do you think there are some things that Windows lagged on that hurt it? For example, there are a couple things like ASLR, NX/W^X bit, and stack canaries that I think they should have rolled out sooner. Do you think that made a difference or were SQL injection et al so easy by then that there was no point in bothering with overflow attacks if your goal was to make money and get information? Edit: Ah, and I forgot: Windows ACE's are pretty much as good as NFSv4 ACLs but Linux still doesn't support anything other than basic POSIX.1e ACLs out of the box.
      - tptacek 16y ago
        My perception is that at WinXPSP2, where Microsoft finally got serious about runtime protection, the state of the art in mainstream Unix deployments was not that much better. How resilient was Solaris to overflows in 2003?
        Locke1689 16y ago
        I think you're right; most UNIX installations weren't that much better (Linux especially). I think Solaris may have been one of the best simply because they were running on SPARC procs and the SPARCs have had optional NX support since '98 or so. That still relied on the admin enabling it though (so basically no one had it enabled).
- caf 16y ago
  The other thing the Windows ecosystem has that makes it more hospital for executable file viruses is a culture of user-to-user sharing of binary executables. In the UNIX world, sharing source is the usual vector for copying programs user-to-user. This was particularly true back when executable file viruses were at their most prolific - back in those days, if you copied a game from your friend at high school, that binary was quite likely to be several tens of generations removed from the original source. Each generation was an opportunity for a virus to climb aboard. With internet distribution of illicit wares, you're much closer to the original source.

Confusion 16y ago

virii OT, but please: viruses. In Latin, 'virus' is like 'sand': it has no plural (and if it would've had a plural, it would've been 'viri'). http://stason.org/TULARC/security/computer-virus/14-Is-it-viruses-virii-or-what.html http://stason.org/TULARC/security/computer-virus/14-Is-it-vi...

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
lmkg 16y ago
> and if it would've had a plural, it would've been 'viri' That's not immediately clear. Depending on whether you think it's second or fourth declension, and masculine or neuter, the various possibilities are virua, vira, virūs, and viri. My best guess is that the "correct" usage was one of the more exotic varients (virua or vira), but the word was so rare that many people didn't learn the nuances, and instead adopted it to the more common patterns. Similar to how "begs the question" is often used incorrectly, and that ends up becoming an accepted usage. However, the plural could not have been "virii."
- paulgerhardt 16y ago
  http://www.ofb.net/~jlm/virus.html http://www.ofb.net/~jlm/virus.html More than either of you two probably want to know about the subject.