[35573] in bugtraq

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Re: Microsoft technologies. By default, non-HIPAA compliant?

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Nicholas Weaver)
Fri Jul 2 20:17:53 2004

Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 09:46:50 -0700
From: Nicholas Weaver <nweaver@CS.berkeley.edu>
To: Jeremy Epstein <jeremy.epstein@webmethods.com>
Cc: Anything But Microsoft <abm@anythingbutmicrosoft.org>,
        "<@securityfocus.com BUGTRAQ" <BUGTRAQ@securityfocus.com>
Message-ID: <20040701094650.A8541@ring.CS.Berkeley.EDU>
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In-Reply-To: <5B10E50E14A4594EB1B5566B69AD94070620A3DF@maileast>; from jeremy.epstein@webmethods.com on Wed, Jun 30, 2004 at 01:43:11PM -0400

On Wed, Jun 30, 2004 at 01:43:11PM -0400, Jeremy Epstein composed:
> A slightly less draconian configuration might have a filtering router that
> only allows users to visit particular sites; in that case also, the IE
> problems would be of no concern (since the redirect to the Russian and
> Estonian sites could be prevented).

This would not be the case, as the trojaned sites could easily present
the malware directly, rather than contacting a third party site.  That
it didn't is simply a sign that the attacker was less clever and
creative than he could have been.  Thus all sites which can be
contacted need to be "trusted".

> The latest set of attacks demonstrate some pretty bad problems, and
> Microsoft deserves a lot of criticism.  But let's not go overboard.

A better criticism is that, yeah, QA is important, but this is a known
critical exploit for over a WEEK now and there is no patch in sight.

That the crisis hasn't bloomed further with the simple hack:

Make the malcode modify any .html it can find, and include itself on
that site for download, combined with the continual attacks on IIS
sites, banner servers, etc...

is a mystery to me.

-- 
Nicholas C. Weaver                                 nweaver@cs.berkeley.edu

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