Re: MS signed softwrare privileges

[thegnome () NMRC ORG (Simple Nomad)]

Let me get this straight -- you had users complain because of some OK
buttons they had to click on, so you made some changes. Juan and Elias
both have comments that are negative to those changes, so you decide to
put the security of the system into end user hands. If I were a sys admin
at a large company and were responsible for protecting users from
themselves, *I* would want to make that decision, not my end users.

Yes I am aware of other products that do this, such as the warning before
you submit a form in Netscape. However I don't think that this makes sense
when it involves downloading of potentially nefarious code. In my opinion
it doesn't fully address either Juan's paranoia (justified or not)
nor Elias' comments.

-         Simple Nomad          -  No rest for the Wicca'd  -
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On Wed, 23 Feb 2000, Microsoft Product Security Response Team wrote:

> Hi All -
>
> We wanted to respond to Juan Cuartango's comments on the purpose of the
> handling of Microsoft certificates in the Active Setup control.  While we
> love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person, the reality is
> that the certificates are treated as they are in order to improve our
> customers' experience while downloading software from Microsoft web sites.
> In the past, customers complained about being prompted to "OK" every signed
> control after they went to one of our web sites to load or update software.
> Because of this, the Active Setup control treats the Microsoft certificates
> as "trusted providers".
>
> We understand that a few customers may find this behavior undesirable, and
> we are concerned by the scenario that Elias pointed out.  Therefore, we will
> be modifying the Active Setup control so that it warns before downloading
> unless a customer has specifically requested that he not be warned in the
> future.  Regards,
>
> Secure () microsoft com
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cuartango () TELELINE ES [mailto:cuartango () TELELINE ES]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2000 8:36 AM
> To: BUGTRAQ () SECURITYFOCUS COM
> Subject: MS signed softwrare privileges
>
>
> I would like to clarify some aspects from the Elias post
> regarding Microsoft signed software.
> The fact that anybody could install MS signed software
> using Active Setup component in not very important.
> The issue is : MS can silently execute any code in our
> Windows systems just using their signature.
> MS has privileged their code, even if your IE security
> setting "Download signed ActiveX" is set to prompt MS
> software will be installed without prompting the user.
> It seems that MS has left a back door that will allow them
> to perform any action in the Windows systems just visiting
> a WEB page or opening an e-mail message.
> I have prepared a demo in :
> http://www.angelfire.com/ab/juan123/iengine.html
>
> This demo shows the diferent behaviour of IE when the
> ActiveX is signed by MS or signed by others.
>
> This issue opens a big security and privacy hole, MS can
> take complete control over our systems using this backdoor.
>
> In this backdoor acceptable ?
> In my opinion It is not, I have worked 18 years for
> diferent OS software manufacturers and I have never
> installed one line of code without a previous user approval.