Re: Windows Access Control Demystified

["Steven M. Christey" <coley () mitre org>]

"Bruce Ediger" <eballen1 () qwest net> asked:

> > to find complex privileges/ACL problems in Windows.  I've always
> > suspected that the fine-grained nature of Windows' security
> > mechanisms would result in difficult-to-find, easy-to-make
> > vulnerabilities, and
>
> What tickled you to suspect this?  Was this an intuition born of
> experience with other operating systems fine-grained security
> mechanism or do you have some general principle that covers this?

Just a suspicion based on experience and logic, namely:

 - privilege/ACL management problems are reported for all kinds of
   software, not just operating systems (e.g. Oracle, Bugzilla, and
   BEA WebLogic have had a number of issues related to interactions
   between privileges/ACLs)

 - developers routinely make patently obvious configuration errors
   like a world-writable executable

 - by logic, a developer who makes patently obvious errors is likely
   to make subtle errors :)

After getting a bit more of a look at the Windows Access Control
Demystified paper, some of the vulnerabilities don't seem to be that
subtle at all.

- Steve