RE: Rash of navy web site defacements

[Andrew Thomas <andrew () unysen com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jay D. Dyson [mailto:jdyson () treachery net]
> Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2001 7:36 PM
> To: Incidents List
> Cc: Dan Schrader
> Subject: Re: Rash of navy web site defacements
--snip--
>       Exploiting IIS isn't simply trivial.  You have to tie a board
> across your butt to keep from falling in.

As much as everyone has knocked M$ products, IIS in particular,
most of the most recently released vulnerabilities are entirely
avoidable *WITHOUT* the hotfixes in question.

1 - Go through the relevant MS issued security checklist (Securing
IIS4 or IIS5)
2 - Set ACL's sensibly: why would IUSR/IWAM accounts need to execute
anything in the winnt\system directory, or most places for that matter?
3 - remove extension mappings for handlers you don't need
4 - remove virtual directory mappings you don't need/the like
 (/msadc, /scripts, ...)

With these steps, while I remain open to correction, I don't see how
any of the unicode, cgi double-decode or recent .printer overflows
would have been easily exploitable.

Take care,
  Andrew
-
Andrew Thomas
office: +27 21 4889820
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 "One trend that bothers me is the glorification of
stupidity, that the media is reassuring people it's 
alright not to know anything. That to me is far more 
dangerous than a little pornography on the Internet." 
  - Carl Sagan