Microsoft moves beyond patches

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MS should stop "enabling" things

Microsoft could prevent a lot of these vulnerabilities from becoming a significant problem quite simply. If the default install mode of each networkable Windows feature was to be "Disabled", and network admins were expected to enable the things they needed, then things would be much safer. This way, for any given Windows function, only a subset of the world's computers would be exposed to the danger.

But the way it is, network admins and home users are expected to patch all kinds of things they don't use, because they're vulnerable AND enabled. If they were disabled by default, many virus and worm writers wouldn't even bother writing anything because of the "small audience" problem. (If the vulnerable PCs are rare enough, the worm or virus won't even spread.)

Let's face it, the vulnerability that MSBlaster exploited is in a relatively rarely used facility, RPC. Imagine if MS had set the default for it to "Disabled" or "Not Installed". That would have very easily prevented the whole mess.

(There was no way for me to load the patch on our PCs quickly enough. When I read that it was transmitted via TFTP.EXE, I decided to replace TFTP.EXE with a dud EXE file we wrote in Delphi that tells the user to call the HelpDesk. So I overwrote TFTP.EXE with that file via the login script. It would pop up whenever a PC was attacked, and when users stopped calling, I knew we had obliterated it.)

Overall, I spend a lot of my time learning how to disable or lobotomize Windows functions we don't use, and it has protected us many times. But there are an endless list, and you can't learn enough about them all in order to gain enough control.

- netminder

Posted by: netminder   Posted on: 12/20/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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