Comments on: Espionage Hackers Target ‘Watering Hole’ Sites

By: Stephen - NYC

Stephen - NYC — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 22:46:26 +0000

I may be biased about it and I know I don’t know all there is to know about security, but wouldn’t using OpenVMS solve some of the problems with servers getting infected? Of course, the apps need to be written so that they can run on OpenVMS systems, but none of the applications I supported when I was supporting VMS servers ever got infected.
If you used a VDI front-end to run OpenVMS terminal emulation (think VT220), it might be a more pleasant experience.
Like I said, I don’t know if it’s viable. But I leave it to the group to discuss.
Thanks for reading.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 18:47:05 +0000

Using VMs and other measures may safeguard your computer, but that won’t help your security in other sreas. For example, if the hackers put a keylogger in your system, blowing that system away may remove the malware but by then it may be too late. Not only may the hackers have grabbed some of your passwords, by blowing the system away you yourself may be unaware that they have done so…until the hackers start infiltrating other, less protected systems using YOUR passwords.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 18:21:40 +0000

JasonR wrote: “Sandbox your casual surfing to a VM.”

Won’t that lose you things like logs and browser histories? Wouldn’t it be better ti partition your drive into system & non-system areas. The system area you perioidcallt blow away, whether via a sanbox VM or some other way and the non-system areas you keep. The latter would contain your user directories, lo directories, etc

By: Jake Merz

Jake Merz — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 21:22:08 +0000

Just by using NoScript one should be able to prevent this kind of attack. However, JasonR does have some good ideas for security but you have to assume that not everybody who is having these issues is going to have any skills with a computer (yes a VM is really easy to set up but still, I always think back to my parents when thinking average technical skill)

Along with that you have to remember that a VM runs a lot slower than if you were to run you browser session natively from your current OS and with many older computers, which may be neccesary to be used for a variety of reasons, can’t always run them at a reasonable speed.

By: filler

filler — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 17:28:24 +0000

It is disgusting how you get your private&confidential informations. You ruin lives of some people with that.

By: Rabid Howler Monkey

Rabid Howler Monkey — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 17:13:25 +0000

“Sandbox your casual surfing to a VM. Sandbox your “business essential” surfing to another VM.

You’ve just described Qubes OS. Qubes currently (version 1.0) runs modified Fedora AppVMs, but Windows AppVM’s are in the works. Just be sure to keep the AppVM template clean. Qubes’ target audience is the enterprise.

Similarly, with VDI, one must keep the desktop image(s) clean. In addition, the desktop image refresh frequency should be high enough to keep the miscreants at bay (think of Sisyphus).

Presumably, a knowledgeable and experienced sysadmin would have a much better chance of keeping the template/image clean than would ordinary enterprise end users keeping their own desktops clean.

P.S. Faronics also has an interesting solution with their Anti-Executable and Deep Freeze products. AE makes it difficult for the miscreants to get a foot in the door during desktop use, while DF provides reboot to restore. A certain amount of Windows hardening would add to AE’s effectiveness during desktop use.

By: meh

meh — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:11:05 +0000

Or recreating the links

By: meh

meh — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:09:14 +0000

Yeah I could do that but that only limits the malware I get, doesn’t stop the spread or make it categorically harder to accomplish. Microsoft could have easily designed windows 8 to do these things at a core level of its OS, incorporating application whitelisting, VM, and sandboxing without proprietary issues or the usual windows incompatibilities with 3rd party solutions. They could easily make a way to actually roll back the entire OS in perfect fidelity to a date instead of just porting over some settings with their system restore – this would take more disk space but would be a small price to pay for a greatly reduced threat across the board from malware.

By: JasonR

JasonR — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 17:35:17 +0000

Sandbox your casual surfing to a VM. Sandbox your “business essential” surfing to another VM. Internal surfing can be on your native OS (or if you’re really paranoid, sandbox it to a VM as well). Then not only does an exploit have to take over the Browser/OS, it has to break out of the VM as well. Use snapshots to revert the VM each time you power it on (create a new snapshot after patching).

Another way to do this for a business environment is with Terminal Services/Citrix/VDI. Have systems that can be used for casual surfing and another set for “business essential” with whitelists of where they can go. When the user logs off, everything is reset (except the profile bookmarks).

By: DrAtkins

DrAtkins — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 13:10:03 +0000

So they disconnected all the links between potentially compromised networks. Well and good. How can they be sure that the malware hasn’t already spread over those links?