Windows Update Begins Installing Malware
zdnet.com
zdnet.com
> Researchers say Windows machines that fetch updates from an enterprise update server not configured to use encryption are vulnerable to an injection attack.
And:
> The researchers said if network administrators followed Microsoft's guidelines to use SSL by default on the update server, that alone will be enough to prevent the described attack.
Essentially if you use WSUS the way it is configured out of the box then you're golden. You have to misconfigure your WSUS server on purpose, which exposes you to a MITM attack.
Windows has this constant stream of these, where someone will reconfigure the system into an insecure state, report how it is exploitable in that state, and then tech "journalists" will write fear mongering articles about how we're all going to get hacked.
Three other examples just off the top of my head:
- "Steal plain text DOMAIN ADMIN passwords from memory!1!!": Requires local machine admin and reconfiguring the system to enable wdigest for LSA (within HKLM), and a restart, and then finally having the domain admin login. Only then can you steal your plain text passwords.
- "Decrypt Windows passwords in 3 seconds!!!": Requires enabling legacy hashes and you need complete physical access to the machine.
- "You can bypass Windows login by replacing this signed executable with this other signed executable!!!": Requires unrestricted physical access to the machine (inc. no full drive encryption).
Ultimately a lot of people think these are issues because they haven't given it enough thought. If it violates the "The 10 Immutable Laws of Security" then it isn't a security problem[0]. Since if you have unrestricted physical access then you could theoretically re-write the entire OS to extract plain text credentials (since inherently you'll have that information somewhere).
[0] https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.10.securit...