http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/032608-microsoft-security-concerns.html
By Bob Brown
Network World
03/26/2008
BOSTON -- Microsoft's U.S. general manager/chief security advisor for
its National Security Team thinks like a true security professional: In
every bit of good news, Bret Arsenault wonders what bad news could be
lurking behind it.
Speaking at the Boston SecureWorld conference Wednesday, the 19-year
Microsoft veteran whose job includes protecting enterprises, developers
and Microsoft itself said there actually is plenty of good news on the
security front. For example, his outfit scans a half million devices
(with customer permission) per month and in the first half of last year
saw the first period-over-period decline in new vulnerabilities
disclosed across Microsoft and non-Microsoft software since 2003.
However, 3,400 new vulnerabilities were discovered and “it’s still a big
number,” Arsenault says. “So if vulnerability rates are down, where are
they?”
One trend that pops out is that attackers are increasingly laying off
operating systems and exploiting applications instead. One reason for
this, Arsenault says, is that vendors like Microsoft, Apple and Red Hat
have done a good job in recent years securing the IP stack and operating
system.
Arsenault pointed out that the first operating system hardening guide
Microsoft wrote for Windows 2000 came 18 months after shipment of the
product; the next (for XP Service Pack 2) was within 90 days of product
shipment. With Vista and other new products, Microsoft ships the
hardening guide along with the product. “On the application side, on the
other hand, we’re very far behind,” Arsenault said (though he said the
Office 2007 hardening guide is very solid, even if it did take a
year-plus to release it).
“You have your classic arms escalation race between the hackers and the
people who are trying to protect [software], so [the hackers] go after
the easiest target that’s least protected,” Arsenault said. “The
application space is the next space in the model they’re going after,”
and he sees this continuing to be the case for at least the next few
years. And Arsenault is talking about Office as well as CRM, ERP and
other programs that contain the sorts of data that financially motivated
hackers crave.
“This is not a problem that people should be thinking is just an Office
problem,” he said. “It’s anybody who uses file formats that are not XML
based going forward.” Adobe, Corel and Google are among others facing
similar challenges, Arsenault said.
Microsoft has made fixes to older products, such as Office 2003, but
Arsenault emphasizes that it’s a lot harder to retrofit an old product
for a new environment than it is to build a newer product, say Office
2007, more securely. He made an analogy about the tradeoffs of updating
older software to his desire to add airbags to his 1992 Toyota: He can
(and will) actually get it done, but it’s going to cost him.
Another thing that worries Arsenault: security issues surrounding Web
2.0, Web services and software as a service. “They all rely on deeper
trust at the client level and a smarter client to do that trust model,”
he said. “We can’t assume that the traditional model we are using is
actually going to work.”
Danger signs are also emerging when it comes to securing virtualized
systems.
“Your CIOs have no clue as to where we are on this,” he told the
audience of security pros. “I think that there’s a lot of things we
don’t have right on virtualization as an industry….We’ve got the ability
given its nascent state today working with all the folks doing
virtualization to put some things in hypervisors and other components
that would allow us not to play catch up like we have over the past 7
years in security.”
Microsoft gathers security data in a number of ways and formats,
including its Security Intelligence Report, now conducted twice a year
but potentially going quarterly.
Among the most frustrating findings for Arsenault: Just over half of all
attacks originated from the .edu domain. “[That’s] a fundamental
problem,” he said. “We’ve got to do a better job with the university
systems to stop that.”
As for geographically where attacks are coming from, all eyes are on
China, the source of 380% more attacks than a year ago.
In terms of what kind of malware is showing up most often, Trojans are
on the rise. Rootkits are raising their ugly heads, but fortunately,
Arsenault said, they’re so hard to write that they probably won’t get
too much worse.
On a positive note, Microsoft is seeing the amount of publicly
exploitable code, at least for its own software, shrink. But Arsenault
does sweat over whether there’s really less exploitable code, or whether
it’s more a case of such code just being kept secret by nation states
looking to wage cyberwar.
Microsoft also gets a read on security issues by holding CSO and CIO
summits (Arsenault is executive host for the company’s annual CSO
Summit, at which 300 top CSOs, mostly from the United States, partake).
Microsoft compares data from the two groups to determine whether
security concerns are being taken seriously by CIOs.
In Microsoft’s latest survey of CSOs, it found that protection is the
top security issue (62%), followed by identity/access management (57%)
and compliance (44% and falling in the rankings, a finding consistent
among CIOs as well). Secure messaging/collaboration is among issues on
the rise, as is application architecture (“The biggest question there is
how far back you go in your code base,” Arsenault added). Patch
management ranked 6th on this list, with 29% citing it, though Arsenault
says this topic ranked first about years ago.
Arsenault also spent a chunk of his talk discussing why Microsoft makes
the security investment and partnership and technology decisions it
does, and steps Microsoft has taken internally to shore up its security
and protect its own intellectual property and systems. He noted that
decisions, such as what security products to include in an operating
system, aren’t always up to Microsoft given certain regulatory
restrictions. Others, such as how to integrate security and management
products, are also complex. He also discussed the requirement to weigh
the needs of enterprises, small businesses and consumers, noting that
security at the consumer level can have a big impact on enterprise
security.
Arsenault isn’t your typical Microsoft speaker. He prefaced his talk by
noting that he has spent his entire career at the company outside of the
profit and loss side of things and doesn’t really care whether you buy
Microsoft Forefront security products or technology from someone else
(he even fessed up to using Quicken rather than MSN Money). “I have a
vested interest in reducing security risk in the overall environment so
we don’t slow down the computing stuff that’s been going on or what
you’re doing over the Internet.”
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