How to Hack Windows Vista

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Tue, 27 May 2008 10:46:43 GMT

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re: How to Hack Windows Vista

Stephen Spence — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:47:45 GMT

This vector isn't new to Vista.

As bitlocker isn't a standard feature it's not a universal fix for Vista either, only shipping on two of the Vista SKUs - Enterprise and Ultimate which represent a small proportion of the systems shipping with Vista.

re: How to Hack Windows Vista

stuart — Thu, 29 May 2008 05:29:37 GMT

Surely this could be easily fixed by forcing Vista to check that the Utilman.exe file hasn't been tampered with? I still agree with you on Law #3, but it seems like this particular hack could be prevented.

re: How to Hack Windows Vista

rhalbh — Thu, 29 May 2008 11:22:58 GMT

True, but this would prevent this single attack only. At the end of the day we need a way to completely protect software from being tampered, which would mean, having the trusted stack

Roger

re: How to Hack Windows Vista

stuart — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 05:30:33 GMT

I agree with you, Roger, but I think that any executable that can be launched prior to logging in could be checked to see if it has been tampered with. This would include utilman.exe as well as any other process that can launched under the system account before I've logged in.

re: How to Hack Windows Vista

rhalbh — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 09:00:35 GMT

Valid point. This would add trust to the stack

Roger

re: How to Hack Windows Vista

tyler — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:28:50 GMT

that is a valid point i also agree with roger but also think that stuart is correct

re: How to Hack Windows Vista

natxo — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:58:59 GMT

This is also known to happen with the sticky keys program (sethc.exe); what blows my mind is: why o why do you allow this actions to take place *without* anyone logged on to the console of the OS?

Of course I agree that having physical access to the system nearly gives you access to it, but why facilitate it? Why are these programs allowed to execute without logging in? That is just sloppy from MS, especially if one knows that this 'feature' has been present in all windows systems at least since windows 2000.