The recent IE attacks have show again that the current technology built in Windows Vista and Windows 7 could at least help to mitigate the attacks. One of these technologies which could be used more broadly is Data Execution Prevention (DEP). Here is how to switch DEP on (it is fairly well hidden).

1. First, enable it in your BIOS. It might have different names in your system. Basically it enables the use of the NX flag in the processor. Most systems I know of today, have switched it on by default.
2. Boot your OS and go to the System settings (right-click on Computer – Properties).
3. On the following screen, choose System Protection
4. In the System Properties dialogue which follows, you have to select the Advanced tab and there in Performance click on Settings as shown here:
   
5. And then choose Data Execution Prevention. The default is on Turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only which is good enough for most environments. I increased the security of my machine, but I have to manage it as well as I have to exclude (or de-install) applications which do not comply:
   

Now, this is on an OS-level for your applications in general. In IE, it is in the Internet Options:

This option is switched on by default in Internet Explorer 8 (in my case re-enforced through Group Policies and therefore gray). This might have an impact on usability as certain poorly written plug-ins will crash – something I can definitely live with. On the IE blogs, there is a post describing DEP in IE8: IE8 Security Part I: DEP/NX Memory Protection

Just use it!

Roger

A few days ago, I blogged on Tired of Web 2.0? Kill your Online Identities – an automated way to “disappear” from Web 2.0 (actually Facebook has banned the tool since…).

Today, I was reading an article called Un-Google Yourself. Trust me, I am not explicitly looking for such approaches but seem to find them at the moment…

I am not sure whether the un-googling really works but if you want to give it a try, let me know how it turned out. If When Goog becomes your Roommate is true, this is something we should consider – BTW if you have not seen those videos yet, you should definitely take the time to do.

Roger

As most of you as well, I was looking for information and opinions on Cloud Security over the last year. I found a lot of papers but when I talk to our customers I realize that they think about the Cloud but Cloud Security is mainly something for the specialists – which it is not for me. Therefore I was looking into preparing something on a management level which is easy to read and understand and finally makes more appetite to look deeper into the subject.

Probably the biggest challenge we had was to make sure that we do not oversimplify. Finally, we did not want re-invent the wheel. There is very good material out there e.g. from the Cloud Security Alliance and ENISA which I rather reference than do something similar.

At the end we came up with two new papers. One is written by our Trustworthy Computing organization and is a high-level overview of the Cloud and the corresponding security opportunities and challenges. You can find it here: Security in Cloud Computing Overview.

Additionally Doug Cavit – a Principal Security Strategist at Microsoft – and me were working on core considerations you have to make when you include the Cloud into you IT strategy. The paper is located here: Cloud Computing Security Considerations. This is the paper I would like to get your feedback on. Please keep the target audience in mind. In other words, if you give this paper to your CIO or even your CEO, if you would give it to a government elite in your country or a journalist – what is your view on it? What are you missing? What is good?

To set your expectations: I will answer all mails with constructive feedback but as I am heavily on the road over the next few months, give me a little bit more than 24 hours (which I try to have normally) – but I will come back to you, promised! If you think that a call might be more accurate as you have so much to say, we might be able to do that – depending on the number of requests. What I cannot promise is that we include all the feedback into a next version – if a next version is needed. My experience shows that feedback is sometimes contradicting each other and sometimes I will disagree – and we might to have to sort that out.

So, you are definitely free to use the documents and if you would even be willing to take the time to give us feedback, I would highly appreciate. My mail is roger.halbheer@microsoft.com ��� looking forward to a lot of mails!

Roger

When the industry prepared for the Year 2000, I was working in a consulting company living good from doing reviews on Y2k-projects. Then the year 2000 came and nothing happened (besides a big party).

Then year 2010 came – and the bug actually got hold of us. Initially I thought that I was reading a joke but it seems to be true. The German Sparkassen (a banking brand) had a problem with their ATM cards: The Gemalto chip on the card was unable to process the year correctly and failed to give you money.

I do not know how you handle your daily money consumption but here in Switzerland you are able to pay almost everywhere with your debit (say ATM) card. So, the cash I have with me is very limited and I run into a serious problem if I cannot pay with plastic. Additionally to get to money – you need the card again. And finally I often rely on the fact that I can get local currency in a lot of countries with my debit card.

This really causes some serious troubles and – at the end of the day – affects the critical infrastructure of a country – all of a sudden and without pre-warning.

If you are able to read German, here are two articles about it. Unfortunately I did not find anything in English:

• Vor allem Sparkassenkunden von Kartenpanne betroffen
• EC-Karten: Chips erkennen das Jahr 2010 nicht

Roger

I guess you might have seen it by now but if not, please make sure you read and understand the material available:

This night we released a Security Advisory on a Vulnerability in Internet Explorer Could Allow Remote Code Execution. The reason for that is that our investigations have shown that this vulnerability was one of the attack vectors used in the recent attacks against Google. So, please read the blog post of our Microsoft Security Response Center on the release of the advisory.

I just want to quote some of the key elements in there:

Based upon our investigations, we have determined that Internet Explorer was one of the vectors used in targeted and sophisticated attacks against Google and possibly other corporate networks.

[…]

Our teams are currently working to develop an update and we will take appropriate action to protect customers when the update has met the quality bar for broad distribution. That may include releasing the update out of band.

[…]

Customers should also enable Data Execution Prevention (DEP) which helps mitigate online attacks. DEP is enabled by default in IE 8 but must be manually enabled in prior versions.

There are some additional mitigations shown in the advisory. However, a few things from my side:

• Yes, it is a vulnerability and we do everything to fix it in time without breaking your systems. So, even though we all understand the urgency of an update, it has to be tested. There is a good chance that soon somebody will release an update for this vulnerability not coming from us. The past experience has shown that those updates usually are not tested thoroughly and that there is a good chance that it will break certain systems. Often this risk is higher than the risk of being attacked in my opinion.
• Make sure that you are watching our internet sites in case we go out of band.
• Use the protections built in to the Operating System and the browser. E.g. Data Execution Prevention as mentioned above. Yes, it breaks certain applications. On my system, where I switched DEP completely on, I had to exclude my Sony Reader software as it did not work – it was terminated and it took me a while to figure out why. But this is the only application which had to be excluded. Switch that on (use Group Policies) in Internet Explorer as well.

I realized that it might be necessary to give an introduction in how to switch DEP on and I therefore wrote a post on that as well today: Leveraging Data Execution Prevention (DEP)

Roger