Re: How Secure is Windows, Really?

Jim,

My example was not of a backdoor but rather a piece of malware that
was designed for nefarious purposes. This program would not have to adopt
any authority or use any backdoor access; it would just update more records
than the user intended for it too but only a little at a time so that it
would be harder to track. Heck, without journaling, it might even require
several restores to get things back the way they were supposed to be since
the mischievous changes would be very small and likely remain unnoticed for
a while.

I think backdoors are fairly common on the System i and are easily
implemented. That's why it's important to have security auditing turned on
and to pay attention to what programs are adopting authority or switching
profiles among other things.

Kind regards,

BJ

On 1/3/07, Jim Franz <franz400@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Brian>Better yet, how about you create and distribute a freeware utility
>like....
It doesn't take freeware to create a backdoor.
I've seen them in commercial software. Doesn't have to even be malicious
in it's orginal intent. It's how the executing user uses it....
jim

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 12:17 PM
Subject: RE: How Secure is Windows, Really?


> Uh... you need a user profile and password to do that.  That's why it's
a
> bad idea to have user profiles and passwords in the wild, and also a bad
> idea to allow SQL access to your machine.
>
> If you're worried thast someone with a valid user profile and password
> will
> do this sort of thing, then you better turn off ODBC immediately.
>
> The big difference between iSeries attacks and Windows attacks is that a
> number of the exploits we're talking about on Windows can bypass Windows
> security.  Just like the Rutkowska kernel code injection technique, they
> can
> install software beyond the privileges of the user.
>
> All these theoretical attacks on the iSeries require a valid user
profile
> and password, as well as the authority to the objects.
>
> Joe
>
>> From: Walden H. Leverich
>>
>> Really?... How about selecting all the tables from systables, then for
>> each table select all the numeric fields w/decimal positions and then
>> for each of them execute a sql statement that updates their values to
>> the effect of (set fld1 = fld1 * 0.01)... Easy to implement w/out any
>> knowledge of the underlying applications and subtle enough that it
>> probably wouldn't be noticed until lots of damage had occurred.
>
>


--
This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing
list
To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l
or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.