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Windows Vista's firewall can easily be subverted because of design decisions made by Microsoft Corp., a researcher at Symantec Corp. said Friday.
Orlando Padilla, a Symantec security response team member who authored a study released this week on how well Vista stands up to current malware, took the new operating system's firewall to task in a blog.
Quote:
"[The firewall] poses a great limitation for malicious code looking to backdoor a host," said Padilla in the entry. "Unfortunately, the Unblock button may be accessed with the same privilege level as a standard user. This configuration of privileges creates a point of vulnerability that undermines the effectiveness of the firewall's policy in Windows Vista."
Padilla was unavailable for comment, but Javier Santoyo, manager of development in Symantec's research group, explained.
Quote:
"Subverting a firewall is nothing new, but Microsoft, with Vista and User Account Control [UAC], had the ability to strengthen the firewall." The company didn't take that opportunity, he said.
The motivation for tricking Vista into allowing malware access to the Internet is plain:
Quote:
"They could then download other malicious code" or hide the command-and-control traffic between an infected PC and the hacker using the machine as a spam zombie or denial-of-service attacker,
said Santoyo.
Quote:
"Assuming an attacker can perform the firewall unblock attack, most of the functionality commonly present in a bot is available," wrote Padilla in his research paper (download PDF).
"Yes, I think attackers will try this," said Santoyo. "It's not hard to do."
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