[Gllug] Trojans and social engineering

[Christopher Hunter]

On Wed, 2010-08-11 at 21:53 +0100, damion.yates at gmail.com wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Aug 2010, t.clarke wrote:
> 
> > Just a throw away thought - but I have always felt that one of the
> > dangerous aspects of GUIs - Windows at least - is the fact that a user
> > can simply click on an icon/filename without any clue as to whether it
> > represents an executable or a file of a particular type to be
> > 'operated upon' by ana potentially unkown executable.
> 
> Yes.  Is IS the OS not just the users fault.  In Windows you can click
> on a url with a .exe it'll ask if you want to run it and you're
> infected.
> 
> In Linux* if you click on a binary nothing happens, just "save-as..."
> Then you can bring up a shell, navigate to the d/l directory, chmod and
> ./ execute it.  If you know enough to do this, you also know NOT to do
> it in the 1st place. 

This brings up two points - firstly, the Linux way (offering to save a
potentially dangerous .exe file) is obviously safer, and secondly, the
additional "hassle" (as a Windows user would see it) of having to go
through the palaver of navigating to the downloaded file, and then the
commands to execute it makes things intrinsically safer.

It must be remembered that Windows just arbitrarily executes anything at
second click, often without the warnings (that most users will just
click through anyway!).  This was a decision taken by Bill Gates himself
back in the late 80s as a method of providing "ease of use" (the phrase
that will be forever burned into every Microserf's brain).  It's just
one of the many bad decisions taken in that era that have returned to
haunt Microsoft ever since.

You must also consider that all Windows versions(even the NT tree) were
never designed with Internet connection in mind, and that any TCP I/P
connectivity was just a tacked-on "feature", using code "borrowed" from
BSD.  Networking was meant to be only done with the proprietary Windows
networking options!

Microsoft are still hamstrung by a series of poor design decisions taken
years ago, by nasty spaghetti code that has been unmaintainable for some
long time, and by a marketing department that perpetually demanded "new"
products be released at the "beta" stage.  They're finally beginning to
realise that the "NT" line of products will have to be abandoned, and
that the way forward for them is thin clients with on-line applications.
Of course, Google have led the way, and MS have a lot of ground to make
up...

C.


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