Microsoft: May 2006 Archives

I saw this linked by Rod Trent over at myitforum.com/

Microsoft Standard User Analyzier is an application compatibility tool helps developers and IT professionals diagnose issues that would prevent a program from running properly as a standard user.

That sounds a lot easier than working with regmon and filemon to find conflicts with low user rights and what an application needs. This may be just what the doctor ordered if you're considering taking admin rights back from users.

If you have heard there is a new zero day attack on Word that has been sighted at one company in the world.

To protect yourself, you may want to consider the following

1. When you receive an email, IM, Fax, telephone call or someone comes to your door, call them and make sure they really intended to communicate with you. Don't be fooled. You may wish to use a turing test to verify you are speaking to a human
   
2. Roll out PKI so you can sign all your messages. That way no one can get away with sending the exploit as you.
   
3. Switch to a VT200 terminal hooked to a VAX running VMS.
   
4. Three words - Precautionary Internet Disconnect.
   
5. Quarantine all email messages 5-7 days to allow antivirus vendors to catch up.
   
6. Set up fans to disperse smoke. After you take away all other means of communication users may resort to smoke signals to communicate. WE HAVE NOT VERIFIED THAT THE WORD VULNERABILITY CANT SPREAD THROUGH SMOKE SIGNALS!
   
7. 
   

SANS actual recommendations are here. They seem about as useful as my joke recommendations.

Zero day vulnerabilities and targeted attacks are here to stay. Research into technology that provides proactive defenses is extremely important.

Microsoft has purchased Whale Communications.

Three or four years ago I looked at Whale's egap hardware as a way of securing remote access to OWA. I liked some of their software protections used to make sure OWA was logged out and prevent information from being left on the local computer. Ultimately I ended up purchasing ISA and used it in conjunction with our firewall to provide access.

Another interesting security purchase by Microsoft.