You gotta love Windows... I don't see this as a real problem. The
reason being if some one can do what you describe they have already
compromised the machine. It would the equivalent of locking your fridge
so a burglar can't have a refreshing beverage while robbing you.
Along this same vein, a trojan could change the icon of any shortcut to
point to any exe or dll with resources.
-----Original Message-----
From: Greg [mailto:security-basics@pchandyman.com.au]
Sent: Monday, September 26, 2005 7:32 PM
To: security-basics@securityfocus.com
Subject: How to....
....really shoot your XP machine in the foot, so to speak.
Pick any program shortcut that is pinned to your start menu. If you
don't
have any, find any old program shortcut (or make one) then pin it to
your
start menu. Now go find some other shortcut to a completely different
program and open it's properties. Copy the full path info from that one
and
past it into the path info in the properties for that other shortcut
that is
pinned to the start menu and click OK to make it stick. Now carefully
look
at that icon. It hasn't changed. Now click on it. The icon now starts
that
other program instead of the one it looks like it is SUPPOSED to start.
Now while all that is simple "so what?" to most of you, think of this -
I
deal in a lot of low level security stuff that is below the radar of a
lot
of you but if an icon that is frequently used in the list of commonly
used
programs or those pinned to the start menu can be so easily changed to
start
some other program yet not look like it was tampered with at all, why
couldn't the next Trojan include code to do this? Eg, place a Trojan on
the
C drive, copy the full path info into the "Windows Update" icon on your
start menu (for example) where it runs that Trojan instead. That Trojan
may
do what it is designed to do and also do the actual starting of Windows
Update after that.
What stops a local user or a Trojan doing this in a normal XP
installation
that hasn't been changed and all runs at admin levels as so many
businesses
do?
Greg.
