Replies

Even without physical access to the computer the operating system is insecure.

1. No support for smart cards making keyboard logins necessary which can be picked up locally via rf radiation without actual physical access.

2. Pagefile.sys is left unencrypted when using EFS (XP's file system encryption.) Meaning EVERY XP computer has to be tracked and secured ALL the time for its entire life span or else there is the risk of someone grabbing passwords or unencrypted file data out of the page file.

3. EFS was slower than molasses on XP making it ripe for quick fixes and work-arounds to speed up essential applications - this is a warship after all and response time is critical.

4. Group Policies can't be used to enforce file encryption.

5. NTLM passwords are easily cracked. So any access to the netwire would allow a hacker to pick up passwords with ease. They have an NTLMv2 out now but I'd be surprised if that isn't also crackable as the defects with NTLM were pretty much structural - don't know for sure though since I've been out of the business for quite awhile now and don't keep up like I should.

6. The AT (task scheduler) command does not check the Administrator password when running tasks with Administrator rights giving a hacker a wide open door to Admin rights once he does gain access to the XP computer under any account with almost any low-level permissions granted.

7. No support for per-client permission checking of off-line files - making all sorts of file naming and bit swapping inside of files possible.

There were plenty of other ways into XP which was one of the reasons Microsoft quit patching the old lady - it simply couldn't be made secure.

I'm sure the navy IT guys are doing a lot to close these holes, but putting a 16 year old operating system on a $3 billion warship manned by something like 600 men is criminally insane. One mistake, one time is all it takes to cripple the computing infrastructure and kill the ship. They must be even more broke than I had thought.