{"id":18103,"date":"2018-04-19T10:12:24","date_gmt":"2018-04-19T09:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/?p=18103"},"modified":"2018-04-26T11:29:47","modified_gmt":"2018-04-26T10:29:47","slug":"morey-haber-talks-compatibility-between-windows-update-and-av-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/2018\/04\/19\/morey-haber-talks-compatibility-between-windows-update-and-av-software\/","title":{"rendered":"Morey Haber talks Windows Update and AV software compatibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

With a responsibility for strategic business discussions and vulnerability management architectures, BeyondTrust\u2019s Vice President of Technology Morey Haber knows a thing or two about safeguarding systems.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here, Mr Haber \u2013 who has more than 20 years of IT industry experience and is the author of Privileged Attack Vectors \u2013 discusses the issue of compatibility between Microsoft Updates and anti-virus software.<\/em><\/p>\n

He says:\u00a0<\/b>\u201cIf you think back only about 10 years ago, Microsoft Windows Update was a part of Internet Explorer and you had to run it over and over, reboot in between, and patiently wait for each patch to download and install until the asset was up-to-date,\u201d said Mr Haber, who in 2004 joined eEye as the Director of Security Engineering where he was responsible for strategic business discussions and vulnerability management architectures in Fortune 500 clients.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn addition, if any patches failed, diagnosing the issue was difficult and could prevent additional dependent updates from being applied as well. For an operating system like Windows XP or Windows 7, this could be literally hundreds of patches, so organisations embraced service packs and cumulative updates to shorten this process and ensure every required patch was applied.<\/p>\n

\u201cA single update verses potentially dozens allowed for a time savings and an easier patch cycle. Hence, \u2018a patch in time saved nine\u2019 as a pun on the old clich\u00e9. In today\u2019s environment, things are changing again and that may no longer be true.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeginning with Windows 10, Microsoft began enforcing automatic patch deployments on its desktop operating system.<\/p>\n

\u201cRecently this has evolved to bundling all of the patches in one distribution versus allowing organisations to select which ones to deploy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile enterprises still have the ability to control their own patch schedules, most environments are forced to accept them every month and as one bundle. This ensures the latest and greatest are always delivered and vulnerabilities are automatically remediated in a timely manner. That is a good thing. Right? What is changing next that we need to be concerned about?<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the recent news of the Intel vulnerabilities, and subsequent patches for Spectre and Meltdown, Microsoft did something very unusual to its update process. Early on when testing security updates, Microsoft noticed that many anti-virus vendors where not compatible with the fixes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were notified, encouraged to test the fixes, and issue updates accordingly. To keep track of these incompatibilities Microsoft added a new compatibility registry key that must be set by an anti-virus vendor in order for Windows Update to continue functioning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal is for the anti-virus vendor to state they are compatible with the Spectre and Meltdown security updates and by setting this flag, they will accept these patches and allow future patches to provide compatibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the anti-virus vendor does not set the flag as a part of the update, then they have not proven co-existence and Windows Update stops working. You will not receive any more updates.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo here is the rub. If you are running an older anti-virus solution and have not updated it in a while or have a vendor that has still not proven compatibility and set the appropriate registry flag, you are not getting updates.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are stuck and thus vulnerable to any new exploits and cannot receive patches until they update the solution and you deploy the update \u2013 everywhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis means you may have missed the January patch update cycle and may miss February as well, since your anti-virus vendor is not compatible \u2013 yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou may be forced to even upgrade your anti-virus license or change vendors if these delays last too long in order to maintain proper security and even regulatory compliance.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut here is the messy part. Malware executing with the proper privileges could tamper with this registry key as well and revert an acceptable state to stop updates in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis could allow a persistent presence that may be resolved with future Windows updates. Essentially, this technique controls future Windows updates and provides a vehicle with tampering with the entire process; something that has not been implemented before in Windows to control when updates should stop due to incompatibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnd users and businesses should therefore take note. If machines stop receiving updates, check if your anti-virus vendor is compatible and if they have done the proper due diligence in setting this registry key.<\/p>\n

\u201cMachines that are not set are going to fall out of your patch cycle. In addition, if you use a third-party patch solution, they need to honour this setting as well because future updates could cause issues to the host if anti-virus is not compatible and newer Windows updates are applied.<\/p>\n

\u201cA vicious dependency and circle. It is the first time relying on the new Windows Update process has had a glitch due to the flaws in Intel microcode.<\/p>\n

\u201cPatching individual issues is no longer possible and we must complete them as one patch (stitch) every month once we have confirmed they will be applied correctly. You\u2019ve been warned. It is worth checking your environment to make sure you can still receive patches too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With a responsibility for strategic business discussions and vulnerability management architectures, BeyondTrust\u2019s Vice President of Technology Morey Haber knows a thing or two about safeguarding systems. Here, Mr Haber \u2013 who has more than 20 years of IT industry experience and is the author of Privileged Attack Vectors \u2013 discusses the issue of compatibility between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":18301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[399],"tags":[5018,393,576,5019,176,5020,547,5021,5022,5023,5024,5025,177],"class_list":["post-18103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-more-news","tag-anti-virus-software","tag-beyondtrust","tag-intel","tag-meltdown","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-windows-update","tag-morey-haber","tag-patches","tag-privileged-attack-vectors","tag-spectre","tag-updates","tag-vice-president-of-technology","tag-windows"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18103"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18300,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18103\/revisions\/18300"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}