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Comment on Microsoft Defender Flags Tor Browser as a Trojan and Removes it from the System - Deform

I still don’t understand why Windows doesn’t use .exe whitelisting instead of bothering with endless blacklists and heuristics and antiviruses.

On any given system there’s a handful of legit .exe while out there there’s like a billion malware .exe, and more created every minute.

Or at least switch to an explicit “executable” flag like on MacOS and Linux.

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DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Because it makes it the easiest thing to spoof an .exe which enables attacks of which you will never get out of. A legit.exe vs a spoofed legit.exe will be the exact same in every way except the coding in spoofed fucks you.

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- CheezyWeezle@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’m not sure that these things work the way you think they do… an antivirus wouldn’t just look for the name of an executable to be “legit.exe” but rather would look at what the program calls itself in it’s manifest, compute the hash for the executable binary file, and compare that hash against a database of known good hashes. If the contents of the executable compute a hash identical to the known good hash, then you know the contents of the executable are clean.
  
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  - gronjo45@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Still getting into programming and having a bit of trouble understanding what a “manifest” is. What does this technically entail? Are “manifests” implemented differently by PL or OS?
    
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    CheezyWeezle@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The manifest (at least how I am using the term) is whatever metadata a file has, and the format and location of this metadata can differ between operating systems. Usually the manifest is generated by the operating system based off of header data from the file itself, and details about the file that the operating system can deduce, such as file size, origin, location, file type, etc. In Windows you can view this info by right clicking/opening the context menu on any file and selecting “Properties”, on macOS by opening the context menu and selecting “Get Info”, and on other OSes such as linux/freeBSD it will be something similar.
    
    There are other usages for “manifest” depending on the context, for example a manifest.xml would be something a developer would include with an android app that has configuration settings and properties for the app.
    
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    Gabu@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Manifests are like an abstract for an executable.
    
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- xantoxis@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Please don’t reply to comments when you’re talking out your ass, that doesn’t help anyone. You don’t know wtf you’re on about, at all.
  
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- starchturrets@feddit.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Not really, WDAC doesn’t usually just look at the filename. It can look at the certificate it was signed by, or fallback to using hashes.
  
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- CheezyWeezle@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Lmao your edit 2 is completely silly. SHA-256 is what would be used for checksum verification, and SHA-256 is pretty much collision resistant, and even then if two files computed the same hash they would have such different contents/properties that it would be obvious they are not the same file. MD5 and SHA-1 have been phased out for any serious usage for a while now.
  
  Seriously tho, if you don’t know what you are talking about you should probably stop making a fool of yourself
  
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starchturrets@feddit.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Windows has both WDAC and Applocker for allowlisting, not just for exes, but stuff such as powershell scripts and what drivers run in the kernel as well.

…microsoft.com/…/windows-defender-application-con…

In it’s strongest form (a signed WDAC policy) even admin access can’t easily override it, and a well written policy can even enforce stuff such as downgrade protection (example: only allow firefox.exe signed by Mozilla at or above a certain version) which prevents an attacker from loading older versions of an executable.

The problem is that it’s not so easy to use in practice - an installer will often drop loads of unsigned files. Tor Browser ironically enough is a prime example, and any WDAC policies allowing it have to fallback on hash rules, which are fragile and must be regenerated every update, or filepath rules which are not so robust.

Microsoft is trying to make allowlisting more accessible with Smart App Control, which runs WDAC under the hood. It does save the hassle of managing one’s own policies (and also blocks certain filetypes like lnks commonly used for malware), but it is not very customizable.

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PoolloverNathan@programming.dev ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
From my experience, Windows by default completely blocks non-Microsoft-verified .exes. It’s called S mode and usually requires a Microsoft account to exit.

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- brsrklf@jlai.lu ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Do you mean that it’s enough just to be on a microsoft account? On 10, I didn’t technically do anything to “exit” that and I just have an annoying popup first time I’m using an unverified app. I can just authorize them.
  
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  - PoolloverNathan@programming.dev ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You need to “download” normal mode from the store, which requires a Microsoft account to use. All of the W11 computers I’ve gotten came in S mode.
    
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