Windows Update 2 questions: MITM and Driver security updates

katio · Jun 22, 2010

Does anyone know if and how Windows Update is protected against MITM attacks? Does it use checksums, signatures, certificates? I couldn't find any detailed info on this.

Second question I will just quote from another thread that sadly got locked because of some "mature" posters.

But there's one thing I wonder: what if there's a security vulnerability, maybe even a remote kernel exploit, in one of the drivers. If you check the Linux kernel changelog you see some driver related security fixes every now and then (for an example see CVE-2009-4537 or CVE-2009-4538 ). Linux vendors patch these vulnerabilities and drivers are kept updated together with the rest of the system, except for non-free binary drivers you usually have to install manually.

While I'm a longtime Windows user I have no idea how this is handled there.
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Might not have been clear enough but I had already discovered and fixed vulns in mind, not the by comparison rare and negligible 0day risk. Does anyone know how Windows 7 in particular handles this? With earlier versions hardware recognition was a lot worse and I always downloaded (had to) drivers from the manufacturers homepage, then usually kept them till they broke or I reinstalled the OS. With MS's latest I didn't have to manually install any driver, all the hardware was recognised and it's working flawless.

My question, what if there is a serious bug or exploit in one of these "bundled" drivers. Does windows update push them as "critical" or is this task still left to the user. With other OSs, namely Linux and OS X, this problem does not exist: Software Update/the package management of choice take care of this tedious task.
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MrBrian · Jun 22, 2010

Regarding your second question, I remember this issue from a few years back. In this particular case, the driver was listed in Windows Update as an optional driver update.

katio · Jun 22, 2010

Thanks for the reply!

from that article, November 11, 2006

But even then, Microsoft device driver updates are never pushed out as automatic critical updates and we all know that if it isn't automatic and seamless it probably won't get done. This is something Microsoft needs to address with the PC industry in general because driver exploits are becoming very common and very dangerous.
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MS are you listening? :/

MrBrian · Jun 22, 2010

Regarding the first question, from Researchers hijack computer software update process:

Fortunately, Microsoft's Windows Update is not vulnerable due to the fact that it uses digital certificates.
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