Bugtraq mailing list archives
Summary of Printer Sharing and M1CR0S0FT Windows98
From: paulle () MICROSOFT COM (Paul Leach)
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 13:31:25 -0800
Here is a summary of all the info on the PRINTER$ share: A. Win95 does the same thing. B. The reason for the share is so that when other users on the LAN that connect to your printer they can get the device drivers for it. It happens automatically. C. Yes, it would have been better to put the printer drivers in a special directory for just that purpose and share it. D. It isn't world readable. It's readable from the LAN but not by default from the other side of a dial-up connection -- i.e. the Internet. (If you want to check that you're OK, go to ControlPanel\Network\Configuration\TCP-IP->DialupAdapter, select Properties, Bindings tab, make sure that "File and Printer sharing for Microsoft Networks" checkbox is unchecked.) E. WIN.INI, registry, and PWL files are not accessible via this share. They are in \windows, not \windows\system. F. More broadly, Windows puts no sensitive files in that directory, and I know of no application that puts anything in that directory (other than perhaps redistributable OS DLLs and device drivers); 99% of what's in there are system DLLs identical copies of which are available on 100 million or so CDROMs. Most of the rest are drivers for 3rd party devices. G. We have always been quite clear that Win95 and Win98 are not the systems to use if you are in a hostile security environment. We recommend Windows NT for those environments. Paul
Current thread:
- Re: Firewall-1 Security Advisory, (continued)
- Re: Firewall-1 Security Advisory Mnemonix (Oct 27)
- Sendmail, lynx, Netscape, sshd, Linux kernel (twice) Michal Zalewski (Sep 05)
- Re: Sendmail, lynx, Netscape, sshd, Linux kernel (twice) Nick Andrew (Oct 28)
- Re: Sendmail, lynx, Netscape, sshd, Linux kernel (twice) brian j. pardy (Oct 28)
- [L0pht Advisory] MacOS - FWB passwords easily bypassed Space Rogue (Oct 30)
- Re: Firewall-1 Security Advisory John Horn (Oct 28)
- rootshell hacked via ssh-1.2.26 Felix von Leitner (Oct 28)
- Sendmail, lynx, Netscape, sshd, Linux kernel (twice) Michal Zalewski (Sep 05)
- Re: Firewall-1 Security Advisory David S. Goldberg (Oct 27)
- Re: Firewall-1 Security Advisory Gary Gaskell (Oct 27)
- Re: Firewall-1 Security Advisory Ejovi Nuwere (Oct 29)
- Summary of Printer Sharing and M1CR0S0FT Windows98 Paul Leach (Oct 29)
- Re: Firewall-1 Security Advisory Jason Costomiris (Oct 30)
- Firewall-1 insecurity. Darren Reed (Oct 29)
- Bug in Solaris 2.6 ??? Daniel Ezekiel (Oct 29)
- WatchGuard Firewall internal D.O.S Who Wants To Live Forever ... (Oct 29)
- Re: Firewall-1 Security Advisory Gary Gaskell (Oct 27)
- Re: Firewall-1 Security Advisory Larry Pingree (Oct 27)
- Re: Firewall-1 Security Advisory Simon Finn (Oct 29)
- Re: Firewall-1 Security Advisory Keith Young (Oct 29)
- Re: Firewall-1 Security Advisory Mnemonix (Oct 27)