Adobe adding security, privacy goodies to Flash Player 11

Summary: Adobe’s new Flash Player 11 will include support for 64-bit exploit migitation and support for SSL socket connections.

Battling to cope with the hacker bullseye on its back, Adobe plans to add new security and privacy features to the next iteration of its ubiquitous Flash Player, including  support for SSL socket connections and the introduction of 64-bit ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization).

Adobe said the new Flash Player 11, expected in early October, will include the SSL socket connection support to make it easier for developers to protect the data they stream over the Flash Player raw socket connections.

[ Adobe to rush out Flash Player patch to thwart zero-day attacks ]

Flash Player 11 will also include a secure random number generator.

Adobe’s Platform Security Strategist Peleus Uhley explains:

Flash Player previously provided a basic, random number generator through Math.random. This was good enough for games and other lighter-weight use cases, but it didn’t meet the complete cryptographic standards for random number generation. The new random number generator API hooks the cryptographic provider of the host device, such as the CryptGenRandom function in Microsoft CAPI on Windows, for generating the random number. The native OS cryptographic providers have better sources of entropy and have been peer reviewed by industry experts.

[ Adobe admits to 80 'code changes' in Flash Player patch ]

The company is also adding 64-bit support in Flash Player 11, a move that Uhley says will bring some security side-benefits.

If you are using a 64-bit browser that supports address space layout randomization (ASLR) in conjunction with the 64-bit version of Flash Player, you will be protected by 64-bit ASLR. Traditional 32-bit ASLR only has a small number of bits available in the memory address for randomizing locations. Memory addresses based on 64-bit registers have a wider range of free bits for randomization, increasing the effectiveness of ASLR.

On the privacy side, Adobe is adding a private browsing mode to allow users to stay incognito while viewing Flash files.   A mobile control panel is also being added to Android devices to easier for users to manage their Flash Player privacy settings on their Android devices. Read More...

Intel, McAfee link security to chips

DeepSafe offers a glimpse at future Intel-McAfee security products

Nearly seven months after Intel shelled out $7.68 billion for antivirus vendor McAfee, the two companies are offering a glimpse of their future.

At the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco Tuesday, McAfee will provide an early look of its new effort to build security protections outside of the OS, using Intel's chip-level hooks that allow McAfee's Endpoint Protection Software to get a better look at malicious software such as rootkits.

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Called DeepSafe, the software is something new for the antivirus industry, said Candace Worley, senior vice president and general manager of McAfee Endpoint Security. "This level of technology has never existed before," she said. "It's brand new; it's been jointly developed between the two companies."

DeepSafe is McAfee's answer to advanced hacking technologies, such as rootkits, that seem to be getting better and better at slipping malicious software onto PCs unnoticed.

"Most antivirus products today reside at the same level in the system as the operating system," Worley said. "What we're finding is a lot of the antivirus is simply not seeing a rootkit that's installed at that level of the system."

Rootkits use all kinds of sneaky tricks to cover their tracks, rewriting file names, and even modifying data in system monitoring tools so that everything seems normal.

In fact, it's somewhat of an open secret in the security industry that determined cyberattackers can skirt antivirus detection almost at will. Some victims go years without detecting so-called APT (advanced persistent threat) infections, even with their antivirus software up-to-date.

That's left vendors such as McAfee scrambling to make things harder for the bad guys

Worley describes DeepSafe as a "technology foundation," for future products. The first of these products will be an add-on to McAfee Endpoint Protection that will focus on rootkit detection for the enterprise. That's who's most interested in this kind of technology right now, Worley said. The product, yet unnamed, will be launched at McAfee's Focus conference in Las Vegas next month, "and as time progresses we will migrate this to the consumer space," she said.

McAfee was vague about how DeepSafe will actually work, but the company started working on the technology prior to the Intel acquisition, Worley said.
The product will work in VMware installations, but Microsoft and Citrix customers will have to wait a bit longer. "We're still working out how this system will work with those technologies over time," Worley said.

Although McAfee will be the first major antivirus vendor out of the gate with this type of technology, it isn't the only company going in this direction, said Lawrence Pingree, a Gartner research director. "What's going to happen is they're going to release this and then others are going to follow suit," he said.

DeepSafe is interesting, but it still isn't the kind of breakthrough technology that will justify McAfee's multibillion dollar price tag. "We're still waiting for real hard technology to come out of this merger that will really be a big innovation," he said.

nb : infoworld

 

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