[gui-talk] Windows CE, Symbain Wide Open to Attack

Sat Oct 14 10:07:07 CDT 2006

Hi Nick,

What does "setp top" mean?  Does all this equate, roughtly, with saying that 
these to things, Windows CE and Sinbaine, are what I've heard called the 
"firmware" of such devices?
hose
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "W. Nick Dotson" <nickdotson at bellsouth.net>
To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 14, 2006 7:03 AM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Windows CE, Symbain Wide Open to Attack

A set top version of the Windows OS on which devices such as the BrailleNote 
family of devices run, as well as many sub-notebooks Etc...

Nick

On Fri, 13 Oct 2006 17:58:52 -0700, Joel Deutsch wrote:

 What is Windows CE?

 thanks.

 ----- Original Message ----- 
 From: "Christopher McMillan" <chrismcmillan at earthlink.net>
 To: <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>; <rehab at nfbnet.org>; <nfb-talk at nfbnet.org>
 Sent: Friday, October 13, 2006 5:40 PM
 Subject: [gui-talk] Windows CE, Symbain Wide Open to Attack

 Windows CE, Symbian wide open to attack

 Growing number of vulnerabilities turning up in both platforms

 John E. Dunn   Today's Top Stories    or  Other Security Stories
 October 13, 2006 (IDG News Service) -- Windows CE is at an especially high
 risk of attack according to a new analysis of malware threats.
 Kaspersky Lab researcher Alexander Gostev has produced the report, it which
 it is noted that the mobile version of Windows remains wide open to 
software
 exploits compared to desktop versions, and allows easy programming access 
to
 core operating system functions.
 Gostev refers to the growing number of vulnerabilities that have affected
 the platform, starting with the Duts proof-of-concept virus of 2004 that 
was
 able to exploit a security hole unknown to Microsoft, making it a zero-day
 flaw. "There's no doubt that these vulnerabilities exist. The question is
 only who will detect them first - a virus writer, or a white hat security
 researcher," said Gotsev. "The main environment used to develop malicious
 programs will be .Net, and a significant number of these viruses will
 exploit vulnerabilities in Windows CE."

 Although rival Symbian is a harder platform on which to create native
 malware -- programmers require expensive tools to build Symbian
 applications -- Gotsev is almost as scathing on its security design.

 He details a newly documented and verified vulnerability that would allow 
an
 attacker to cause a denial-of-service on a Symbian system simply by sending
 a small file capable of choking the Web browser, thereby slowing it down.
 "Even a cursory glance and a few simple experiments reveal that Symbian is
 riddled with errors," he said.

 To date, mobile malware and exploits -- which typically spread using a
 mobile device's Bluetooth connection -- have been a mostly theoretical
 issue, prompting some to question their significance.

 But the pessimism surrounding Symbian seems justified. In 2005, the
 TrojanDoombot.A , which harbored the Commwarrior.B worm, went turned up to
 bother a small number of Symbian Series 60 devices. More recently, the worm
 Commwarrior.Q hit the platform again.

 Reprinted with permission from

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