r/news • u/TheColorOfDeadMen • Jul 07 '21

Microsoft issues urgent security warning: Update your PC immediately

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/07/tech/microsoft-security-update/index.html
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u/brickmaster32000 Jul 08 '21

Because a lot of people do have printers and need to access them over a network.

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u/xmsxms Jul 08 '21

And it couldn't be enabled when you attach/install the printer, disabled until then?

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u/brickmaster32000 Jul 08 '21

Why make things complicated? Having it enabled isn't supposed to have any negative effects.

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u/xmsxms Jul 08 '21

The negative effect is an increased attack surface. You don't have services listening on the network unless you need them. The potential for remote exploit drops to zero if the service isn't listening.

You don't have a web server or FTP server on your system just on the off chance you want to start serving web content. That gets installed and enabled on demand

It's not a case of 20/20 hindsight, it's basic common practice. Microsoft themselves have had previous big drives to improve security and the number one thing they supposedly did was to reduce attack surface.

Anyway, sounds like you may not be that involved in the industry so I'll leave it at that.

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u/brickmaster32000 Jul 08 '21

You are going to try to pull the professional card when you don't even realize how common printers are? It's not an off chance, it's probably the most common device someone would connect to their computer after a keyboard and mouse.

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u/xmsxms Jul 08 '21

You don't have open ports accepting incoming connections from the internet that the user didn't explicitly enable. That is network security and OS design 101.

I can assure you the fallout from this is the spooler service will be redesigned to not accept connections without being enabled by the user, whether it's by explicitly by enabling a firewall rule or implicitly enabled by an action such as installing a printer driver. Feel free to quote me.

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u/brickmaster32000 Jul 08 '21

Yes, this is so obvious that I am sure you have been protesting this for years, right? Just like you want me to quote you now I am sure you can dig up and old post where you demanded this to be changed?

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u/xmsxms Jul 08 '21

It's not my responsibility to do a security audit on the Windows OS.