Windows Store and the future of Malvari

    Caution, amateur opinion .

    The word “virus” in this text most often needs to be interpreted as “malware”.

    Windows 8 introduced us to the Windows Store, and Windows Phone introduced its app store.
    Starting with Windows 10, the course was aimed at uniting platforms and a single store (by the way, Google also expressed similar intentions ).

    For 20 minutes in Russian about all this I propose to see in the video.



    What does this mean for hackers in the long run:

    1. The required skill level will increase significantly, this will increase prices, and the elasticity is higher than that of bread and salt.
    2. The number of cryptoclockers so relevant today will be significantly reduced. Just because this functionality is present in the software, it will no longer be possible to run across all disks according to the file extension template. But if this happens, the application will not last more than 48 hours in the store.
    3. The security service will be able to immediately receive copies of all versions of the malware, and will be able to update the database of fake developer accounts centrally.
    4. Now it’s not enough just to write and script something, to send it to the established distribution sites. Each time you have to create or buy fake developer accounts with certificates, or buy stolen ones. There will be a surge in malvari that changes the source (there were already such ones).
    5. When a Linux user wants to install a new program, what does he do most often? That's right, it goes to the repository , and only sometimes to the search engine. Someday this will be true for Windows users, time and / or skillful marketing will teach the first thing to turn on the Windows store. Searching for programs through the browser will go into the category of exceptions, the number of Drive-by download attacks will decrease, because updates have become mandatory for initial editions.
    6. Most Desktop apps will go to the store. It will be more difficult for crackers to do good to people (hello WSService Tokens Extractor), and those who like joiners will have to be content with only a percentage of the current audience of their bots. Photoshop, AutoDesk, 3DMax, Visual Studio, Antiviruses ... will their distribution (attack) model remain the same, the question is.
    7. They pay a lot of money for Windows XP updates, but ATMs do not last forever, and someday they will be replaced with the OS anyway. Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, their support will not be infinite, they will still switch to Windows 10.
    8. But if / when 0day is found, then the Windows store will play in the opposite direction, millions of users will be infected in minutes. Thanks to the automatic update, which will probably be turned off immediately after the attack.


    But look at the analogue, Google Play. The quantity of malvari in it is large, the ways to bypass auto-checking by a robot are googled, few read permissions for programs, people root their devices themselves, use custom firmware of unknown origin, install applications bypassing the store, etc. ... It seems that Microsoft in this sense will simply redirect attack vector in a more controlled direction, the store is not a panacea, but definitely a step forward (and total control over the process, Windows as a service will absorb us entirely).

    This does not apply to the store, just leave it here.

    In the topic of firmware - "everything is cool, I watched it myself." There is a video"Natalya Kasperskaya and Alexei Viktorovich Lukatsky, Cisco Systems FSB." Even in commercial software, not everything is so smooth, in recent years there have been news about backdoors in the products of well-known brands.

    The first computer virus was created in ~ 1970 (this was not Morris's worm in 1988), and until the 2000s their quality was very high (right, who wrote them? There was no computer in every house). As soon as PCs went to mass, the general level decreased on both sides of the monitor, but today's realities have spawned a new kind of business, with millions of budgets and the complexity of SharePoint: D. 45 years have passed, and it will not be further clear whether all platforms will have their own store analogues (Microsoft, Google, Apple, Steam), and third parties (intermediaries between the developer and the platform owner) simply will have nowhere to sit down or something better will appear. But viruses as a phenomenon are definitely too early to retire.

    At any rate, the “general level” is not 100%, I also read quarterly and annual reports of anti-virus companies and heard about Carberp with others, I even looked at
    License to Kill - Malware Hunting with the Sysinternals Tools - Mark Russinovich (Stuxnet, Flame) , reports on PHD to combat them.

    Only registered users can participate in the survey. Please come in.

    In your opinion, how long does it take for users to get 80% + of Windows applications from the store, thereby significantly reducing the number of successful infections on their devices?


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