February 24, 2008

Windows Communication Protocols (MCPP) or , Holy Crap !

I really couldn't stop myself from blogging about this holy crap :

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc216513.aspx

Since release of communication protocols details by MS , everyone is busy reading his/here favorite long awaiting protocol documentation , and I`m not an exception . Most people thought Microsoft has just released few file-format and legacy protocol details, but ... . Here`s how some people react when they notice about the link :)

"" (9:33:58 PM) hdm: there goes my free time.. forever ""

And here`s a short description for those who`ve not understood the link :
Before this BIG release , Microsoft has never released any details nor documentations about it`s proprietary protocols , skipping MSDN poor / missing details and notes. RPC family of protocols are good old & famous samples . So everyone who wanted to implement his own staff working with any of these undocumented protocols had to actively analyze and reverse it by any possible method he were capable of . For complex protocols ( like most of those included in this release ) , reversing means A LOT of time and efforts . So having details of them now , can be considered extremely valuable even for experts . It means faster development , implementation and most interestingly auditing & fuzzing from security geeks point of view .

You can`t imagine how much cool it is , when you`re trying to learn RDP by reading rdesktop project codes line by line every night (sadly looking for never-findable technical details of protocol ) and suddenly you see all of virtual channels are documented and ready for download az PDF files ! The other interesting item is WMF , beeing favorite attack vector for long time , leading to some critical vulnerabilities ...

I guess nobody will clearly thanks Microsoft because of releasing them , cus it should have been released from very first days of every protocol birth . I`ve no idea what`s Microsoft`s plan behind this release but there ae many guesses out there . let`s wait and hear from professionals of the field . Anything related to anti-trust law suites in Europe ?
Btw , some of new protocols introduced with Win Server 2008 / Vista are also released among others .

happy reading protocol details !

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