McAfee VirusScan 8.8 Managed Client STIG

Containment during a virus outbreak is crucial. Infected hosts may attempt to spread malware and will use every network path available to them when spreading that infection. By containing the system when a detection is found, the malware will be restricted to that one system. Likewise, if malware is detected in a shared folder, maintaining the connection between a system and the shared folder would allow the malware to spread. Placing temporary restrictions on network connectivity is an effective mitigation mechanism.

These block connection settings will most often be used on a server housing shared folders and files, and will block the connection from any network user on a remote computer who attempts to read from, or write to, a threatened file in the shared folder. In addition, it will block the connection from any user on a remote computer who attempts to write an unwanted program to the computer. The connection will be unblocked after the specified amount of time, re-allowing access to the other shared files and folders, but will be re-blocked should those same file accesses be attempted.

Containment during a virus outbreak is crucial. Infected hosts may attempt to spread malware and will use every network path available to them when spreading that infection. By containing the system when a detection is found, the malware will be restricted to that one system. Likewise, if malware is detected in a shared folder, maintaining the connection between a system and the shared folder would allow the malware to spread. Placing temporary restrictions on network connectivity is an effective mitigation mechanism.

These block connection settings will most often be used on a server housing shared folders and files and will block the connection from any network user on a remote computer who attempts to read from, or write to, a threatened file in the shared folder. In addition, it will block the connection from any user on a remote computer who attempts to write an unwanted program to the computer. The connection will be unblocked after the specified amount of time, re-allowing access to the other shared files and folders but will be re-blocked should those same file accesses be attempted.

Antivirus software is the most commonly used technical control for malware threat mitigation. Real-time scanning of files as they are written to disk is a crucial first line of defense from malware attacks.

When scanning for malware, excluding specific file types will increase the risk of a malware-infected file going undetected. By configuring antivirus software to scan all file types, the scanner has a higher success rate at detecting and eradicating malware.

Due to the ability of malware to mutate after infection, standard antivirus signatures may not be able to catch new strains or variants of the malware. Typically, these strains and variants will share unique characteristics with others in their virus family. By using a generic signature to detect the shared characteristics, using wildcards where differences lie, the generic signature can detect viruses even if they are padded with extra, meaningless code. This method of detection is Heuristic detection.

Malware may have infected a file that is necessary to the user. By configuring the antivirus software to first attempt cleaning the infected file, availability to the file is not sacrificed. If a cleaning attempt is not successful, however, deleting the file is the only safe option so as to ensure the malware does is not introduced onto the system or network.

Email has become one of the most frequently used methods of spreading malware, through embedded HTML code and attachments. User awareness and training, warning users to not open suspicious emails or email attachments, and not clicking on hyperlinks, etc. from unknown or known senders, will not fully protect from email-borne malware. Mass mailing worms are similar to email-borne viruses, but are self-contained, rather than infecting an existing file. Protecting from email-borne viruses and mass mailing worms by scanning email upon delivery mitigates the risk of infection via email.

Buffer overflow is an anomaly where a program, while writing data to a buffer, overruns the buffer's boundary and overwrites adjacent memory. This anomaly has been used maliciously, explicitly to craft exploits. Buffer overflow attacks compose greater than 25% of malware attacks. Without buffer overflow protection enabled, systems are more vulnerable to attacks that attempt to overwrite adjacent memory in the stack frame. Buffer overflow protection is only configurable on non-64-bit systems.

An effective awareness program explains proper rules of behavior for use of an organization's IT systems and information. Accordingly, awareness programs should include guidance to users on malware incident prevention, which can help reduce the frequency and severity of malware incidents.

Organizations should also make users aware of policies and procedures that apply to malware incident handling, such as how to identify if a host may be infected, how to report a suspected incident, and what users need to do to assist with incident handling.

Ensuring the antivirus software alerts the users when a buffer overflow is detected will ensure the user is aware of the incident and be able to more closely relate the incident to actions being performed by the user at the time of the detection.

While logging is imperative to forensic analysis, logs could grow to the point of impacting disk space on the system. In order to avoid the risk of logs growing to the size of impacting the operating system, the log size will be restricted, but must also be large enough to retain forensic value.

Adware, like spyware, is, at best, an annoyance by presenting unwanted advertisement to the user of a computer, sometimes in the form of a popup. At worst, it redirects the user to malicious websites. Detecting and blocking will mitigate the likelihood of users being tricked into visiting sites with malicious content.

Antivirus software vendors use collective intelligence from sensors and cross-vector intelligence from web, email, and network threats to compile scores that reflect the likelihood of whether a file in question is malware. The collective intelligence is constantly being updated, more frequently than the typical daily antivirus signature files. With File Reputation lookup, a more real-time response to potential malicious code is realized than with the local-running antivirus software, since by querying the cloud-based database when a file appears to be suspicious, up-to-the-minute intelligence is provided. This type of protection reduces the threat protection time period from days to milliseconds, increases malware detection rates, and reduces downtime and remediation costs associated with malware attacks. Using File Reputation lookup is mandated by US CYBERCOM on DoD systems.

Email has become one of the most frequently used methods of spreading malware, through embedded HTML code and attachments. User awareness and training, warning users to not open suspicious emails or email attachments, and not clicking on hyperlinks, etc. from unknown or known senders, will not fully protect from email-borne malware. Mass mailing worms are similar to email-borne viruses, but are self-contained, rather than infecting an existing file. Protecting from email-borne viruses and mass mailing worms by scanning email upon delivery mitigates the risk of infection via email.

Log management is essential to ensuring that computer security records are stored in sufficient detail for an appropriate period of time. Routine log analysis is beneficial for identifying security incidents, policy violations, fraudulent activity, and operational problems. Logs are also useful when performing auditing and forensic analysis, supporting internal investigations, establishing baselines, and identifying operational trends and long-term problems.

Many malicious programs have attempted to disable VirusScan by stopping services and processes and leaving the system vulnerable to attack. Self-protection is an important feature of VSE that prevents malicious programs from disabling VirusScan or any of its services or processes. Many trojans and viruses will attempt to terminate or even delete security products. VSE's self-protection features protect VirusScan registry values and processes from being altered or deleted by malicious code. This rule protects the McAfee security product from modification by any process not listed in the policy's exclusion list.

Many malicious programs have attempted to disable VirusScan by stopping services and processes and leaving the system vulnerable to attack. Self-protection is an important feature of VSE that prevents malicious programs from disabling VirusScan or any of its services or processes. Many trojans and viruses will attempt to terminate or even delete security products. VSE's self-protection features protect VirusScan registry values and processes from being altered or deleted by malicious code. This rule protects the McAfee security product from modification by any process not listed in the policy's exclusion list.

This rule will block common programs from running from the Temp directory; however, this rule is much more restrictive in that it stops nearly all processes from launching in the Temp folder. Most viruses need to be run once by a person before infecting a computer. This can be done in many ways, such as opening an executable attachment in an email or downloading a program from the Internet. An executable needs to exist on the disk before Windows can run it. A common way for applications to achieve this is to save the file in the user's or system's Temp directory and then run it. One purpose of this rule is to enforce advice that is frequently given to users: "don't open attachments from email." The other purpose of this rule is to close security holes introduced by application bugs. Older versions of Outlook and Internet Explorer are notorious for automatically executing code without the user needing to do anything but preview an email or view a website.

A common distribution method for adware and spyware is to have the user download an executable file and run it automatically from the Downloaded Program Files folder. This rule is specific to Microsoft Internet Explorer and prevents software installations through the web browser. Internet Explorer runs code from the Downloaded Program Files directory, notably ActiveX controls. Some vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer and viruses place an .exe file into this directory and run it. This rule closes that attack vector.

Autorun files are used to automatically launch program files, typically setup files from CDs. Preventing other computers from making a connection and creating or altering autorun.inf files can prevent spyware and adware from being executed. There are many spyware and virus programs distributed on CDs.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is the preferred communication method used by botnet herders and remote-access trojans to control botnets (a set of scripts or an independent program that connects to IRC). IRC allows an attacker to control infected machines that are sitting behind network address translation (NAT), and the bot can be configured to connect back to the command and control server listening on any port.

When scanning for malware, excluding specific files will increase the risk of a malware-infected file going undetected. By configuring antivirus software without any exclusions, the scanner has a higher success rate at detecting and eradicating malware.

Malware may have infected a file that is necessary to the user. By configuring the antivirus software to first attempt cleaning the infected file, availability to the file is not sacrificed. If a cleaning attempt is not successful, however, deleting the file is the only safe option so as to ensure the malware is not introduced onto the system or network.

Antivirus software vendors use collective intelligence from sensors and cross-vector intelligence from web, email, and network threats to compile scores that reflect the likelihood of whether a file in question is malware. The collective intelligence is constantly being updated, more frequently than the typical daily antivirus signature files. With File Reputation lookup, a more real-time response to potential malicious code is realized than with the local-running antivirus software, since by querying the cloud-based database when a file appears to be suspicious, up-to-the-minute intelligence is provided. This type of protection reduces the threat protection time period from days to milliseconds, increases malware detection rates, and reduces downtime and remediation costs associated with malware attacks. Using File Reputation lookup is mandated by US CYBERCOM on DoD systems.

Log management is essential to ensuring that computer security records are stored in sufficient detail for an appropriate period of time. Routine log analysis is beneficial for identifying security incidents, policy violations, fraudulent activity, and operational problems. Logs are also useful when performing auditing and forensic analysis, supporting internal investigations, establishing baselines, and identifying operational trends and long-term problems.

Access Protection prevents unwanted changes to a computer by restricting access to specified ports, files and folders, shares, and registry keys and values. It prevents users from stopping McAfee processes and services, which are critical before and during outbreaks. Access Protection for VSE uses predefined and user-defined rules to strengthen systems against virus attacks. For instance, rules are used to specify which items can and cannot be accessed. Each rule can be configured to block and/or report access violations when they occur, and rules can also be disabled.

Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) include Spyware, Adware, Remote Administration Tools, Dialers, Password Crackers, Jokes, and Key Loggers. While PUPs do not typically have any infections capability on their own, they rely on malware or other attach mechanisms to be installed onto target hosts, after which they will collect and transfer data from the host to an external host and/or will be used as attach mechanisms. Configuring the antivirus software to attempt to clean the file first will allow for the possibility of a false positive. In most cases, however, the secondary action of delete will be used, mitigating the risk of the PUPs being installed and used maliciously.

This rule prevents all program from running files from the Temp directory. This would protect against a large number of trojans and questionable web installation mechanisms that are used by many adware and spyware applications.

Boot sector viruses will install into the boot sector of a system, ensuring that they will execute when the user boots the system. This risk is mitigated by scanning boot sectors at each startup of the system.

"An effective awareness program explains proper rules of behavior for use of an organization's IT systems and information. Accordingly, awareness programs should include guidance to users on malware incident prevention, which can help reduce the frequency and severity of malware incidents.

Organizations should also make users aware of policies and procedures that apply to malware incident handling, such as how to identify if a host may be infected, how to report a suspected incident, and what users need to do to assist with incident handling.

Ensuring the antivirus software alerts the users when malware is detected will ensure the user is informed of the incident and be able to more closely relate the incident to actions being performed by the user at the time of the detection."

Log management is essential to ensuring that computer security records are stored in sufficient detail for an appropriate period of time. Routine log analysis is beneficial for identifying security incidents, policy violations, fraudulent activity, and operational problems. Logs are also useful when performing auditing and forensic analysis, supporting internal investigations, establishing baselines, and identifying operational trends and long-term problems.

Log management is essential to ensuring that computer security records are stored in sufficient detail for an appropriate period of time. Routine log analysis is beneficial for identifying security incidents, policy violations, fraudulent activity, and operational problems. Logs are also useful when performing auditing and forensic analysis, supporting internal investigations, establishing baselines, and identifying operational trends and long-term problems.

Antivirus signature files are updated almost daily by antivirus software vendors. These files are made available to antivirus clients as they are published. Keeping virus signature files as current as possible is vital to the security of any system. The antivirus software product must be configured to receive those updates automatically in order to afford the expected protection.

Email has become one of the most frequently used methods of spreading malware, through embedded HTML code and attachments. User awareness and training, warning users to not open suspicious emails or email attachments, and not clicking on hyperlinks, etc. from unknown or known senders, will not fully protect from email-borne malware. Mass mailing worms are similar to email-borne viruses, but are self-contained, rather than infecting an existing file. Protecting from email-borne viruses and mass mailing worms by scanning email upon delivery mitigates the risk of infection via email.

Email has become one of the most frequently used methods of spreading malware, through embedded HTML code and attachments. User awareness and training, warning users to not open suspicious emails or email attachments, and not clicking on hyperlinks, etc. from unknown or known senders, will not fully protect from email-borne malware. Mass mailing worms are similar to email-borne viruses, but are self-contained, rather than infecting an existing file. Protecting from email-borne viruses and mass mailing worms by scanning email upon delivery mitigates the risk of infection via email.

Email has become one of the most frequently used methods of spreading malware, through embedded HTML code and attachments. User awareness and training, warning users to not open suspicious emails or email attachments, and not clicking on hyperlinks, etc. from unknown or known senders, will not fully protect from email-borne malware. Mass mailing worms are similar to email-borne viruses, but are self-contained, rather than infecting an existing file. Protecting from email-borne viruses and mass mailing worms by scanning email upon delivery mitigates the risk of infection via email.

While logging is imperative to forensic analysis, logs could grow to the point of impacting disk space on the system. In order to avoid the risk of logs growing to the size of impacting the operating system, the log size will be restricted, but must also be large enough to retain forensic value.

Antivirus software is the mostly commonly used technical control for malware threat mitigation. Antivirus software on hosts should be configured to scan all hard drives and folders regularly to identify any file system infections and to scan any removable media, if applicable, before media is inserted into the system. Not scheduling a regular scan of the hard drives of a system and/or not configuring the scan to scan all files and running processes introduces a higher risk of threats going undetected.

When scanning for malware, excluding specific file types will increase the risk of a malware-infected file going undetected. By configuring antivirus software to scan all file types, the scanner has a higher success rate at detecting and eradicating malware.

Malware is often packaged within an archive. In addition, archives might have other archives within. Not scanning archive files introduces the risk of infected files being introduced into the environment.

Due to the ability of malware to mutate after infection, standard antivirus signatures may not be able to catch new strains or variants of the malware. Typically, these strains and variants will share unique characteristics with others in their virus family. By using a generic signature to detect the shared characteristics, using wildcards where differences lie, the generic signature can detect viruses even if they are padded with extra, meaningless code. This method of detection is Heuristic detection.

Malware may have infected a file that is necessary to the user. By configuring the antivirus software to first attempt cleaning the infected file, availability to the file is not sacrificed. If a cleaning attempt is not successful, however, deleting the file is the only safe option so as to ensure the malware is not introduced onto the system or network.

Log management is essential to ensuring that computer security records are stored in sufficient detail for an appropriate period of time. Routine log analysis is beneficial for identifying security incidents, policy violations, fraudulent activity, and operational problems. Logs are also useful when performing auditing and forensic analysis, supporting internal investigations, establishing baselines, and identifying operational trends and long-term problems.

Log management is essential to ensuring that computer security records are stored in sufficient detail for an appropriate period of time. Routine log analysis is beneficial for identifying security incidents, policy violations, fraudulent activity, and operational problems. Logs are also useful when performing auditing and forensic analysis, supporting internal investigations, establishing baselines, and identifying operational trends and long-term problems.