Month of Apple Bugs Debuts in January

An anonymous reader writes "A pair of security researchers has picked January 2007 as the Month of Apple Bugs, a project in which each passing day will feature a previously undocumented security hole in Apple's OS X operating system or in Apple applications that run on top of it. According to a post over at The Washington Post's Security Fix blog, the project is being put together by researchers Kevin Finisterre and the guy who ran November's Month of Kernel Bugs project." From the post: "It should be interesting to see whether Apple does anything to try and scuttle this pending project. In November, a researcher who focuses most of his attention on bugs in database giant Oracle's software announced his intention to launch a "Week of Oracle Database Bugs" project during the first week of December. The researcher abruptly canceled the project shortly after the initial announcement, without offering any explanation."

Some thoughts and considerations

[daveschroeder (516195)]

Brian Krebs seems to have some kind of fascination with "proving" that Mac OS X is "insecure" while simultaneously accusing Apple of using strong-arm tactics to try to silence critics. (Note: going after people for leaking confidential information is not the same as a situation in which people are making security issues known.)

Every reasonable person on the planet already knows, and has known, that every OS has bugs, vulnerabilities, and security issues, and Mac OS X is no exception. The simple, undeniable truth is that for a variety of reasons, including marketshare and the security architecture of the OS, Mac OS X is a far more secure general purpose desktop operating system for most users than any viable alternative. There is almost zero malware of any kind "in the wild", no malware with vectors for mass propagation, and little with ANY kind of propagation capability whatsoever. And contrary to popular opinion among some, Apple does indeed respond to, and fix, security vulnerabilities, including crediting the discoverer(s) when said person or entity provides Apple with enough information to verify the issue. It has continuously and consistently improved on this front, mostly as a result of working with people in the enterprise and academic communities (e.g., Apple University Executive Forum and MacEnterprise.org). There is always room for improvement, but we have seen Apple make marked progress in disclosing, accurately describing, and fixing vulnerabilities in Mac OS X. As with most commercial vendors, Apple does not comment on security issues before they are fixed. So don't expect Apple to make public statements and explanations of any kind until after a particular vulnerability is addressed.

What should be "interesting" to see isn't whether or not Apple "does anything" to "scuttle" the project; it will be whether Apple has previously had any chance to respond to any of the issues that will be disclosed. If not, this little project doesn't prove anything at all, other than that every operating system, Mac OS X included, has bugs. (Duh?) What's important is the general security architecture, practical security state-of-affairs on the platform, and how the vendor responds to issues. I'll be far more interested to see how and when Apple responds to the issues raised, and if it properly "triages" the issues and handles them accordingly (on this note, predict that people will complain Apple is taking "too long" to fix some of the issues, when in reality it is devoting programming and testing and QA resources to the issues in the order of importance and impact).

Re:

[gravesb (967413)]

I also think the quality of the bugs will be interesting. If all 30 bugs are show stoppers, then there are some serious underlying issues that should be addressed. If, however, they are insignificant or extremely contrived (this application can install malware if the user types in the admin password), then won't it really be an admission that the parties involved can't find critical security holes? (Not that they don't exist, its almost impossible to prove a negative in general one, and that one specific

Re:Some thoughts and considerations

[Incongruity (70416)]

(I'm not a mac fanboy, but I play one on slashdot)

I also think the quality of the bugs will be interesting. If all 30 bugs are show stoppers, then there are some serious underlying issues that should be addressed.
And I totally agree. If there are bugs, better to have them out there and then fixed than it is to have them be obscure pieces of knowledge that a motivated few will use for their gain.

In the end, a month of OS X bugspotting can only be a good thing, IMHO.

Re:Some thoughts and considerations

[Trillan (597339)]

I don't oppose making the bugs public at all. But I do think this needs to be done in a fair manner.

Specifically:

1. Bugs should be in Mac OS X 10.4 (or possibly 10.3).
   Pre-release software is not a fair target. It's under NDA, and is bound to have a bunch of issues. Apple has a system in place for dealing with 10.5 issues.
2. All bugs should be reported to Apple via Radar.
   Posting without giving Apple advance notice is fine, but forcing Apple to deal with potentially thousands of reports from readers isn't.
3. The web and Radar report should both include steps to reproduce.
   This really falls under the category of "duh." A bug report that can't be reproduced is simply not worth much (although it isn't entirely worthless).

Re:Some thoughts and considerations

[Trillan (597339)]

The three points I addressed were pre-release, radar, and repro steps.

Now I consider bugs from private betas covered by NDAs to be forbidden fruit, and that's true of Microsoft as well. However, public betas are fair game. So it depends on the nature of the release, both for Microsoft and Apple..

Although it's possible there's another system somewhere, the only system I'm aware of for reporting bugs to Microsoft requires me to pay them. They may, at their discretion, return the money. I'm not risking my money to help Microsoft, so I don't expect anyone else to. And since Microsoft doesn't have a public and free bug reporting system, the repro steps would have to be public only at first. I don't like public only. Ideally, vendors should be notified first; simultaneously is the minimum. But by plugging their ears and requiring a credit card number, they're digging their own grave here.

I should say, by the way, that I don't especially like bugs being publicly disclosed quickly. It wouldn't be the way I'd handle it. But I don't think people who do it should be tarred and feathered. Maybe that wasn't clear.

Re:Some thoughts and considerations

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

It would be, if ever Apple actually fixed bugs. The oldest bugs I have in their bug tracking system marked as 'open' are from 2004. The latest one relates to the implementation of NSMutableArray's -sortUsingSelector: method. This is given the name of a compare method and sorts the objects in the array by calling it on pairs of objects. I took some code that used this and worked on PowerPC and compiled it for Intel. After calling this method, the results were incorrectly sorted. Calling it again, they were in a different, still unsorted, order.

I thought it must be my code, so I added a load of debugging output to my -compare: method. I found that the it was giving the correct result, and enough comparisons were performed to be able to create a sorted array. The final results, however, did not reflect this; if the comparisons said a is before b, and b is before c, the resulting array would often contain a c b.

I was going to just copy the GNUstep implementation of this method into a category and use this in my application, but when I looked at it I noticed that theirs called -sortUsingFunction:context: where the context was a the selector and the function was one that just invoked the method. I wondered if Cocoa did this too, so I tried using -sortUsingFunction:context: with a function that just called my -compare: method. And then it worked. It seems that someone wrote some 'clever' optimisations for Intel in the -sortUsingSelector: method, and broke it completely.

Re:

[kwerle (39371)]

I'm thinking that you're not the only person who sorts arrays using sortUsingSelector on an intel machine.

I'm also thinking that they probably haven't done anything with that particular code in the past 8 years.

I am thinking that it is a problem with your code.

Re:Some thoughts and considerations

[kwerle (39371)]

Can you think of any possible reason why...

You have a memory smasher on Intel that either behaves differently or correctly on PPC.

That's the one that jumps first to mind...

Re:

[Ed Avis (5917)]

In a sense it matters nothing at all whether Apple has previously had a chance to respond. I don't think any exploit tool has a special mode where it only takes advantage of vulnerabilities if the vendor has had a reasonable time to fix them. Nobody should care about how good the vendor's excuses are about why the security holes haven't been fixed; only that they haven't.

Re:Some thoughts and considerations

[daveschroeder (516195)]

This has nothing to do with whether or not holes will be maliciously exploited by some; of course they will be.

What matters most is how Apple responds to issues once it knows about them, whether it discovers them internally, is privately informed, or finds out via a project like this.

You can't fix a bug you don't know about, and saying Apple should somehow magically know about them all itself is disingenuous. All software will have bugs, and people other than the vendor will always discover some of them. Some of these bugs will be able to be used as avenues for exploit.

The only question is whether, as a responsible security researcher, you give the vendor a chance to respond before disclosing, or not. This has zero to with what other malicious people will do.

I understand you're probably one of those people who doesn't think there is any value at all in informing the vendor and giving them an opportunity to fix an issue before widely disclosing it, so this discussion isn't likely to get anywhere.

Of course?

[SuperKendall (25149)]

This has nothing to do with whether or not holes will be maliciously exploited by some; of course they will be.

Of course? Why would that be?

Some holes disclosed previously have, for example, included flaws in the OS X SSH daemon. You might think that would make a great target to exploit, except that it doesn't ship enabled by default - so the universe of computers you are going to be able to reach with a remote attack is exceedingly small. Thus, even though there's an exploit you probably would not see one for that hole.

Similarly other exploits previously disclosed have been in areas you can only reach by penetrating the OS in the first place, or gaining admin access. Again this initial effort to reach that position makes writing exploits more trouble than it's worth.

So generically, you cannot say that every hole automatically leads to a malicious exploit. If that were true, there actually would be viruses and malware for OS X today.

Re:Some thoughts and considerations

[Abcd1234 (188840)]

That's insane. No software product, no matter how well intentioned the developers, will ever be completely absent of bugs come release-time. Obviously, defensive code practices and other techniques can reduce the number of bugs generated, and a well-designed architecture can minimize the impacts of bugs that *do* leak through, but no product will ever be perfect.

The "Windoze Haters" feel the way they do because, time and again, Microsoft has demonstrated that they produce software which is not only very buggy (certainly more so than their competators), but faulty by it's very design (eg, wiring IE into the OS, which made it a perfect vector for infection). Worse yet, when they release fixes, they are just as likely to introduce *new* bugs as fix the old ones, demonstrating a significant lack of competance (not to mention further calling into question the underlying architecture).

Re:

[Achromatic1978 (916097)]

Nowhere did I ever say the code would be perfect. What I /was criticizing was the GP's attitude that it didn't matter what bugs Appple did have in OS X as long as they 'reacted' to them when announced. What I did was contrast that with the constant lambasting that MS stuff gets (indeed, legitimately, a lot of the time) - for doing that, 'reacting to security issues'. It's not acceptable for MS to do that, so why is it (as the GP said) the 'most important thing' that 'Apple does that'? That was the entirety

Re:Some thoughts and considerations

[Abcd1234 (188840)]

Except that, thus far, OSX has proven itself to be far less bug-ridden, out of the box, than any MS product. If, in five years, Apple has proven to be as unreliable as MS, you can bet people will be complaining just as loudly about them.

Re:

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746)]

So it's okay if (and I'm not suggesting this is the case) you design something with severe holes all over the place, as long as you fix them when it's brought to your attention? You might want to tell all the "Windoze Haters" here. Apparently this is not acceptable.

You've presented a false dichotomy. It is unreasonable for a developer to create insecure bug ridden software, with no testing, unless it is unlikely for other reasons that that software will be compromised (only running on an internal net or

Re:

[BarryJacobsen (526926)]

What if the reason they haven't been fixed is because some asshat is waiting for a publicity stunt to reveal 30 some exploits that have been found instead of giving them the information to fix them NOW. Some how if this was any field other than computers I think people would look at this very differently: I have some information about cancer and can give a formula that almost any scientist could turn into a working cure given a reasonable amount of time, but I'm going to wait a few weeks and then release p

Re:

[cyngus (753668)]

I don't care at all about a vendor's excuses, I care about their reasons. If the reason there is a bug that hasn't been fixed is that they were working on something more important, good. Its all a matter of priorities. If there is a bug in the airport implementation that only occurs when doing something obscure like roaming across access points and transitioning from an 802.11a to an 802.11g connection while using certificate authentication, big deal that you didn't catch it. I'm glad Apple didn't waste res

Re:

[Zebra_X (13249)]

"Mac OS X is a far more secure general purpose desktop operating system for most users than any viable alternative. There is almost zero malware of any kind "in the wild", no malware with vectors for mass propagation, and little with ANY kind of propagation capability whatsoever."

Because none has been written? How many people have bothered to write something for an OS with ~ 4% of the market share when there is a whole 96% out there waiting to be owned, apparently no one. There has been one attempt at a rud

Re:

[ceoyoyo (59147)]

Your argument has some merit, but the difference between zero wild exploits for OS X an what, 150,000 or something, for Windows would indicate there's something more going on than marketshare.

Sure, OS X gets shielded because it's not as common, but total protection? I think being built on UNIX, already having security features that MS is building into Vista, separating user accounts and root, all incoming ports closed by default and not having your web browser and mail client allowed to do whatever they wa

Re:

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746)]

Because none has been written? How many people have bothered to write something for an OS with ~ 4% of the market share when there is a whole 96% out there waiting to be owned, apparently no one.

This is an unsupported assertion. Logically, just because there are no propagating worms does not imply that no one has tried and failed to create one.

There has been one attempt at a rudimentary Trojan recently, but OS X goes largely unexploited, and for good reasons - too much work with little gain.

If it is

Re:

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746)]

I'm just making the point that 95% of the people out there just don't know enough to prevent getting pwnd.

I'd argue that systems don't let people easily run untrusted software safely and give them enough information and granularity of control to allow the average user to avoid being compromised. Apple announced some new frameworks in 10.5, and then pulled the references to them from their public facing Web pages. Those frameworks were a Mandatory Access Control framework for applications and an applicat

Re:

[Udo Schmitz (738216)]

whether Apple has previously had any chance to respond to any of the issues that will be disclosed.

No they hadn't and they won't. From the Washington Post [washingtonpost.com]: "As with the kernel bugs project, Apple will be given no advance notice with the Month of Apple bugs, LMH said in an interview conducted over instant message."
Just a publicity stunt.

A month of Apple bugs...

[by Anonymous Coward]

A week of Apple games.

Irresponsible

[Phroggy (441)]

I'm all in favor of taking Apple to task for failing to fix a bunch of bugs, but releasing detailed information to the public without notifying the vendor first is simply irresponsible. The only reason it's being done this way is shameless self-promotion: if Apple fixed all the bugs in advance, then they'd have nothing left to show for their month of Apple bugs, so people wouldn't freak out about it.

In short, their goal isn't really to get these bugs fixed ASAP; their goal is to spread fear and panic. If the bugs get fixed eventually, that's just icing on the cake. The problem with this is that it could cause some real problems for Mac network admins out there, many of whom don't have a lot of extra time to deal with unpatched security holes. If it was just a matter of "sticking it to Apple", that would be one thing, but this will affect a lot of innocent victims.

Yes, I'm a Mac user. No, that isn't why I feel this way; Microsoft should get advance notice too.

Re:

[moore.dustin (942289)]

He is many things, but not irresponsible.

Sure he may be doing this for self promotion, but what is wrong with using your knowledge to get some recognition? What he gets from this will be worth far more than what he would if he submitted these bugs to be fixed to Apple. Unless Apple is ready to thank he personally for all the bug fixes in a public manner and allow him to post the exploits after they were fixed, then why not?

It is not his public duty to make sure Apple's OS is safe, if anything, it is his

Re:

[soft_guy (534437)]

In my opinion, if he has already submitted the bugs to Apple (easy to do - visit bugreport.apple.com) and they haven't fixed them yet - then in my opinion, what he is doing is totally OK. If he didn't at least file a bug with Apple, while he may (or may not, IANAL), be in legal troubel, he is at the very least kind of a jerk.

Re:

[jellomizer (103300)]

Submit the bug to Apple/Microsoft wait a 2-5 days then post it publically. That way you get the best of both sides.

First you give the company a head start in fixing the security hole before a well package exploit go public.
But you get you shameless self promition of being "Mr. Uber Geek, I am smarter then you because I have more free time to do these things.".
If the patch isn't released shortly after posing people can take additonal measures to protect their system.

It is like finding a persons (lets call h

Re:

[truthsearch (249536)]

If the person who started this whole Month of Bugs is trying to remain anonymous then how can it be for self-promotion? If they're trying to spread fear it's to make the public put pressure on the vendors to fix flaws.

Re:

[jellomizer (103300)]

No you point to the security updates. To proove there were wholes. And you tell them there is a good chance you will get more. Also if a guy is going around claim that holes don't exist. Just put him in the same group of people who beleave man didn't go to the moon, or Macro-Evolution is a myth. Fixing the bug before it is a problem is better then just trying to proove some wacko wrong.

Re:

[Trillan (597339)]

There is still no evidence that SecureWorks' hole exists. The subsequent patches from Apple are completely unrelated to the claimed vulnerability. I'm still waiting to see what SecureWorks has; so far, it really looks like nothing.

Hint to Apple PR: you can make hay from this

[toby (759)]

Memo to Apple PR:
Work with this guy. Simply ensure that each bug identified is fixed ASAP, and issue a press release about it. This lets you capture and keep the high ground by showing that you care more about security and quality than the competition does. Up for it?

Just remember, where the big bad guys see "little people to be silenced," others see "opportunity."

Re:Hint to Apple PR: you can make hay from this

[Mr. Underbridge (666784)]

Memo to Apple PR: Work with this guy. Simply ensure that each bug identified is fixed ASAP, and issue a press release about it. This lets you capture and keep the high ground by showing that you care more about security and quality than the competition does. Up for it?

Memo to toby: We don't negotiate with terrorists.

--Steve

Memo to Mr Underbridge

[toby (759)]

... :-)

Re:Hint to Apple PR: you can make hay from this

[tonywong (96839)]

That just escalates this guy's standing and position in the 'newsy' community. Why would you want to build his fame and fortune for him? You pander to his fancies of being a security guru and he will hold you hostage with a 'security review' every time he needs a PR boost.

Ignore this guy and keep doing things the way they've been done. It has been responsive and working.

Re:

[Udo Schmitz (738216)]

Memo to toby:
I doubt the guy wants to work with anyone.
As I just quoted in another post:Washington Post [washingtonpost.com]: "As with the kernel bugs project, Apple will be given no advance notice with the Month of Apple bugs, LMH said in an interview conducted over instant message."
I guess his emphasis is on page views and ad revenue. Not making the world of computers a saver place. Hope that doesn't shatter your weltanschauung.

Test of a common theory!

[GodInHell (258915)]

Hey! This is a unique (and for this mac user, kind of worrisome) oppourtunity to test the MS theory that realeasing this kind of information causes a prolifieration of exploits and only serve to teach people what kind of holes to look through.

If there is a sudden spike in viri and back end hacks on macs, then we'll know. The question is, will the community care either way - if it turns out that this kind of activity rapidly accelerates the spread of black-hat script idiots, will there be reprecussions, or w

Re:

[peragrin (659227)]

well people like rob enderle will say see there was a 300% increase in Mac viruses just this week. of course it means it went from 1 to 4 but hey at least he would be right for once.

The fact is that *nix's dealt with mass propagating viruses and auto excuting text formats 20 years ago. They figured out how to limit their spread simply. OS X while not bullet proof or perfect has at least a solid foundation to work with. Windows including Vista has an unstable one at best. Vista's security system at least

Re:

[uhlume (597871)]

Vista's security system at least in the betas could be bypassed by changing an entry in the registry. That's secure?

...And *NIX's security system can be bypassed by chmod -R 666'ing /etc, adding all users to wheel/sudoers, and/or...well, really, any number of ways. That's secure?

Oh wait, yeah, it is.

It goes without saying that any administrator knowledgeable enough to change system settings (particularly those which aren't exposed for easy access) has the capability and the potential to change them to some

Also by this author...

[XxtraLarGe (551297)]

Month of Homeland Security Vulnerabilities!
The places where terrorists could to the absolute most damage if they were to strike within the next few hours!

Re:

[telbij (465356)]

And you thought Windows was a security nightmare. no... really.

A benefit to the Mac community, surely?

[xwizbt (513040)]

At the moment, MacOS X Hints has a couple of bugs as its first two articles. One is a flaw in Text Editor, the other a possible data loss in iWeb. A month of Apple bugs, to me, means at least 30 bugs found and fixed. Apple has a proven track record when it comes to security updates, and the Software Update function works extremely well to roll out updates with an awe-inspiring ease.

I'd like to say I'm confident they won't find thirty bugs, but that's unlikely. The important thing to focus on, however, is th

Hmm, January 2007...

[kiltyj (936758)]

Isn't something else happening in the OS world... near the end of the month, maybe?

I disapprove

[Sloppy (14984)]

I have to admit I sometimes waffle on my opinion regarding disclosing to vendors first, versus disclosing to the whole world simultaneously. Both approaches have some advantage.

This approach does not.

If the goal of disclosing to the whole world is to give users a chance to defend themselves (since it is assume that black hats may already know about these holes, and may already be expoiting them) then why delay until January?! And why dole out the information one bug, one day, at a time?

By delaying, you gain the disadvantage of vendor-only disclosure: today's users aren't getting the information to at least try to protect themselves from exploits that are possible right now.

Best-case, you also may get the advantage of vendor-only disclosure. Maybe Apple has been told about these bugs and has had an opportunity to address them. But the article doesn't say that. We just don't know. So that's a best case, and the worst case is that we'll get the disadvantage of simultaneous public disclosure: the script kiddies get to start exploiting the bugs right away, while the users have to wait for a fix from a big clumsy vendor. And that's not counting the intentional delay, where people might be exploiting the bug between now and the disclosure.

This is a bad idea, no matter which camp you're in (exception: black hats).

Re:

[MetaKey (896166)]

"Maybe Apple has been told about these bugs and has had an opportunity to address them. But the article doesn't say that. We just don't know."

Actually, yes, we do know.

FTFA: "As with the kernel bugs project, Apple will be given no advance notice with the Month of Apple bugs, LMH said in an interview conducted over instant message."

It's a childish and self centered move on the part of "LMH" to NOT inform the vendor. Apparently, he is more concerned about puffing himself up than with security or the wel

Why don't software companies offer bounties?

[Jon Abbott (723)]

Why don't large software companies offer bounties to find their security flaws and disclose them in private before they become a problem? I know security companies do this sometimes, as well as underground organizations to find 0-day exploits, so why aren't the software companies themselves getting into this game? I would think that it would motivate programmers at the company in question to tighten up their code, especially if the bounty cash cuts into their results sharing.

stipulated to be true

[fermion (181285)]

We can accept the following as a given:

• every system has bugs
• Some bugs will result in the creation of security issues
• Bugs that do not result in the creation of security issues or other user problems will be ignored
• If an exploit does not exist in the wild, the developer will claim a fix for the bug can be deferred
• if a developer is secretly altered of a bug, the developer will claim the fix can be deferred because the bug is secret
• If a white hat hacker has found a bug, then someone else probably has as well
• Just because a exploit is not known, does not mean that it does not exist and just waiting for release
• Hackers that release bug lists are just looking for attention and friends

Given all of these varied assumption, there is no simple answer to the reporting of bugs. There is really no reason to keep the bugs secret, as that does a disservice to the customers and allows the manufacturer to postpone a fix. If the issue is serious, then it will get out anyway, and the sooner the fix the better. By making the bug public, the developer can openly discuss the issue and justify the action or inaction.

In the end the only shitty thing to do is sit on a bunch of bugs and then release then in mass. This of course is going to overwhelm the developer, and expose a bunch of issues that cannot be quickly be fixed. It is not only an attack on the developer, but an attack on the innocent users. I have no problem with hackers releasing bugs as they are found, but building up an arsenal is something that only black hats would do.

As far as if a particular OS is secure, this probably has more do with the quality of code rather than error rate. Even quality code will have errors. The difference is that quality code is written in such a way that side effects are minimized by clearly defined interfaces and domains of data. This leads to code that can be easily fixed without the problem of a change effecting many other unrelated systems. Ever since we were told that MS Windows can not function with IE or WMP, and it took 5 years to generate an upgrade, we are all very suspicious about the code quality of MS Windows.

Re:

[Em Adespoton (792954)]

Too bad MS doesn't seem to care that much about their rep, or Vista could be a goldmine!

What makes you think it isn't?

Re:

[daemonenwind (178848)]

Yes, I fully realize I'm spending karma to make this joke.

I guess it just proves that Mac fanbois have no sense of humor.

(FWIW, I always saw Jobs as Palpatine in SW:TPM. Benevolent on the face, manipulative and nasty in the background. His use of Woz and little percolations on Jobs's ego makes me see this)

Re:

[Trillan (597339)]

No, it just proves you find humor in trolling. Randomly adding Darth to someone's last name simply isn't funny.

Darth Torvalds
Darth Bush
Darth Jobs
Darth Stallman
Darth Blair
Darth Bin Laden

It's okay to find meta-humor amusing - i.e., the fact that Apple fanboys don't find it funny -- but posting to elicit that kind of response is trolling by definition.

Now, personally, I wouldn't waste mod points modding it down anyway, but I would not m2 Unfair someone who did. My only point is this: You're not being nearly as

Re:

[enrevanche (953125)]

It's more like Ballmer the Hut. [ladyofthecake.com]