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Auction Site To Sell Security Vulnerabilities 121
talkinsecurity writes "A Swiss research lab has built an eBay-like marketplace where hackers and researchers can sell the security vulnerabilities they discover to the highest bidder. WabiSabiLabi could replace the back-room, secret sites where researchers and hackers used to sell their exploits and replace them with a neat, clean way to make money by finding security flaws. Those who have seen the site say they are concerned about how the buyers will be vetted, and how the marketplace will ensure the flaws aren't found through illegal methods."
Bidding up (Score:2)
Re:Bidding up (Score:5, Insightful)
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"illegal methods" ? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:"illegal methods" ? (Score:4, Informative)
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Actually most EULA's prohibit this, thus making it illegal,
At best, breach of contract. Even if the EULA is valid, which many aren't. Plus you have to prove that the information was obtained through "illegal" means.
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I will only see the EULA if I install the software. There is nothing to say that I have to view the EULA in order to reverse engineer the software.
However, I agree with the (many) other posters - EULAs are not legally binding where I live.
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So I dunno about you and the US, but I can reverse as I please.
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1. Who says EULA's are legally binding? Give me ONE example of a EULA being upheld against an ordinary consumer in a non-US western country.
2. In danish copyrightlaw(Lov om Ophavsret) there are two bits(36 and 37) that talks about reverse engineering. The interesting bit is that part of the law is that NO other contract can forbid reverse engineering! So if the EULA(Which I dont think is legally binding) says you cant reverse engineer the software it
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And as pointed out by others, dissasembly is actually "illegal" according to their EULAs. This is another laughable notion that proprietary SW houses sometimes entertain..they think that when the code passes through a few lines of compiler, i
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How do you preserve value? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if the people putting this on are actually looking to make a point about software vendors and their products. Any chance that they are looking to do nothing more than score some legal victories for the good of the public?
Regards.
How would you know that it is only sold once? (Score:5, Insightful)
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If I see the cross platform vulnerability I just bought again, I'm suing!
1. Login to your computer
2. Stand up
3. Put your foot through your monitor
4. PROFIT!
Re:How do you preserve value? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The best a software company might hope for by not bidding (or losing) is using the information as a bit of help if narrowing down the search, or more probably, becoming aware of the potential exploit in the first instance.
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I think this is a good idea though, though I can see why it's controversial. It'll create a market for people looking for security vulnerabilities, it'll make software companies pay attention and perhaps a
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The best 0day is one that nobody knows about.
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Its simpl;e, really - and why it won't work (Score:5, Insightful)
It reminds me of the joke:
If its a real vulnerability, you can sell it over and over again. None of the buyers is going to leak it - they'd lose their investment, and chance to make $$$.
So, sell it once for $X, or sell it 20 times for $X/2?
This is just someone else with a lame attempt to insert themselves into a market.
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If you want to make a lot of money selling $PRODUCT, eBay is not a very good place to do it, particularly when the market is flooded.
This will probably only be used by lazy white-hats who don't want to bother finding a black-market purchaser for their exploit--assuming there are sufficient quantities of supply and demand.
As with many "new overarching central service to do X" stories and sites on
- R
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Umm... waitaminute...
Interesting vulnerabilites on the site (Score:2)
How can anyone exploit a memory leak?
Re:Interesting vulnerabilites on the site (Score:5, Informative)
If you're interested in these things, in my opinion, the best thing you can do is read a good operating system book - in my opinion you're best off with either Tanenbaum [amazon.com] or Silberschatz [amazon.com] - those books describe these problems in detail in terms of debugging your work, but in many cases, compromising a system is about leveraging unfixed bugs (enbugging, if you'll pardon the coining;) as such, a book meant to teach one to fix these is a great way to learn what needs to be protected against, as well as why.
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In the web services industry we call this ColdFusion 5 and Microsoft Access.
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Just my 2 cents ;-)
easy (Score:2)
Next, place a pointer there.
Next, run the kernel out of memory.
Next, ask the kernel to do a getsockopt() call that needs memory. The kernel will get back a NULL. The kernel will keep going, eventually using the NULL pointer to get some critical data like a kernel pointer. (a data pointer in this case, but it could well be a function
BTW, this is getting fixed (Score:2)
For better control, a SE Linux hook is being added. Not that this isn't an abuse of the SE Linux mechanism, but... it'll work.
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no modern kernel works as Intel intended (Score:2)
User code and data resides in addresses from 0x00000000 to 0xbfffffff. The kernel resides in addresses from 0xc0000000 to 0xffffffff. At all times, both user and kernel stuff is in the page tables. At all times, both user and kernel stuff is mapped. At all times
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from a description of CVE-2007-1000 at http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE- 2007-1000 [mitre.org]
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Buy, read, learn.
Obviously Ok (Score:1, Troll)
sounds good to me (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a free market approach like this is good.
As for vetting buyers and sellers, I don't think that's either necessary or desirable. If people find security holes through "illegal means" (whatever that means), it's a matter for the police and courts. And if the mafia outbids Microsoft, well, then Microsoft will have to live with the consequences or pay more next time. Companies like Microsoft should be exposed to the true costs of their security vulnerabilities, and they will be exposed to that only if the "bad guys" are in on the bidding, because vulnerabilities aren't worth a lot to the other "good guys".
If prices and damages get high enough, companies will invest enough in software development to stop creating security vulnerabilities in the first place.
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Re:sounds good to me (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a free market approach like this is good.
Oh yea, free market always works! Especially when the bidders in this case would actually gain financial benefit from said "goods" by illegal access to people's machines.
Software companies that produce products will be forced to "pay up" or let the vulnerability go to said parties above.
Other free markets that work just fine, and bidding works miracles in there:
* Human Organ Markets
* Internet domains
* Fire Weapons, Biological Weapons, Missiles
* Kidnapping journalists in Iraq for bounty
* De-regulated utility monopolies
* Open Market Health Insurances
The world is full of amazing examples where the best thing EVAH to do, was just sit there in awe and think "it's perfect"!
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Kinda flawed logic right there. Let's flip it, since a bidder is a bidder, never mind what are his intentions:
"So if this site never goes up, the exploits will never get into the hands of the software vendors? Yeah, that's likely. With this, the malicious companies would get a chance to bid too, a
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Why, you're doing great yourself. I should just sit here and watch you go against your
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You are cherry-picking [wikipedia.org] from among the few examples that almost everyone agrees should *not* be for sale to anyone with cash (also included in that category would be nukes and selected ICBM technologies). However, it does not follow that computer vulnerabilities are subject to the same level of scrutiny simply because there exist unrelated items, nukes and biological weapons, that almost
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(also included in that category would be nukes and selected ICBM technologies).
AND GRANDMA'S SECRET RECIPE FOR CHERRY TARTS!
The comparison does nothing to advance your suggestion that the "free market" is not a good idea in the case of software vulnerabilities.
To further this "cherry-picking" though, software exploit's can be as dangerous as a nuke or an ICBM. What happens if we see a Resident Evil type scenario and a killer virus gets out (no not talking AI here) because some sociopath used an exploit he bought off this site to enter the biological weapons facility. Same scenario but with the hoover dam... someone finds a way in with the exploit and opens all the gates.
True, these are extreme situations, and probab
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But this isn't like a biological weapon. It's like putting up for bid a set of security schematics for Fort Knox, with possible holes highlighted. If the government wants, it can bid, and win. Then, even if th
why do you think we have an organ shortage? (Score:2)
It's such a load of crap. Nobody can sell organs, but the middlemen can charge huge "handling fees" and "processing fees". Grrr. Well, maybe the icky solution is that my surviving family charge such fees. My wife could stand there next to the doctor, dropping organs into a cooler for $1234567/hour. Yuck! This is stupid. Just let me
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Software companies that produce products will be forced to "pay up" or let the vulnerability go to said parties above.
Or, not sell broken products in the first place. Of course, that will require undoing all the buyer "education" that they've performed over the last 15 years to train the purchaser to (not) distinguish between "shiny things" and "solid and secure code".
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I welcome the idea. Even if their primary customer is black hats, the ability to point to them and say "see, there are these 5 vital fixes that Symantec hasn't done or MacAfee won't touch" is helpful to making sure they do, indeed, fix them.
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No, free market approaches don't always work. But in this case, I think it would.
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I think a free market approach like this is good.
Could this create a divide between developers/companies that can afford to buy up exploits and those that can't ?
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You're very conveniently using Microsoft as an example, but Microsoft won't be the one hurt from the entire deal. Microsoft has the money to bid and win, it has the money to lobby for a law that would make this site illegal if it hurts them. It has the lawyers to bring the site down even just like that.
What do FOSS vendors do, h
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Possible solution: Set up an enterprise pool where enterprises could pool money to buy exploit information, and get fixes up front for those exploits (before the patch was publicly released.) Might still leave those that couldn't afford to be in the pool with a worse situation than today, though.
Eivind.
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And if the mafia outbids Microsoft, well, then Microsoft will have to live with the consequences or pay more next time. Companies like Microsoft should be exposed to the true costs of their security vulnerabilities, and they will be exposed to that only if the "bad guys" are in on the bidding, because vulnerabilities aren't worth a lot to the other "good guys".
Microsoft has a monopoly and can bypass free market affects. Here's the situation: MS does not outbid the mafia. The mafia writes a worm which steals $10 from every PC's online bank account. People are angry and upset and trash their computers. Then they go buy a new one they hope won't have that problem. Maybe a Gateway will be more secure than a Dell. Since every computer in all the stores near them comes with Windows installed, people assume it is the most secure option available. They are used to deal
Now bidding (Score:5, Funny)
Flaw - You name it
Bid - 1 beeeeellllion dollars
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Flaw - You name it
Bid - 1 beeeeellllion dollars
Yep, funny. Let's put Linux up there now. Where will be beeeeellllion dollars come from now? FSF? Yea sure.
Sites like these are a potential disaster for FOSS software.
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I suspect that many other people will think the same way, and so I think this site will tend to be used mostly by "white-hats" who have enough morals not to exploit their exploits.
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Yea, just like a good trailer kinda makes it pointless to see the movie, right... Here's the good description:
"An exploit in Apache 2.x which allows a remote attacker sending kdata on port 80 to gain full control of the machine"
"An exploit in PHP core 4.x an 5.x which allows uploading arbitrary content to victim's server in arbitrary locations"
"A sys
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Ripoff Central? (Score:3, Insightful)
While someone dumb enough to, say, screw over a Russian Mafiya buywer, I can see where there would be more than enough idiots out there who would happily try (and hiding behind eGold and proxies, etc for payments... it may even be feasible )
Not like there would be much in the way of honor among theives when it comes to a near-total-anonymous thing like malware and malware kiddies...
(besides, all one would really have to do to make a killing as a seller is to dredge through securityfocus' vulns DB... the smart crims would avoid bidding on it, and the dumb ones? Well...)
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Exploit name, Outlook (Score:2)
Self Exploitation (Score:5, Funny)
Would it turn out to be (Score:1, Troll)
BANK ACCOUNT INFORMATION FOUND IN HIDDEN FACILITIES BY GABRI31!!
10 WAYS BREAKS INTO NATIONAL RESERVE!!!!
SEX VIDEO OF THE BITCH WHO DUMPED ME
I don't understand some people (Score:1)
Of course offering money for finding exploits might be a bad idea, it might entice people to look
Laws Are _Not_ Universal (Score:3, Insightful)
and how the marketplace will ensure the flaws aren't found through illegal methods.
"""
In which country?
A mountain of pretense (Score:1)
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A Jihad on speed limits? (Score:2)
Condoms == speech codes? (Score:2)
You're either looking to get someone pregnant, or contract an STI. I guess that's the price you pay for fighting the "hypocritical diaper society".
Well... (Score:2)
At least such a site will keep those holding our precious information on their toes to make sure any holes are plugged QUICKLY!
Sell the same 0-day several times? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds good to me, but don't the buyers feel cheated? I can't see anything to stop this from happening, so it doesn't seem like much of an _auction_ to me.
Also, consequently, after you buy an exploit you could auction it off to a bunch of other people and potentially make all your money back and more.
I don't really see how the auction format can support non-tangible items, is all I'm saying.
Competition for VCP and ZDI (Score:1, Insightful)
perceived problem (Score:2, Insightful)
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I wonder though if they do have a process for unhappy buyers who arn't satisfied with what they buy. How do you return Intellectual Property??
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Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, the site itself... (Score:2)
Nice Registration Form (Score:2)
Sure, I'll get right on that.
Wabisabi is a cool concept (Score:3, Informative)
Speaking of auctions and bugs... (Score:2)
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I doubt that eBay can present me with a confirmation of acceptance of an offer at a specific price, and then later retract it saying, "Oh, wait... we were a bit hasty, made a mistake, didn't notice this other coincidentally higher bid here."
I suspect we can all hold eBay legally liable for those initial confirmations and make eBay eat the difference, since they're in turn confirming only the later higher bids to the sellers, rather than the initial ones reported to buyers
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I know that sniping can be used to defend against shill bidding, but I don't see the value in using the technique against people who don't understand that eBay auctions are designed for proxy bidding.
Whether a legitimate bidder places one or one hundred bids is irrelevent; they will ultimately reach their final price. I don't see how the number of bids that it takes them
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Sniping - I see price at $22 and instead of beating that price right away I logon to the snipe service, type in my max amount, I log off happy. 5 SECONDS before the auction closes, with potentially the sheeple who bid first refreshing like mad, my bid is entered. Before said sheeple can decide that yeah
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Again, that makes no sense to me. Maybe it's because I have a firm maximum bid in mind whereas some people decide that they're willing to increase their maximum bid in certain situations?
In the first case you mentioned, your maximum bid was $25. Someone had a higher maximum bid than this so you lost. I don't see how the other party throwing out several max bids alters things. The only way it does make sense is if your first maximum bid wasn't really your max bid.
In the second situation, you're just
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You still don't win all the time because sometimes oth
Yes (Score:2)
Maybe it's because I have a firm maximum bid in mind whereas some people decide that they're willing to increase their maximum bid in certain situations?
Yes, that is exactly why you can't understand the benefit of sniping.
Most people are not engineers and have zero discipline. They act on their emotions and do illogical things. The average person does not enter his true maximum bid into the proxy system. He enters some idea of his max, but then his emotions take over. "Am I willing to lose this auction over $1 or $2?" And he raises his bid.
Watch the bidding on an item for evidence. You'll see some joker increasing his "maximum" bid by $1 or $2 for ab
I wash my hands. (Score:2, Insightful)
Had this type of subject come up in class (Score:5, Interesting)
Question- what do you do if you come upon a security hole?
Answer- ?
Case in point, some grad student in physics accidentally came across a vulnerability in the engineering dept's site. He reported it to his adviser the same day. (Yes, it was all proven). Adviser told the engineering dept., they fixed it, high fives all around. About a year later, the psych dept. gets broken into with a quasi-semi like exploit. Who does the uni and cops go straight after as a suspect? Yup, the kid who turned in the engineering vulnerability. Eventually was cleared, but how great is it to be a "Good Samaritan"?
So now you are student who comes across a commercial exploit. Now what? Auction is off for some moohla, let the company know, sit tight? If you auction it off and don't get sued by the company, does the school have a right to kick you out due to "unethical behavior"? If you let the company know, what kind of exposure do you have then? Can they accuse of being a hacker? If something similar in the future happens, can they come back to you? If you're a fan (or fanboy) of the company and sit tight, and later it gets hit by the same exploit, how is your conscience?
Now ramp the whole thing up to be a person in the commercial field. Tell your boss, etc.?
Now ramp it up to government level. Tell.... ? (underpant gnomes- had to fit that in somewhere)
Now ramp it up to classified level. Wait... nah, you cool as long as you tell your boss so -they- can exploit it.
As an individual at home, you'll probably be fine as long as you don't use the exploit to your advantage, and if you report it to a security site or the company I would think you would be fine.
Personally, I wouldn't touch this site with a 6 foot pole.
Eh? (Score:1)
I will let the legends speak for me (Score:2)
Good! (Score:2)
Will Adobe give me Photoshop CS3 for free? Of course not.
Then why do people expect these companies to get vulnerabilities for free?
I know, a vulnerability in $SoftwareVendor's product could be exploited by Some Nefarious Person ($SNP) to cause damage. So what's preventing $SoftwareVendor from bidding on the same vulnerability and beating out $SNP?.
Don't companies spend $$$ doing security audits,
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Anyhow, the companies are giving you value for reporting vulnerabilities. They are fixing them. That gives value to a user of that product, anyway.
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What you're supposed to do is find some suitable site (preferably running ASP and Cold Fusion), sprinkle it liberally with apostrophe's, and if some MS SQL Server error pops out, stuff the link in there. And then link that site from Slashdot.
Alternatively, spot a comment (or even better: a frontpage story...) which already lin