MS Giving Exploit Writers Clues To Flaws 63
In the IT trench writes "How's this for a new twist on the old responsible disclosure debate? Hackers are using clues from Microsoft's pre-patch security advisories to create and publish proof-of-concept exploits. The latest zero-day flaw in the Windows DNS Server RPC interface implementation is a perfect example of the tug-o-war within the Microsoft Security Response Center about how much information should be included in the pre-patch advisory."
I can see open vs closed source (Score:5, Insightful)
But this is a case where a half-and-half approach is probably the worst of all.
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Of course, going halfway on either ideology, closed or open source sets you up for trouble. Which is why it is a bad idea for Microsoft to release any details about their patches at all. Yes, I said it. If they are going to try and make a blackbox OS, they shouldn't do it half way.
Re:I can see open vs closed source (Score:5, Funny)
Damn Microsoft! Their full disclosure is allowing hackers to write exploits; don't tell the hackers how to hack my system!
Damn Microsoft! They're kinda going half way in a vain attempt to stop people flaming, as if I'm going to stop doing that! Stick with one or the other, we'll flame you whatever you do anyway.
I'd rather have half-and-half (Score:1, Interesting)
Now, it's true that it is still in the favor of the virus writers in that hardly 100% of sys admins keep up to date on this stuff (wheres the time?) but it is scary that they can exploit a specific bug base on a vague explanation in the first place..... (scary in that Windows is really that bad...)
Chaffing (Score:4, Interesting)
If they wanted to get more diabolical, they could even put some honey pots into the code itself. For example, something that emulates a buffer overflow crash when a certain malfromed word is injected. Or maybe something more tantilizing but useless like a 1 second pause in Internet explorer when a certain tag combination appears followed by a page reload to make them think IE just belched but managed to somehow recover. Hint at this in the pre-pub or leak it on the web (post it in a slashdot comment). they can validate it's existence so they believe the bug really exists too.
Each time they patch the real security hole they can preload ten new honeypots for the next round of spoofing the hackers and eradicate the old ones so it looks like they are patching real bugs and the hackers never catch on.
Why am I posting this under this parent? Well because you could only get away with this in closed source. Open source would make this a give-away.
Re:Chaffing (Score:5, Insightful)
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I personally think that there are uses for both. Its natural to have both in place.
One example is if I am the Coca Cola company, and I wan't to keep the formula a secret. I might go to great lengths in securing the room, in which you can read the formula. You owuld need to know the security, in order to access it in the first place.
If I had $20,000 in cash at my house, in the basement, and not tell anyone that it is there. If I
Re:Chaffing (Score:4, Insightful)
Only one of them, the $20,000 in your basement. The reason you only do that for one night is that it isn't a good long-term security solution. Eventually, someone will find out that you have that much cash lying around and your chances of being robbed go way up.
Re:Chaffing (Score:4, Interesting)
Having an element or elements in your security setup which are irregular is a good part of a complete security picture, but don't for a moment assume that these will even slow down someone who knows what to do and is determined to get into your network. Only real security measures will do that. If you leave an unsecured FTP server on port 12056 facing the internet, someone will eventually find it and exploit it. If you leave phpmyadmin with no root password hidden in your website somewhere with no outside links, they still might find it, and then you are toast. Obscurity just stops most script kiddies. That's not bad, though, is it?
*COhg* No? (Score:2)
I've broken into houses. I'm neither proud nor ashamed (I was young, it's the least of the stupid things I did). Leaving your door open *would* increase the chances of you being broken into. Being broken into *would* increase the chances someone sees the money you've cleverly laid out in the basement.
Meanwhile, you would have been much safer having just posted directly on your front door that you had $20K and installing your (*cough* firew
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One example is if I am the Coca Cola company, and I wan't to keep the formula a secret. I might go to great lengths in securing the room, in which you can read the formula. You owuld need to know the security, in order to access it in the first place.
No, no, NO!
The Coca Cola should open source the formula and abandon any trademarks so that The Community can check the formula for health risks and contribute improvements, and m
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That's not true - the point of open source is that users have the right to change the code and distribute changed versions. The license determines whether you need to release your source code changes, but both GPL and BSD a
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A situation where a piece of software is open source, but does not come with any rights to distribute and/or modify code would be one where a company or government want to carry out a code review usually (but not exclusively) on the grounds of security, or comp
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Passwords are secret, not obscured (Score:1)
The secrecy of the password is, actually, the only secrecy not connected with it.
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Only for people that doesn't understad what is 'security by obscurity'. Most security systems depend on something being secret. Security by obscurity is when you tell that secret to the enemy, but in a hard to read way.
And it only works if what they can gain from you is worth less than the cost of deciphering the secret. That is, almost never.
Re:Chaffing (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, introducing fake honey pots in the code would cause problems. If they announced it and fixed each one, the honey pots would be useless. If they announced it but didn't fix it, they'd look like they didn't care/or it would make it obvious it was a honey pot. If they didn't announce it or fix it, then invariably some security researcher would find it (it has to be discoverable to become a honey pot) and blast MS for the security vulnerability.
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As I mentioned in my first post, each time they send out a patch they fix all the honeypots so no one can tell and then pr
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Really it's perfect because it frustrates those that want to somehow prove MS is less secure by counting bug rates.
(those numbers are kinda meaninngless as there is so little normaliza
Re:Chaffing Poorly? (Score:2)
I'll peg them to try introducing chaff/fake exploits... and *missing*, at which point they get OWNED for real.
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Wouldn't that be ironical - a honeypot leading to a real exploit?
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Unfortunately, so would a decent debugger. It's a pretty cool idea, though.
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OTOH, maybe the cracker will find his time had not gone to waste.
Just because MS think a piece of their code is good, it doesn't mean it is so. After all, they do need bugfixes and service packs
Not so relevant to open source (Score:2)
Open source also reduces the risk of needing this kind of thing in the first place. And that is true regardless of whatever the current state of Linux vulnerabilities vs Windows vulnerabilities.
In closed source, for whatever reason, MS can't seem to release zero-day patches. That is, they discover the vulnerability, or someone reports it to them, and the patch still has to wait till Patch Tuesday. Only exception to this is if it becomes public in a big way, such as
When in doubt provide more information (Score:2, Interesting)
IT admins will be the most affected
Hackers that RTFM
Re:When in doubt provide more information (Score:4, Insightful)
They also know How To Ask Questions The Smart Way [catb.org].
Crackers have the upper hand on system administrators, because the focus is very narrow. System administrators have to RTFM and stay up-to-date on everything from why Alice can't print (because her network cable is unplugged) through to debugging the cause of a fatal exception/crash in a plugin they've written for a HTTP daemon. System administrators are very overloaded with work whereas crackers can take it much easier.
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Note: This is a generalisation of a select group. It will not cover every possibility.
Tick tock tick tock... (Score:1, Interesting)
How hard is it for Microsoft to push out a new update for a change this minor (and important)?
This is a critical problem for any intranet (Universities come to mind as the largest target) running Microsoft servers. And it can also affect a whole load of dedicated servers running the basic versions of Microsoft server software.
What are they waiting for?!
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Shoot from the hip fixing is not always right (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually think that MS pushes out some patches too fast. My Windows laptop gets autopatched and the problematic parts of the system (wireless networking in particular) sometimes get screwed up for a while until the next patch set arrives. I don't think that MS is responsible for all the breakage. Often, MS makes a change which can break an existing driver or app. From a user's perspective all that you see is that a MS patch breaks the system.
Compare the facts: open source patching is FAST (Score:4, Interesting)
Julien Tinnes reported [immunitysec.com] it at 13:48:00 EST on December 7, 2006.
At 14:17:50 on the same day the patch [madwifi.org] was available in the main source code repository.
A little while later at 17:08:26 the vulnerability is officially confirmed [madwifi.org] by Madwifi and advisories had been prepared.
Looking downstream, the response times for an official fixes/advisories by distribution specific security teams were:
Gentoo: December 10 [gentoo.org]
SUSE: Confirmed December 8 [novell.com], Fixed December 11 [novell.com]
Ubuntu: January 9 [ubuntu.com]
There is certainly some room for improvement here with distribution specific fixes, but that also includes time spent testing the changes to the driver. To be fair to Microsoft (actually, I'm just being overly optimistic), they probably had a patch ready within 30 minutes of the initial vulnerability report as was the case with Madwifi. But instead of giving the customer the option of trying the "beta" patch so they can test it themselves, it is kept private. Days tick by at Microsoft HQ and nothing appears to happen. Eventually, a patch is released on the patch Tuesday of the next month (or the month after that). System administrators get no choice and no chance to test it themselves.
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Remember how XP was cracked? (Score:3, Interesting)
Clear choice (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe they should do what Mozilla does, which is to "hide" vulnerabilities until they either patch them or feel that a sufficient number of people have applied the patch (which is of course the other problem). Of course, like with Blaster for example, you can release a patch and 30 days later the exploit nails all the people who didn't bother to fucking patch.
I can see some people's heads exploding with this one.
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Fabulous (Score:5, Insightful)
That's great. Now they have an excuse to be incredibly vague about the problem in the advisories. It will be like the Government and National Security Letters.
"We need you to submit to this, to protect you from hackers. We can't discuss the issue as it's a trade secret and a threat to computing security. This is a critical venerability. But we can't tell your why. Just install this patch when it comes out and you'll be better. Trust us, we know what we're doing."
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Supply cs Demand? (Score:1)
There was already exploit code before the advisory (Score:5, Informative)
Re:There was already exploit code before the advis (Score:3, Interesting)
Put another way - it was actually initially discovered by the black hats, and an exploitation tool released and used, not confidentially reported to Microsoft under the "Responsible Disclosure" programme, or even publically posted to somewhere li
There's always a "0-day" (Score:1, Insightful)
It really doesn't matter how much information you disclose about the technical details or workarounds except in how long it will take to develop the exploit. Once an exploit writer knows there is a critical vuln in a particular area of the system, it's not that hard to narrow down the inputs required to exploit it. In particular, Metasploit makes this much easier [wikibooks.org] to do by being able to see what memory offsets are in EIP when the process segfaults.
The only real impact is how many people will be able to w
+1 troll to the headline (Score:5, Insightful)
The headline should instead read something like Hackers Create Exploits Using Microsoft Published information. This IS what hackers do after all. They read documentation and manuals. They find out how things work with all the available information. They social engineer. Trying to pin this on Microsoft is childish.
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Now does it mean that I can improve my karma by trolling?
Re:Here's an idea that Microsoft hasn't thought of (Score:4, Insightful)
You realise RPC [exct.net] is, in fact, a UNIX feature? That it's there on your Linux/Sun/BSD/OSX box? That like anything running on a known port it's easily blockable at the firewall? Or via IPSEC if you don't run a firewall? And that the Win2003 firewall will block it by default?
Well done; next time I develop code I'll make sure I name my services something like "Sooper secure, non-remote admin interface", because we wouldn't want to make the cracker's job easier with a name now would we?
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Yet another buffer overflow...time to stop using C (Score:4, Insightful)
And before someone says it's all about the programmers and not the language, I would say I agree: it takes a God programmer to produce a flawless C program. The God programmer category has few members around the world, and most of them are not in Microsoft (hint: they are Linux / open source guys).
So it's time to stop using this horrific programming language called 'C'. It worked so far, but its flaws are very serious...time to move on!
A Casual Understanding of How Microsoft Sees You (Score:1, Troll)