$16,000 Bounty for Sendmail, Apache Zero-Day Flaws 173
Famestay writes "Verisign's iDefense is putting up a $16,000 prize for any hacker who can find a remotely exploitable vulnerability in six critical Internet infrastructure applications. The bounty is for a zero-day code execution hole on the following Internet infrastructure technologies: Apache httpd, Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) daemon, Sendmail SMTP daemon, OpenSSH sshd, Microsoft Internet Information (IIS) Server and Microsoft Exchange Server. 'Immunity founder Dave Aitel, who also purchases flaws and exploits for use in the CANVAS pen testing tool, says its doubtful iDefense will get any submissions from hackers. "It's very hard to exploit [those listed applications]," Aitel said. "IIS 6 hasn't had a public remotely exploitable bug in it. Ever." Several other hackers I spoke to had very much the same message, arguing that $16,000 can never equate to the amount of work/expertise required to find and exploit a hole in the six targeted technologies.'"
IIS and Exchange (Score:1, Funny)
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The article says Sendmail has had only 4 remote holes since 2003... Why not lead by example and dig up a fresh one?
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BTW -- TFA says that IIS 6 hasn't had a single public remotely-exploitable hole. That means essentially nothing to me, because most serious 'hackers' aren't using public exploits.
Re:IIS and Exchange (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it does means a lot to many people when a piece of software has never had a publicly exploitable hole.
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Put the fanboi attitude away and think about logically and you'll know what I'm talking about. This applies to all applications and operating systems, not just II
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In this case there were no publicly-announced holes. Now your argument has veered off into left field for a last chance save. No dice. You even tried to pull out the fanboy argument which always evidences a final crash and burn when used out of context.
Re:Exchange (Score:1, Funny)
No need to find a flaw, Ms exchange will crash on it's own.
start here! (Score:2, Interesting)
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Username bill
Password gates
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$16,000 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$16,000 (Score:5, Insightful)
arguing that $16,000 can never equate to the amount of work/expertise required to find and exploit a hole in the six targeted technologies. Clearly, the so called experts aren't aware of the multitudes of enterprising folks living outside the inflated Western wage spectrum. For someone a little more eastbound, that's a nice chunk of change.
Not only that, but I'm assuming that claiming the prize and the advertising that goes with it - advertising your skills, that is - is the more valuable part. I'm imagining that the type of person who could claim the prize is interested in doing this sort of thing anyway. The prize would be a nice cash reward and a fantastic thing to put on a resume.
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It is remote, and it is foolproof.
I want the money.
-nB
The exploit is to take the admins family hostage, demanding whatever code you want to be run in exchange for the family's safety.
Since you are using a phone to control the admin it is a remote exploit.
Have a nice day.
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In my opinion the problem isn't really that it doesn't pay for someone to do the work to find the exploit that's there, it's that it's not enough to be painful if there is one there.
For instance if I put a "security exploit bounty" on my code of $1 (probably less than I pay for donuts weekly) ... how secure does that say the code is? Now if I put the same bounty on it of $2,000 [and.org] (yes I'm not amazingly rich, so that's a very painful amount), this is a very different equation.
It's the difference betwe
Bidding war. (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you sell it to those guys for $16K
Re:Bidding war. (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither. You auction it off to the highest bidding spamgang. Or so I've heard.
Re:$16,000 (Score:4, Informative)
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Must be nice.. I live in Pa and I'd love to have a extra $16k
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hMMM (Score:3, Funny)
From the FA (Score:2)
So, it would be reasonable to assume that any development branch stuff including current CVS snapshot would be inadmissible.
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No, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to mention ability to convert O2 to CO2... (Score:5, Funny)
True
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I didn't sign an NDA when i started working for the..... Oh high Vladmir, what are you doing he.....
Re:No, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but pimpin' ain't easy.
Meanwhile, the Russian Mafia offers you... (Score:1)
Triple that amount of cash. Or more. Or your life. Or, the well being of those you love.
You get the point.
IIS 6 (Score:5, Funny)
IIS 6 hasn't had a public remotely exploitable bug in it. Ever.
How can that be? IIS is crap! Slashdot tells me so!
Re:IIS 6 (Score:5, Funny)
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IIS6 is very good and new IIS7 is even better, also to note on all the 11 Suse dedicated servers i run i switched from Apache 2 to a lighter, less resource hoging alternative
Btw IIS6 has less unpatched vulnerabilities [secunia.com] than apache [secunia.com]
so there
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LIGHTTPD! (Score:1)
Re:IIS 6 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:IIS 6 (Score:5, Interesting)
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"Microsoft Internet Information Services ASP Code Buffer Overflow"
http://secunia.com/advisories/21006/ [secunia.com]
Software:
- Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.x
- Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 6
Impact:
- System access
- Security Bypass
Where:
- From remote
"hasn't had a public remotely exploitable bug"? Ever? Yes, of course - ever
Re:IIS 6 (Score:5, Informative)
This is not a remotely exploitable bug. Nice try though.
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It's remotely exploitable, if the programmer is dumb enough. Then again, so is Apache + PHP.
Most server-related exploits are not through visible and administrated or configured services but rather through side-services like RPC in combination with ineptness of programmers and admins. That's what makes the Microsoft platform so darn insecure, there's by default hundreds of services running that
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PHP was just easy and very popular. Usually unexperienced developers create security problems, not the language itself.
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You're correct about the application cache not surviving config changes, though typically this shouldn't be an issue as cache is only for convenience: users won't feel the difference if there's a cache mi
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Look at me, I'm a hacker (Score:5, Funny)
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Apples and Oranges... (Score:2)
Cracking most of this stuff is, I'd imagine, significantly harder -- after all, it is possible for Apache to be secure, whereas it's not even close to possible for DVDs to be uncrackable.
That's ignoring the economics of it -- $15 per DVD? Fine, you just need to sell 1,067 copies and you've made $16k. That's assuming money was ever the point.
Entrapment? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ha! (Score:1)
That's it ?
That type of exploit is worth at least a brand new BMW.
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Schwab
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That is correct, and directly attributable to Ford Motor Company owning controlling interest for some years now. Same is true for Rover.
(Ironically Jaguar actually got better after Ford took them over.
Free money (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Leave subtle flaw in your code
2. Share information with distant acquaintance
3. Profit!
Already in real life. (Score:2, Informative)
Somewhere, I believe in one of Scott Adam's (the Dilbert creator) books he has a (purportedly) true story about a company where the testers were paid $100 per bug they found. According to him, the program was scrapped after a week, but not before quite a few expensive gifts went from testers to programmers.
It seemed like the an urban legend ala the Woz getting $100 for each chip he got off a board, but I've heard that that one is actually true, so maybe both are??
Yes, it's the fallacy of assuming the who
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Along a similar vein one of the companies I worked for had an idea for spurring innovation and lateral thinking. The program was
Re:Already in real life. (Score:5, Insightful)
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but in this case you have to ask was he expecting a bonus that big for it and if so would have have released it if it hadn't of been. If not then all the excessively sized bonus would do is cost the company both the money and probablly the employee too.
minor correction (Score:2)
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http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123048910 [af.mil]
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From Anton Chuvakin's Blog [blogspot.com]:
...most scary cyber-criminal of the future is not a spammer, a scammer, a phisher or a pharmer, and not even a good ole "cracker" - it is an unethical software engineer, who changes the code slightly to introduce a weakness (or a full-blown backdoor or a logic bomb) and later uses or sells this knowledge
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Internet infrastructure technologies? (Score:2)
Since when are we using marketing speak here? Can we please call them programs or program systems?
Conveying gravity (Score:2)
maybe someone has already done the work (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe there are people out there who already have more than one exploit for these and wouldn't mind trading one in for a legal source of quick cash. Who knows? 16k buys very a nice chunk of electronics for people who don't need the money for anything else.
Bragging All the Way to the Poor House (Score:3, Insightful)
Here are the terms of the challenge -
* The vulnerability must be remotely exploitable and must allow arbitrary code execution in a typical installation of one of the technologies listed above
Ok, so you pick some of the oldest and most robust technologies around - things that have had a LOT of the bugs worked out of them already and things are you're not that likely to have to pay out on.
* The vulnerability must exist in the latest version of the affected technology with all available patches and/or upgrades applied
* 'RC' (Release candidate), 'Beta', 'Technology Preview' and similar versions of the listed technologies are not included in this challenge
So you eliminate any upcoming versions, but you forget to exclude the previous versions....
* The vulnerability must be original and not previously disclosed to any party
So if I've already informed the software maker, it's out, further reducing the likelihood of any kind of a payment having to be made.
* The vulnerability cannot be caused by or require any additional third party software installed on the target system
Reasonable, but...and this is a big but....many things are quite secure on their own, but not so much so when you actually start using them. Prime example, Apache. Apache on it's own is fine. Install one of the open source PHP web apps and then see how secure it is. How many people run Apache serving up hand coded HTML?
* The vulnerability must not require any social engineering
This is because we all know that there is no patch for human stupidity...though I've never seen it admitted quite so blatantly.
PHOOEY ON YOUR CHALLENGE
It would take me a lot of man hours to come up with something, more to code an exploit for it and by the time I'm done...I'd be better off financially if I had worked at Wal-Mart for those hours. $16,000 divided by 4 (people on my team) = $4000 each. Let's say we spend 5 weeks on this. That's 200 hours each. That works out to having a chance to get $20/hr. And frankly, I think that 200 hours each is pretty optimistic. We're talking about pouring over their code base, becoming familiar with it, and looking for places that we can try to break it. That's in excess of 89,000 lines of code just for Apache and more than another 70,000 for Sendmail. Then we have to load it up, write some code to test the exploit, and run it to see if works. If it doesn't on the first try, it's rinse and repeat until we give up on that possible exploit and try a different one.
I'm guessing that this is more of a publicity stunt than anything else. Anyone in the industry should know better. This has to be something that the marketing poohbah's have dreamed up. Just more marketing hype so that they can say, "We're more secure than those other guys. We ran our challenge and we didn't get anything. These apps are safe to use."
2 cents,
Queen B.
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Exactly. Apache without any extra modules, just the core? There's not much to exploit, and that which there is has been worked over and over for years.
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Tried Google? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Tried Google? (Score:4, Funny)
Just to narrow it down, I redid your search with quotes and found 67. But the first one's a blast. It goes to the "w4ck1ng" forum where the thread goes...
"Hello found this exploit: http://www.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lis...5-04/0436....and the response goes:
"you can not use exe files under unix y0u have to compile it with GCC..."
I *think* IIS is safe from *this* guy...
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Ok, now a clarification: the code [derkeiler.com] I think you meant to link to is not an exploit for IIS, it deletes the 1337 h4x0r's files. The exchange is a good way to run out the clock on a Friday, at least through:
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I don't consider a DOS an exploit. Like the article, we're talking about being able access the system. As it still stands per the article definition, there are no remote exploits for IIS6.0.
Does this [secunia.com] look like a DoS to you?
Can the same be said about apache?
This is not about httpd versus IIS 6. The statement was that there were no remote exploits for IIS 6 and it appears that there is evidence to the contrary.
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Yes. Just like this would:
Or like this:
Comes to mind... That last one was used when some people I know from IRC cracked open one TV company's web site here in Finland.
But above examples doesn't work in IIS6/ASP.NET since framework doesn't let you shoot yourself in the foot so easily. ASP.NET checks input and prevents submitting suspicous data unless you specifically tell it to let it through. Also you would have to write something
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If this had hit one of our servers, it wouldn't have worked because the "classic" ASP ISAPI handler is disabled by default, and that's how we leave it. And even if that were not true, you'd end up with the same privileges as the NETWORK SERVICE account, which on 2003 is basically useless. AND you still would need to have configured the roo
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If this had hit one of our servers, it wouldn't have worked because the "classic" ASP ISAPI handler is disabled by default, and that's how we leave it. And even if that were not true, you'd end up with the same privileges as the NETWORK SERVICE account, which on 2003 is basically useless. AND you still would need to have configured the root of your website to allow for authenticated uploads.
So on a shared host that supports ASP, if one shared account does this exploit, would they not get access to all of the others?
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The first thing I did when I moved to my current shared hosting provider was request information on their IIS configuration to make sure it was sufficiently hardened to prevent something like this to affect my site.
Heh (Score:2)
$16k? Peanuts... (Score:2)
If you're after fame, you report it through the proper channels (CERT or the vendor directly). You get credited in the bugfix, but gain no money at all.
Selling to one of these guys just goes into the pockets of these zero-day vendors, who then get more customers paying them $$$ to be a few days ahead of everyone else (but they'll get the patches at the same
Is that legal? (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone can discover them, so it's plausible that two people can know the same flaw. So one party gets the flaw and gives the $16,000, then communicates the exploit to a third party who hacks in and gets trade secrets (or teh g0ld) and sells those, or whatever.
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FYI (Score:5, Funny)
OpenSSH - A service you can install on a Unix system to enable remote admin access for known users.
Sendmail - A service you can install on a Unix system to enable remote admin access for complete strangers.
Hope this helps.....
As a sysadmin I would like to thank Verisign (Score:2)
...for creating a 'busy work' distraction for the geek students who would normally spend the summer holidays writing this year's worm.
Surprised (Score:2)
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Maybe I should ask for corroboration. Is IIS really bug free software? I mean, at lease for security bugs?
Bug free? No, it's a fucking joke in that respect. Security bugs? There don't seem to be many.
Of course with a brand new install being hit only with HEAD requests from the Load Balancer it goes down faster than a Tijuana hooker. Presumably, MS would call that a feature, but it's quite obviously a very badly broken piece of software.
easy money... (Score:2)
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Have a peek at the 695,000 google results. [google.com]
You can play games all you want with words - "we don't have any <insert restrictive adjective here> exploits" the fact is that IIS has historically been and always will be a security nightmare.
It took Microsoft what - 10 years - to actually prioritize security measures in their web server? And you think they got it right the first time?
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Microsoft learned from their mistakes and are making their software secure, not just by Microsoft standards, but clearly by any standard.
You can talk about old versions of software all you want, but it's just an attempt to deflect from the fact that your comment about "Bagdad Bob" would be more accurately assigned to people like you, not Microsoft.
Alrighty Then (Score:3, Informative)
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The article summary itself states:
I laughed. From there...
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of course once they do get in the design of the OS can help in damage control but they have to be in first.